Current Students
Dates and Deadlines
Please refer to the calendars to find information about important dates such as:
- registration dates
- dates when you can make changes to your registration
- dates for refunds on classes you have dropped
- when degree related items need to be completed
- holidays, etc.
Student Resources
Information for Masters Level Students
The Practicum
The practicum provides valuable experience in developing and delivering information science applications by assigning students to projects sponsored by either "real" clients, or in house projects. Practicums have all of the characteristics of typical information systems projects, including negotiated deliverables and schedules. Past projects have focused on corporate strategic planning, service-level agreements, telecommunications, imaging, pen-based computers, office systems, manufacturing, health systems, and decision support systems.
Graduation
The following forms are necessary when applying for your degree. In the case of Ph.D. candidates you simply file the "Intent to Receive a Degree" with the program administrator. (Please note your CGU Bulletin calendar for filing dates.) Master's level students must submit an "Intent to Receive a Degree" along with a "Final Approval of Master's Degree & Master's Program Outline". [All forms are available in PDF format on Line]
For More Details Please contact:
Matt Hutter, Recruiter
Phone: (909) 621-8209
Fax:(909) 621-8564
Matt.Hutter@cgu.edu
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Teaching Portfolio Information
Teaching portfolios take many different forms. A course portfolio is a teaching portfolio that focuses on one particular course. For the purpose of this requirement, you will be composing a course portfolio for a course you have taught at least three times.
The pieces of your portfolio will be:
- Your Curriculum Vitae. This is a full description of your education and employment, packaged to display the qualities you have that relate to teaching in higher education. [It is necessary to redesign/reformat your C.V. for different purposes.] Be sure to describe fully the courses you have taught including information on number and types of students. More information on designing a C.V. is available at the CGU PFF website under “Individual Consultation.”
- Your Teaching Philosophy. A teaching philosophy is not a wish list based on the current buzzwords in teaching. Rather, it is a reflection of your educated and considered opinion on student learning, your efforts in teaching, and how those interact. The teaching philosophy answers the following questions:
- How do you think that students learn?
- How do you think teaching affects learning?
What are your goals (teaching goals and learning objectives) for your students?
- How do you implement your philosophy of teaching and learning?
- What are your professional development plans (to continue to improve at addressing your students’ learning)?
- Instructional Materials for the course with a cover memo description of why you have selected the goals, methods, and assignments you have. Instructional materials include the syllabus, assignments, in-class activities, and tests (with rubrics), as well as examples of student work (and how it was given feedback and evaluated). You will continue to build and refine your course portfolio over time as you teach the course. Save everything!
- Teaching Evaluations and Classroom Assessment Techniques designed for your course, with cover memo explanation of your strengths, challenges, and intentions to address the challenges.
- Your Professional Development Plan detailing what you have done to become a scholarly teacher and what your plans are to continue to be involved in faculty development.
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Doctoral Exam Information
Students planning to take the screening exam must petition the department. Petition forms are usually made available to eligible students planning to take the exams during in the summer months. The School of Information Science will reserve space in one of the computer labs and students will use the standard word processing packages available through the network.
Number of attempts
Students are allowed two attempts at the exam. If you fail one of these examinations twice, you will not be allowed to continue in the Ph.D. program, but you would of course be able to complete the Master’s program. Taking one of these examinations “just to get the experience” is risky!
Grading
You must answer all questions on each examination. Each answer will be graded on a scale of Doctoral, Master, Undergraduate, with + and - assigned to each level. We do not expect you to achieve Doctoral level on each question. You do, however, have to obtain at least 4 Doctoral grades and no Undergraduate grades.
Honor code
These examinations are given under the CGU Honor Code Claremont Graduate University operates on an honor code that specifies that you shall neither give nor receive information during the examination. In taking the examination you agree to abide by the terms of the honor code.
Screening Examination (*)
The screening examination is designed to validate students’ knowledge of the basic material in the field and their integration of that material.
The exam is typically taken after completing the core of the MS program and the first doctoral seminar. Students need not have completed all the courses on which this examination is based before they attempt to write the screening examination. Students can apply to the IS Dean for transfer credit for a particular course. However, regardless of transfer credits or practical experience, students are responsible for all material covered on this examination.
The screening questions will be integrative in nature and not tied directly to courses given in a certain year by certain faculty. We have specified a set of core competencies from which examination material will be derived.
• Role of the computer in the organization
• Systems design and analysis
• Information systems policy
• Telecommunications
• Overview of information systems research
Students will write a total of six questions, three in each of the two 3-hour sessions.
