Due to popular demand, and thanks to the hard work of PROMISE Staff’s Natasha Ramoutar and UMBC’s Mr. W. Archer in Event Planning, there are rooms for the “Dissertation House” at UMBC for nearly 3 full days this weekend!

Friday, Feb. 3: 8:30 AM – 1 PM (Commons 328), 1PM – 6PM (Commons 332)

Saturday, Feb. 4: 8:30 AM – 8:00 PM (Commons 329)

Sunday, Feb. 5: 12 noon – 8:00 PM (Commons 327)

These sessions are limited to graduate students who have participated in a 4-day DH session with Dr. Wendy Carter-Veale in the past, e.g. Jan. 2012, August 2011 (12 hour DH Marathon at the Sheraton Columbia), Sept. 2011 (Employees), July 2011, Jan. 2011, etc.  Be sure to check the 3rd floor monitors and signs near the elevators in the Commons on the designated days in case there are last minute changes.  Don’t forget to blog in.  You’ll be joined virtually by your colleagues from other schools.  Three cheers for an upcoming productive weekend! 

The PROMISE Staff has arranged for alumni of the Dissertation House (students who have participated in at least one Dissertation House week with Dr. Carter-Veale) to continue working on their dissertations during the weekend. You have the “DH” Room — the regular meeting spot on UMBC’s campus. You know the drill. Write your goals, blog in!

Sat. Feb. 4, 8:30 AM – 8:00 PM
Sun. Feb. 5, 12 noon – 8:00 PM
Sat. Feb. 11, 8:30 AM – 8:00 PM
Sun. Feb. 12, 12 noon – 8:00 PM

Are you coming? Let us know on the “Winter Challenge 2012″ site.  Limit 15.

Full Title: “Alumni” of the Dissertation House, working feverishly to finish — February 2012 weekend sessions

The PROMISE Staff has arranged for alumni of the Dissertation House (students who have participated in at least one Dissertation House week with Dr. Carter-Veale) to continue working on their dissertations during the weekend. You have the “DH” Room — the regular meeting spot on UMBC’s campus. You know the drill. Write your goals, blog in!

Sat. Feb. 4, 8:30 AM – 8:00 PM
Sun. Feb. 5, 12 noon – 8:00 PM
Sat. Feb. 11, 8:30 AM – 8:00 PM
Sun. Feb. 12, 12 noon – 8:00 PM

Are you coming? Let us know on the “Winter Challenge 2012″ site.  Limit 15.

Have you missed connecting with other students from PROMISE? Are the great feelings from the PROMISE Summer Success Institute at the Sheraton in Columbia, and the Fall Harvest Dinner at College Park wearing thin from needing more interaction? Then, come on out to the PROMISE Spring Opening Meeting at UMBC and get rejuvenated.

Friday, 2/17/12 
4:30-6 PM

Public Policy, Room 206

Dinner will be served.

Facilitator: Dr. Renetta Tull

Learn about upcoming activities that support graduate students, hear about themes that contribute to success of diverse graduate students from the book chapter: “Successful PhD Pathways to Advanced STEM Careers for Black Women” in the Diversity in Higher Education book series (featuring alumni from PROMISE at UMBC, UMCP, and UMB), authors: Dr. Janet Rutledge (UMBC Dean of the Graduate School), Dr. Wendy Carter-Veale (PROMISE Dissertation Coach), and Dr. Renetta Tull (UMBC Assistant Dean for Graduate Student Development and Director of PROMISE.)

We’ll also give you a glimpse of the upcoming 10th anniversary of the PROMISE Summer Success Institute.  Come and hear updates on funding and jobs from our PROMISE and Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) career partners, and hear an update from the “Why Smart People Suffer from the Imposter Syndrome” webinar.  (You can also read the article on “The Imposter Syndrome and How to Avoid it” in the magazine for theSociety of Hispanic Professional Engineers.)

Come and meet other graduate students from diverse backgrounds!

To read more about PROMISE: Maryland’s AGEP, visit the PROMISE AGEP website, learn more about the national AGEP, and see publications that discuss PROMISE and the signature programs. PROMISE is one of 22 AGEP alliances in the U.S. and is sponsored by the National Science Foundation. 

——————————-

Students from UMBC’s campus may RSVP here on MyUMBC: http://my.umbc.edu/groups/promise/events/10483.

Students from UMB, UMCP, or other campuses may RSVP as a reply/comment to this post.

Please RSVP so that we can order enough food. As with any PROMISE activity, you are welcome to bring friends and family with you.

Have you missed connecting with other students from PROMISE? Are the great feelings from the PROMISE Summer Success Institute at the Sheraton in Columbia, and the Fall Harvest Dinner at College Park wearing thin from needing more interaction? Then, come on out to the PROMISE Spring Opening Meeting at UMBC and get rejuvenated.

Friday, 2/17/12 
4:30-6 PM

Public Policy, Room 206

Dinner will be served.

