The faculty strongly recommends that students prepare a formal Thesis Proposal 9 to 18 months before the Ph.D. defense. The Thesis Proposal process gives students the opportunity to improve the level of intellectual rigor and maturity of their thesis.

The thesis proposal will consist of two parts, a written submission and an oral presentation. The written part should be about 10 to 25 pages and distributed to the examining committee (see below for details on the composition of the examining committee) two weeks prior to the oral presentation. The student must schedule the talk for a day and time when the examining committee is available and notify the Academic Coordinator no later than two weeks prior to the talk. Please include the day, time, and an abstract. The Academic Coordinator will schedule a room and announce the talk to the CSE department.

The written document should contain:

• A clear statement of the problem to be addressed by the research, and why this is an important problem.
• A literature survey that discusses previous approaches, their successes and shortcomings or possible a brief summary of a literature survey that appears elsewhere.
• A clear exposition of the approach(es) to be studied by the candidate, including pros and cons of alternatives.
• Preliminary results that indicate viability of the approach, and an understanding of where difficulties lie.

The suggested format for the oral presentation of the proposal is:

• An open presentation with a short question/answer period
• A closed meeting attended by the candidate, the examining committee, and any other interested faculty. During the closed meeting, the faculty can question the student on the specific research, topic area, and related research and topical areas.
• A closed meeting of the examining committee to decide on the summary recommendation.

Within one calendar week of the talk, the thesis advisor will provide written feedback to the student, including the committee's comments and determination as to whether the proposal was approved or not. In the event that the proposal is not approved, the written feedback will provide a description of the changes/improvements required for an acceptable proposal, together with a recommendation for rescheduling the talk if required.

The proposal examining committee usually consists of the student’s thesis committee plus two additional OGI faculty members, at least one of whom conducts research primarily outside the area of the student's center/research group. If it is costly or burdensome for a non-local thesis committee member to participate in the thesis proposal, then a suitable local area faculty member may replace the non-local member.

Note that the Thesis Proposal is highly recommended but is not a requirement for graduation. Note also that if you change your Ph.D. research topic after you have completed your Thesis Proposal, you should do another Thesis Proposal. The Thesis Proposal is an excellent venue for you to explain your Thesis research plans and to receive feedback from a broad audience, including your Thesis Committee.