The Purpose of Doctoral Exam
The typical student reaching the exam stage at CGU has completed 20 years of formal education. Despite all of this time and effort, very few students have had the opportunity to examine systematically how the relevant knowledge they have gained can be integrated and reassembled into a coherent framework of thought that is both professionally useful and intellectually exciting. Doctoral exam, when taken seriously, afford the opportunity to construct such a framework. They mark one of life’s rare occasions in which you will have the obligation and the luxury of spending several months trying to synthesize your studies around a distinguishable core of knowledge. Rather than simply adding new knowledge, you are encouraged to arrange what you already know into some kind of structure. Although the foundations for such structures have presumably been constructed during your coursework, the exams are suited to the tasks of sorting and re-conceptualization required for mastery of information science.
What you are expected to know
Being “fact smart” is clearly important, but is never sufficient for passing doctoral exam. You will be expected to demonstrate a conceptual grasp of the important ideas in each of several fields. You must be able to identify the basic questions and relevant conceptual frameworks that guide scholarship. Moreover, you must know who the prominent thinkers are, and how their writings have helped to shape the development of thought over time. In the take-home exam, you should also be prepared to offer your thoughts on current research priorities in the field. This would involve reflections on the key issues that need to be addressed, as well as the best methodologies or approaches for addressing those issues.
How to prepare for the exams
The day-to-day preparation for doctoral exams normally takes place over an extended period. Beyond the review of class notes, survey texts, and influential books and articles selected from course reading lists, you should devote much of your time to organizing the material you are studying around two basic questions: Why? and So What? The first question requires you to move beyond mere description of a field (the Who? and What) and to think critically about the relationships between ideas, the relevant actions. Implicit in this question is the “How” question: how are things connected to each other?
The “So What” is intended to remind you that preparation for exams is largely an exercise in extracting what is fundamental and significant about an otherwise unmanageable body of knowledge. Students who fail to be selective and systematic in their review are likely to be overwhelmed by information. Remember T.S. Elliot: “...where is the knowledge lost in information?”
One general method of preparing for exams that has proven to be helpful is to prepare lecture notes or outlines for hypothetical survey course in each field in which you are being examined. By organizing the work within the bounds of a course plan of what can be taught in fifteen weeks, you will have a clear incentive to be highly selective about what concepts, theories, applications, and illustration to include. Moreover, you will have to think about how the ideas and approaches in each successive lecture fit together and build on previous knowledge. Developed in the format of a three-ring, expandable network, the notes can be easily updated and refined as your mastery of the field increases. In the process of preparing for exams in this way, you will have produced materials that may serve you someday in teaching a survey course in the field. At the very least, you will have a highly personalized reference work for use in your final review before exams.
Particularly in the qualifying exam, you should also be prepared to move beyond the broad survey to in-depth mastery of a few topics of particular interest. In the fields of greater depth, you should be able to characterize not only key concepts and major issues, but also the direction in which future research on the subject might most fruitfully be pursued.
Conclusion
Preparation of doctoral exam involves a combination of review, seeking perspective, adding depth, and generating critical insights. All these elements are important for successful completion of the exams, but the most important of all may be the task of seeking perspective. Preparation for the exams is an opportunity to generate a critical over-view of your graduate training. It is an opportunity to develop intellectual capital that you will draw upon as you move on the task of defining and carrying out your dissertation research.
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Towards the Dissertation
This section outlines the steps needed to get from passing your qualifying examination to a signed dissertation.
Dissertation Proposal
After passing the doctoral qualifying exam and having satisfactorily completed all degree requirements including your portfolio and cognate minor, you must prepare a proposal for your dissertation and defend it before a faculty committee. The proposal document, which typically runs 30 to 50 pages plus references, describes what you plan to do.
The proposal should include:
- A statement of the problem
- A survey of the relevant literature
- A plan for carrying out the research, including a description of the research methods to be used and the analyses to be preformed.
- A discussion of the significance of the research if it is completed successfully.
In preparing your proposal, you should work closely with your dissertation advisor. The next section contains detailed guidelines for developing your proposal, and describes the mechanics of:
• finding a dissertation advisor
• selecting a doctoral committee
• setting up a proposal defense
• defending the proposal
As implied by the foregoing, you are required to defend your proposal before your doctoral committee. The defense usually consists of an oral presentation of your proposal, followed by a question period. Immediately upon the completion of your defense, your doctoral committee will meet and determine whether or not you passed.
