Announcing Our Fall Programs

Adams Hall, home of the Graduate School
and the Thesis and Dissertation Office.

Welcome to fall 2017!  In September and October the Thesis Office will once again offer brown bag sessions, presentations, and workshops for NIU grad students at various stages of the thesis or dissertation process. Some brown bag sessions are also open to faculty, and one is geared for faculty and staff.  We look forward to seeing you!

Basics
Brown bags will start in the second week of September and meet Wednesdays from 12 to 1 p.m. in Adams Hall, Room 103.  Presentations and workshops will start in the last week of September, and most will will be held from 2 to 4 p.m. in the same Adams Hall location on a Monday, Tuesday, or Thursday.  Note that two presentations meet at different times, locations, and/or days.  For details on each program, see below.  

Registration
No registration required for brown bags.  Registration is required for a presentation or workshop.  Register via email at thesis@niu.edu.  Include the name of the presentation or workshop you want to attend in the subject line or message.  We do have space limitations for events in Adams 103 (12 seats maximum).  Register early!

What to Expect
Plenty of important information regarding completion of your graduate degree.  After running these programs over several semesters, we’ve learned that most students who attend presentations and workshops are blown away by how much they didn’t fully know about meeting various deadlines, submitting the proper paperwork to the proper place, or formatting the long document.  At all our events, expect thorough coverage of common concerns as well as time to address individual questions.

Brown Bag Sessions 
Breaking Through Writer’s Block (and Other Obstacles)
Wednesday, September 13 (12 to 1 p.m. in Adams Hall, Room 103)
Informal discussion on common obstacles that slow or entirely halt progress on one’s thesis or dissertation.  Carolyn Law, Thesis/Dissertation Advisor, will facilitate the discussion and offer practical strategies.  Students only, please.

Committee Relations
Wednesday, September 20 (12 to 1 p.m. in Adams Hall, Room 103)
Informal discussion on choosing committee members, creating productive working relationships with them, maintaining good communications, and managing feedback throughout the process.  Graduate School policies regarding committees will be reviewed.  Faculty and students welcome.

Robyn Byrd leading a brown bag discussion
in Adams 103.

Writing the Proposal
Wednesday, September 27 (12 to 1 p.m. in Adams Hall,
Room 103)
Discussion will address typical characteristics of any strong thesis or dissertation proposal (sometimes called a prospectus) as well as aspects unique to proposals in various disciplines.  Faculty and students welcome.

The Balancing Act: A Life in Grad School
Wednesday, October 4 (12 to 1 p.m. in Adams Hall,
Room 103)
Informal discussion on the complexities of managing life as a graduate student, balancing family responsibilities, personal health, outside work, and the pressures of a dissertation or thesis.  Session will be facilitated by Thesis Office GA Robyn Byrd, doctoral candidate and mother of two.  Students only, please.

Faculty Q & A

Wednesday, October 11 (12 to 1 p.m. in Adams Hall, Room 103)

(Grad students, you might want to bring this one to the attention of your director or other faculty members in your department.)  Carolyn Law, Thesis/Dissertation Advisor, will introduce the functions and services of the Thesis Office and answer questions about Graduate School requirements and standards for theses and dissertations.  Faculty who are directing a thesis or dissertation at NIU for the first time are especially encouraged to attend, but all faculty and staff are welcome.

Presentations

Carolyn Law presenting on the submission process in Wirtz Hall.

Demystifying the Submission Process
Tuesday, September 26 (5 to 7 p.m. in Wirtz Hall, Room 104)
This presentation is for students preparing to submit a thesis or dissertation to the Graduate School for December 2017 graduation.  Carolyn Law, Thesis/Dissertation Advisor, will walk students through the steps of the process: defense, electronic submission, and final approval.

Dissertation Essentials
Monday, October 2 (2 to 4 p.m. in Adams Hall, Room 103)
Designed for all doctoral students enrolled in 799 in any department.  Staff will walk students through the Graduate School’s specific requirements for dissertations and cover a wide range of the most troublesome issues dissertation writers frequently encounter.