Once your proposal is accepted, the proposal is in effect and agreement between you and the faculty. If you accomplish what you promised to do in your proposal to the satisfaction of the faculty, you will be ready to defend your dissertation.
Admission to Candidacy
You are formally admitted to candidacy for the Ph.D. after successfully completing your proposal defense and having the “Form Two - Advancement to Candidacy” form signed.
Selecting a Doctoral Committee
The committee which supervises your dissertation is usually identical to the one for your proposal defense. The following principles apply to both the proposal defense and your dissertation committee with the exception of the outside examiner. Outside examiners are not needed at the proposal stage.
The committee consists of a Chair and two or three other members. Three committee members, including the Chair, must be members of the graduate faculty at CGU. At least one member must have his or her primary aoppointment in the School of Information Systems and Technology. If the committee has a fourth member, he or she will be regarded as an "outside examiner." He or she may be any CGU faculty member, a faculty member from another institution, or a qualified practitioner. The outside examiner has a vote in the committee’s proceedings only with the consent of the Dean of Information Systems and Technology.
It is your responsibility to form your committee. Your dissertation advisor also will serve as your committee chair. Choosing your dissertation advisor is a critical step. The Ph.D. dissertation process is intensely personal and has many aspects of the ancient “craftsman-apprentice” relationship. You and your dissertation advisor will usually remain friends for life.
Your dissertation advisor should have a personal interest in your research area. In selecting committee members, make sure that they can help you. For example, if you plan to run a survey, make sure at least one of the committee members is skilled in surveys. Just as for the proposal, you ask faculty members to serve on your dissertation committee. Be aware that faculty members have the right to decline to serve. Your dissertation advisor will help you in the process of selecting a committee.
Preparing a Dissertation
Your dissertation proposal is your road map to writing your dissertation. You will typically have completed almost all of the literature survey other than adding new papers and books that appear while you are writing. Your hypotheses will have been formed and your data methods defined. The work now is to accomplish what you promised.
The key to finishing a dissertation is working on it actively at a steady pace. If at all possible, take time off from other activities (such as working for a firm or teaching) and devote full time to the dissertation.
Do not work in isolation. Keep in regular touch with the Dean of your dissertation committee, reporting on progress and letting your dissertation Chair know of any difficulties you encounter. And you will encounter some difficulties. Very few dissertations go exactly as planned. Your dissertation Chair can help you over the rough spots and will work with you if you need to redirect your efforts.
Preparing drafts outlining your findings as you go along. It is much better to accumulate the dissertation piece than to try to do all the work and then write it up. Most people who try to do it all at the end experience great difficulty finishing their work. Also, people tend to forget some of the details of what they have done and often cannot recreate it later. Having your dissertation Chair read draft material as you go along is an excellent way of communicating your work.
The need to communicate cannot be over-stressed. You are expected to be able to write your dissertation in a clear, easy-to-read and easy-to-understand style. A poorly written dissertation, no matter how brilliant in content, will not be accepted by the faculty.
In information systems, a dissertation usually results in one or more papers published in the literature. Some faculty, in fact, judge whether a dissertation is completed by determining whether it contains publishable results.
Final Oral Defense
The next to the last step in obtaining the degree is the final oral defense. Three weeks before you defend your dissertation you must file your “Final Oral Examination” form with the program administrator. A 350-word abstract must accompany your form. Once you and your dissertation committee have established a date and time convenient for all, notify the program administrator who will in turn reserve a room for your defense. The defense takes place in front of your doctoral committee. Like the proposal defense, it consists of a presentation by you of your findings, followed by a question period. The committee will examine you only on the contents of your dissertation.
Immediately upon completing your defense, your doctoral committee will meet and determine whether or not you passed. The members of the committee will sign the “Final Oral Examination” form.
On occasion, as a result of your final oral defense, you may be told by your doctoral committee to make specific modifications in your dissertation. Usually, if such changes are requested, you will be passed conditional upon such changes being made in the final copy of your dissertation.
Final Administrative Steps
- Create the final copy of your dissertation according to the instructions from the registrar. These instructions deal with the format, paper, abstract, order, and pagination of your dissertation.
- Obtain the signatures of each of your doctoral committee members on the signature page of the final copy of your dissertation and of the Dean on the title page. It is prudent to bring several signature pages with you, that way, if the original is lost you will have a back-up.
- Pay necessary fees for the microfilming, binding, and (optional but not recommended) copyright fees.
- It has been the custom for candidates to make additional bound copies for the department office as well as your dissertation committee members. The department copy is kept in the program administrator’s office.
Certification of Completion
Upon successfully completing the oral defense, you can request a letter certifying that you have completed all requirements for the Ph.D. This letter, sent by the registrar’s office is often useful for candidates who plan to teach or want to notify their employer (or prospective employer) that they now have their Ph.D.
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Submission of Dissertation
Introduction
The dissertation process begins when you enter the doctoral program. It begins slowly as you start to find interesting topics for original research that can be accomplished within a reasonable time. It increases in intensity as you narrow the potential questions. Finally, you chose a specific topic and prepare your proposal. A successfully defended proposal is, in effect, a contract between you and your committee on the work you need to do to complete the doctoral dissertation. This section provides some helpful hints on writing the dissertation proposal. A number of books provide a guide to the dissertation. References appear at the end of this section.
Finding a Question
As you complete your course work, you will develop interests and a set of questions that could lead to a dissertation research project. The doctoral seminars will give you insight into researchable questions of interest in the I.S. field. You will have been reading the literature in a number of topic areas. It is a good idea to build a bibliographic data base early in your department and to maintain it as you continue. You may also work on research projects with faculty members. These experiences will help you find your dissertation question.
CGU regulations restrict you from defending your proposal until you have passed the qualifying exams. This should not prevent you from working to identify and refine your research question prior to completing the doctoral (screening and qualifying) exams. Normally, you would defend your proposal six to twelve months after completing qualifying exams.
Forming a Committee and Setting a Date
It is your responsibility to form your committee. For the proposal, a committee consists of at least three CGU faculty members, a Dean and two others. The Dean may be from any department. However, at least one of the members of the committee must be from I.S. All members must belong to the graduate faculty of CGU.
Finding a Dean is the first step in forming a committee. The Dean is almost always a person who has an interest in your research area. Discuss the research topic with potential Deans in depth. You and the Dean will usually work on the initial draft proposal.
You should then circulate the proposal to those faculty members who you believe are also interested in the research topic. Talk with potential committee members. Make sure that they can help you. For example, if you plan to run a survey, make sure at least one of the committee members is skilled in surveys. Then ask those faculty members who express an interest in your topic to serve on the proposal committee. Be aware that faculty members have the right to decline to serve. Your Dean will help you in the process of selecting a committee. Some Deans may also want you to hold an informal meeting of your committee to discuss your proposal during the time you are preparing it.
When you and the committee agree on a proposal draft, you will then schedule an oral defense in front of the committee members and other I.S. faculty who wish to attend your defense. It is also your responsibility to coordinate a convenient date and time at which your committee can meet for the defense, the program administrator will schedule a room and complete the necessary paperwork as well as obtain the necessary signatures on the form.
Note that the proposal committee does not have to have the same members as the final dissertation committee. This can benefit students who wish to work with members of the visiting faculty from Tel Aviv University. Visiting faculty from Tel Aviv are usually not in residence for the entire duration of the dissertation process.
Writing the Proposal
The dissertation proposal should fully describe the question(s) you will study, the theoretical context and methods of research you will use, and the possible outcomes you expect from the study. You prepare the proposal in consultation with the Dean and with other members of the proposal committee.
Dissertation proposals vary in length. Typical lengths are from 20 to 50 double spaced pages plus references. The proposal must include sections on the research question, the theory of hypotheses, and the research design and methodology. It will also include a bibliography and a timetable for completion of the dissertation. Discussion of each of these sections appears below.
The Research Question
The purpose of the introduction is to tell the committee the contribution of your dissertation. It contains a clear statement of the research questions, their theoretical and/or practical significance, and a full definition of key concepts underlying the questions.
Writing this first section of the proposal is the crux of the entire dissertation process. It takes a great deal of effort to refine a topic or an object of curiosity into a researchable question. You need to ask: What makes the issue a problem? Why is it important enough to be studied? In what form is the question researchable?
After stating the basic research question you should identify the goals of the proposed research. These goals may take the form of possible answers to your research question, along with the analytic and substantive steps that will be necessary to reach those answers. For example, if you wish to demonstrate that “X” is true, what else will you have to prove or demonstrate along the way?
Your initial formulation of the research question in your proposal will not represent your final thoughts on the subject. The only practical approach, however, is to write while you are reaching, incorporating additional insights into later drafts of the proposal and, after the proposal defense, into the dissertation itself.