Thesis Essentials
Tuesday, October 3 (2 to 4 p.m. in Adams Hall, Room 103)
Designed for all master’s students enrolled in 699 in any department.  Staff will walk students through the Graduate School’s specific requirements for theses and cover a wide range of the most troublesome issues thesis writers frequently encounter.

Writing a Thesis in Engineering
Thursday, October 5 (2 to 4 p.m. in Adams Hall, Room 103)
Designed specifically for thesis writers enrolled in thesis-credit hours in the College of Engineering and Engineering Technology.  Staff will walk students through the Graduate School’s specific requirements for theses and cover a range of issues that students in engineering fields often find troublesome.

NIU Naperville, venue for Writing a Dissertation in Education.

Writing a Dissertation in Education
Saturday, October 14 (9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at NIU Naperville, Room 119)
This one-day program at NIU Naperville is designed specifically for dissertation writers enrolled in 799 in the College of Education.  Staff will walk students through the Graduate School’s specific requirements for dissertations and cover a wide range of the most troublesome issues dissertation writers in education frequently encounter.

Workshops
Tables/Figures/Pagination
Tuesday, October 10 (2 to 4 p.m. in Adams Hall, Room 103)
This hands-on workshop is designed to help writers comply with the Graduate School’s requirements for tables, figures, and pagination.  Students should bring their work in progress on their own laptops.  Staff will cover the specific format requirements, demonstrate helpful techniques and short-cuts in Microsoft Word, and allow generous time for individual troubleshooting and one-on-one consultation.

ASME Documentation
Thursday, October 12 (2 to 4 p.m. in Adams Hall, Room 103)
This hand-on workshop will teach the documentation style of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, known as ASME journal style.  Using real-word examples, students will apply the principles in real time to their own writing.  ASME journal style is ideal for research documentation in all departments of the College of Engineering and Engineering Technology.

Thesis Office Outreach: Presentations, Workshops, Brown Bags

Two weeks into February, and here at the Thesis Office we’re ready to deliver our spring presentations, workshops, and brown bag sessions for writers at any stage of the thesis or dissertation process.  Below we give a rundown of what’s on offer over the next several weeks.  We look forward to seeing you!

Basic Info
Our programs are free.  Brown bags meet Wednesdays from 12 to 1 p.m. in Adams Hall, Room 103.  Workshops and most presentations will be held from 2 to 4 p.m. in the same location on Tuesdays or Thursdays, but note that two presentations (Writing a Dissertation in Education and Demystifying the Submission Process) will take place on different days and at different times and locations—see below. 

Registration
No registration required for brown bags.  Registration is required for a presentation or workshop.  Register via email at thesis@niu.edu.  Include the name of the presentation or workshop you want to attend in the subject line or message.  We do have space limitations.  Register early! 

What to Expect
Plenty of important information.  Many who experience these events walk away a bit surprised at the intricacies behind things like meeting various deadlines, submitting the proper paperwork to the proper place, or formatting the long document.  Expect thorough coverage of common concerns as well as ample time to address individual questions.   

Presentations

Thesis Essentials
Tuesday, February 21 (2 to 4 p.m. in Adams Hall, Room 103)
Designed for all master’s students enrolled in 699 in any department.  Staff will walk students through the Graduate School’s specific requirements for theses and cover a wide range of the most troublesome issues thesis writers frequently encounter.
  
Dissertation Essentials
Wednesday, February 22 (2 to 4 p.m. in Adams Hall, Room 103)
Designed for all doctoral students enrolled in 799 in any department.  Staff will walk students through the Graduate School’s specific requirements for dissertations and cover a wide range of the most troublesome issues dissertation writers frequently encounter.

Writing a Thesis in Engineering
Thursday, February 23 (2 to 4 p.m. in Adams Hall, Room 103)
Designed specifically for thesis writers enrolled in thesis-credit hours in the College of Engineering and Engineering Technology.  Staff will walk students through the Graduate School’s specific requirements for theses and cover a range of issues that students in engineering fields often find troublesome.

Writing a Dissertation in Education
Saturday, February 25 (9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at NIU Naperville, Room 162)
This one-day program is designed specifically for dissertation writers enrolled in 799 in the College of Education.  Staff will walk students through the Graduate School’s specific requirements for dissertations and cover a wide range of the most troublesome issues dissertation writers in Education frequently encounter.

Demystifying the Submission Process
Wednesday, March 8 (5 to 7 p.m. in Wirtz Hall, Room 104)
This presentation is for graduate students preparing to submit a thesis or dissertation to the Graduate School for May 2017 graduation.  Carolyn Law, Thesis/Dissertation Advisor, will walk students through the steps of the process: defense, electronic submission, and final approval.

Workshops
ASME Documentation
Tuesday, February 28 (2 to 4 p.m. in Adams Hall, Room 103)
This hand-on workshop will teach the documentation style of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, known as ASME journal style.  Using real-word examples, students will apply the principles in real time to their own writing.  ASME journal style is ideal for research documentation in all departments of the College of Engineering and Engineering Technology.

Problems in Theses/Dissertations: Tables/Figures/Pagination
Wednesday, March 1 (2 to 4 p.m. in Adams Hall, Room 103)
This hands-on workshop is designed to help writers comply with the Graduate School’s requirements for tables, figures, and pagination.  Students should bring their work in progress on their own laptops.  Staff will cover the specific format requirements, demonstrate helpful techniques and short-cuts in Microsoft Word, and allow generous time for individual troubleshooting and one-on-one consultation.

Brown Bag Sessions 
Committee Relations
Wednesday, February 15 (12 to 1 p.m. in Adams Hall, Room 103)
Informal discussion on choosing committee members, creating productive working relationships with them, maintaining good communications, and managing feedback throughout the process.  Graduate School policies regarding committees will be reviewed.  Faculty and students welcome.

Breaking Through Writer's Block (and Other Obstacles)
Wednesday, February 22
(12 to 1 p.m. in Adams Hall, Room 103)
Informal discussion on common obstacles that slow or entirely halt progress on one’s thesis or dissertation.  Carolyn Law, Thesis/Dissertation Advisor, will facilitate the discussion and offer practical strategies.  Students only, please.

The Balancing Act: A Life in Grad School
Wednesday, March 1
(12 to 1 p.m. in Adams Hall, Room 103)
Informal discussion on the complexities of managing life as a graduate student, balancing family responsibilities, personal health, outside work, and the pressures of a dissertation or thesis.  Session will be facilitated by Thesis Office GA Robyn Byrd, doctoral candidate and mother of two.  Students only, please.

Proper Document Formatting: Your Readers Want It!

Since our undergrad years we have been told to use seemingly arbitrary formatting conventions for many of the academic assignments we've turned in.  There are lab report formats, literature review formats, citation styles such as APA, MLA, and a hundred others. As an English student, I learned MLA, scoffed at what I thought was APA's fixation on dates and enshrining of other people's research, and never looked back.

But now that I teach writing, and sometimes research writing, I've had to learn how format and style is dependent on discipline.  My students use what suits them. APA makes much more sense for many of the sciences.  I, a literature student, could write many pages on a hundred year old piece of scholarship, as long as I knew what else has been said about it in 2016.  But a science student or psych student has no use for moldy old papers, beyond understanding the history of their discipline. Dates matter, and I'm glad we don't take medicine produced with ancient methods or visit hospitals built upon century-old research!  (APA helps make sure of it.)  Just as I'm glad that engineers even have their own way of documenting things (ASME, and others) that respects the research of others, so that when someone uses their findings, our bridges stay up and our cars drive straight. (I'm showing my humanities understanding of how things work now, haha!)  So, there really are reasons for these things.