Theory and Hypotheses
A review of the theoretical and empirical literature relevant to your research question comes next. The purpose of this review is to indicate what is known (an what you know) about your question. This literature review should not be simply a bibliographical listing, but rather an essay within the proposal that demonstrates how the dissertation builds upon prior studies, as well as pointing out how prior work relates to what the dissertation is about.
Research Design and Methodology
The next section of the proposal describes the research methods you intend to use. Research methods are the means used to answer the research questions you have set for yourself. They include such techniques as surveys, unstructured interviews, archival searches, mathematical and statistical analyses, design, and so on. You should also include an explicit discussion of your research design. Elements of research design include site or subject selection, whether the analysis will track changes over time, and what kinds of controls you impose on your object of study.
Many students face potential problems of access to relevant data or information. Far from attempting to gloss over these problems, you should face them fully with your committee at the proposal stage. This will help you work through or around particular obstacles; it may also enable you to formulate alternative plans of analysis should some problem prove to be insurmountable.
You can include some aspects of the methodology for your dissertation as appendices to the proposal. You should, for example, include copies of data collection instruments such as questionnaires, as well as lists of data sources, interview respondents, or cases to be studied.
The over-all purpose of the methodology and design section is to give you a specific plan of research and to convince your committee that you can competently select, acquire, and analyze the information necessary to your thesis. It is often a good idea to choose one or two members of your committee for expertise in relevant methodologies that you plan to use. It also helps if this person also has substantive familiarity with your topic.
Other Elements of the Proposal
The proposal must include an abstract of 350 words (required by the registrar), a list of discussion of potential outcomes of your research, a timetable of completion that includes a work plan with tasks and milestones leading to completion of the dissertation, and a properly formatted bibliography of all relevant literature. One of the accepted formats in the field (e.g., Management Science, Association for Computing Machinery, American Psychological Association guidelines) will serve as your bibliography format.
NOTE: You will get considerable additional help by examining previous proposals which were defended successfully. Copies are located in the program administrator’s office.
Defending the Proposal
The purpose of the proposal defense is to provide a final check on the adequacy of your proposal. The defense gives you a chance to demonstrate this significance of the work you intend to do, your knowledge of the relevant literature, and your ability to carry out the research. It provides an opportunity for your committee to probe the adequacy of your proposal and to make suggestions for improving it. Successful completion of the oral defense is the last step leading to advancement to candidacy.
The mechanics of the defense: You must schedule the proposal defense with the program administrator at least three weeks prior to the date of your proposal defense. You must provide the date and time of your proposal defense to the program administrator. The program administrator will complete and file the necessary paperwork prior to your defense date. You will have provided your committee with a complete draft of the proposal by that time. The meeting can be attended by committee members and other faculty. Once your proposal has been accepted you must provide the program administrator with a 350 word summary of your proposal. The summary and the form will be processed by the registrar’s office.
The procedure of the oral defense is as follows: the committee meets briefly prior to the beginning of the defense to discuss the questions they will be asking you during the oral exam. You then make an oral presentation of 30 to 40 minutes to describe the purpose of the objectives of the proposed study, to summarize the previous literature on the subject, to argue the significance of the proposed study, its methodology and its expected results. You should plan to use overhead transparencies in your presentation. Faculty present at the defense may ask questions, make suggestions, or challenge assumptions. After the question period, all but the committee members are asked to leave the room. The final deliberations and decision on the acceptability of the proposal, and determination of any required modifications, rests with the committee alone.
Committee members signify a “pass” of the oral defense proposal by signing the appropriate form. Once your proposal has been accepted you must provide the program administrator with a 350-word summary of your proposal. The summary and the form will be processed by the registrar’s office. Any changes required in the proposal will delay the signing of this form.
This contract implies that it is your responsibility to complete the proposed work on the dissertation as defined by the written proposal in the time period defined by your work plan. Unexpected developments and findings do occur. They may suggest a need to deviate from the proposal. Any such changes must be thoroughly discussed and formally renegotiated with your committee well in advance of undertaking them. Failure to do so could result in problems and surprises in the final dissertation defense.
Suggested Reading
Davis, G.B., & Parker, C.A. (1979). Writing the doctoral dissertation. Woodbury, NY: Barron’s Educational Series, Inc.
Locke, L.F., Spirduso, W.W., & Silverman, S.J. (1987). Proposals that work: A Guide For Planning Dissertations And Grant Proposals (2nd ed.) Newbury Park CA: Sage Publications.
There are a number of other books on proposal and dissertation writing in the Honnold Reference Library under the general call letters: LB2369.
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