But even though I know about the plenitude of research styles and the uses for them now, I see even more clearly that all the formatting of these styles, on the page, is definitely arbitrary.

So why the heck do we format?  

What's the point? I'll tell you. Because it is a convention that is absolutely necessary to keep your reader from pulling their hair out and losing their eyesight!  (Especially now that you are writing a hundred or even hundreds of pages for someone else's review). Students, especially my freshman writers, sometimes balk at this arbitrariness. But I kind of revel in it.  (After all, even language itself is arbitrary. And so are apostrophes.). Arbitrary strictness, when it comes to documents, is far and wide preferable to willy-nilly personal formatting quirks (at best), or incoherent methods of document organization that impede meaning (at worst).

Here at the Thesis Office, we understand that many quirks about your document have to do with whether you are a biologist, or an art therapist, or a computer scientist, or a linguist, or... you get the idea. We see the marks of your discipline on the page, and we can even help you make sure you are making those marks correctly (citations, references, tables, etc.) before your committee even sees the thing.  Please, come see us!  But in addition to those formatting requirements handed down from your discipline gods, the Thesis gods have a few more.  And this is where you might really need our help.  Again, you're asking EGADS! WHY?  Because someone has to read your paper, that's why. And hopefully for your sake, many someones will read your paper. Format, and every other kind of orthography, that is, the way things look on a page, is about making yourself easy to read. Your document will go into a repository with thousands of other documents, and if it looks different, it will look funny.  And it may even look confusing. The reader has to know: Where do I find the list of tables? How is the front matter arranged and numbered? What corner are the page numbers in? What level of heading am I reading, like is this an important section or a sub-thought?  Can I put this in a binder and be sure the holes aren't going to punch right through the data sets? Etc. Standardized formatting means readers know what they're getting, and can use it easily.  Nothing we ask you to do will compromise the goals of the formatting of your discipline. But it might drive you crazy anyway.  Seriously, come see us.

A reader's experience

I have a first grader, and I commend the teacher who can read thirty little papers in thirty handwriting styles and in thirty invented spelling styles, all written in everyone's favorite crayon color. I salute you! As a teacher of philosophy and freshman English, I don't have it so bad. But I see so many papers. A few hundred every term.

While it is certainly nice to have everything typed on white paper, I also ask my students to use certain formatting, and invariably they don't take it very seriously until about mid-term.  I get papers in the default Microsoft Word font, I get papers in fonts that look very much like Times New Roman but are not Times New Roman ("TNR 12pt!" I write, in screaming teacher commentary at the top of their paper, right next to "TITLE!" because for some strange reason they don't title their work...)  I read the piles of papers, and the idiosyncrasies drive me mad. The font called Cambria makes me want to scream. OMG CAMBRIA UGH! The attempted use of 2.25 spacing to pad their papers (instead of a double-space) just makes me laugh. 1.5" margins make me put my head down on the table and take a break.  While some of these things are because of students trying to trick me (I know grad students don't do that!), some are them are out of pure carelessness.  They are not bucking against convention. They are being undisciplined and causing problems for their reader.  The students with the best grades?  The ones with good formatting.  Not because I grade them on their perfect margins!  But because they are people who pay attention to detail, and that comes out in both the content of their papers and in the presentation.  While the Thesis office won't have much to say about your content, your committee will. The presentation of it is important.

So when Carolyn at the Thesis Office finally reads your work, we don't want to hear her head thud to the table in the next room, or hear her scream "AAAACK 1.5 inch MARGINSSS!" from down the hall. We'll all want to know who did it.

You have worked so hard on this thesis.  Do it an honor and do your future readers the honor of formatting it like a pro!  Because once you pass this last "test," you are a pro.  Conventions are annoying, they take up time and brain-space, and no one can tell us exactly why they are the way they are.  But they are still important, just as important as the conventions of using a period to end a sentence or quotation marks to set off a quote. If we value our research and its products, we should do everything we can to participate in the community by keeping our reviewers', committee's, and future readers' eyes on the page and their heads off the table.