Facilitator: Dr. Renetta Tull

Learn about upcoming activities that support graduate students, hear about themes that contribute to success of diverse graduate students from the book chapter: “Successful PhD Pathways to Advanced STEM Careers for Black Women” in the Diversity in Higher Education book series (featuring alumni from PROMISE at UMBC, UMCP, and UMB), authors: Dr. Janet Rutledge (UMBC Dean of the Graduate School), Dr. Wendy Carter-Veale (PROMISE Dissertation Coach), and Dr. Renetta Tull (UMBC Assistant Dean for Graduate Student Development and Director of PROMISE.)

We’ll also give you a glimpse of the upcoming 10th anniversary of the PROMISE Summer Success Institute.  Come and hear updates on funding and jobs from our PROMISE and Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) career partners, and hear an update from the “Why Smart People Suffer from the Imposter Syndrome” webinar.  (You can also read the article on “The Imposter Syndrome and How to Avoid it” in the magazine for theSociety of Hispanic Professional Engineers.)

Come and meet other graduate students from diverse backgrounds!

To read more about PROMISE: Maryland’s AGEP, visit the PROMISE AGEP website, learn more about the national AGEP, and see publications that discuss PROMISE and the signature programs. PROMISE is one of 22 AGEP alliances in the U.S. and is sponsored by the National Science Foundation. 

——————————-

Students from UMBC’s campus may RSVP here on MyUMBC: http://my.umbc.edu/groups/promise/events/10483.

Students from UMB, UMCP, or other campuses may RSVP as a reply/comment to this post.

Please RSVP so that we can order enough food. As with any PROMISE activity, you are welcome to bring friends and family with you.

Every season during the Dissertation House, we discuss ways to improve communication with your advisor and your dissertation committee. This year, we have several people from the DH, past and present participants, who are planning to defend their dissertations very soon. 2012 will be a big year! One question that seems to be looming is nailing down a dissertation defense date. How does one do that with 4, 5, or 6 committee members? How do you respectfully let them know that you really want to finish this thing and that you need their assistance? Ladies and gentlemen, this is a process of negotiation. Here are some tips that might assist you. Different people have different methods, and this is not an exhaustive list, but here are some things that work:

1. Find a month where you are flexible. Pick a month where you can say with 98% certainty that you can be available at anytime of the day, Monday – Friday. If your flexibility is limited, you know in advance that you are reducing your probability of finding consensus. (We have had defenses at 8:00 AM on a Friday morning, and the room was packed!)
2. Map out your committee members’ schedules in advance.  Start with your advisor’s schedule, then work your way through the rest of the committee.  You need to know what their obligations are in advance without imposing your desired dates upon them.  Know and respect their immovable events.  Mark off their teaching days, the entire week before their grant or paper is due, conference days, and more.  Some people have their calendars online, some have their calendars managed by the department’s administrative assistant or their lab manager.
3. Give email a break, go and visit them in person.  Before you try to work everything out with a bunch of emails, make an appointment with your committee members (individually) and talk about their schedules for the month that you’re interested in. Remember that your faculty members are people too. They are juggling their teaching, research, service, grants, conferences, publications, external committee obligations, and more. Some have families at home, are caring for aging parents, or are taking care of their own health needs.
4. Let other committee members know about your advisor’s availability first. Don’t try to make the schedule by starting with your outside member. Find your advisor’s availability, then work in the availability of those in the department.  Chances are that there may be some similarities with schedules of those within your department. As you talk with your other committee members, let them know about your advisor’s schedule.  For example, you can say, “Dr. Jamison, my advisor, Dr. Corles, is open on April 3, 5, 10, or 12 after 2PM.” Schedule your external member last. Your advisor may allow your external member to participate by conference call or Skype.
5. Request that your defense be a “feature” for a standard department event. Perhaps your department always has a lecture on the third Friday or the month at 2PM, or your advisor always has a group meeting on Wednesdays at noon. Perhaps the department’s weekly faculty meeting is on Mondays at 1, and you can ask if you can schedule the defense at 11.
6. Make plausible suggestions. If teaching schedules are the bottleneck, talk with some of your friends (advanced grad students, postdocs, alumni) and ask if they might consider facilitating a class for your advisor or committee member on your defense day. If the friends agree, bring this up to your advisor or committee member. For example, you can say, “Dr. Jones, I know that you teach Math 202 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays this semester.  I’d like to suggest a possible way to free your schedule on one of those days. One of your former top students, Dr. Maria Harris, is a Senior Analyst at NSA and has agreed to come in on my defense day to cover your class. She said that she can also tell the students about some of the unclassified projects and how the content that they are learning applies to national security.”

These are just a few suggestions, six out of many that have worked for doctoral students over the years.  Yes, everyone is busy; perhaps people are more busy than ever these days. But in this age of technology, remember to invoke the human connection. Do not try to do everything over email. This may work for some people, but it doesn’t always work for the whole group. You may need to schedule a conference call with each person. Solidify things with your advisor first, and let those dates guide you. Good luck and best wishes!

_____________________________________________

This post may be copied, but please reference “The Dissertation House — http://www.thedissertationhouse.com, a program of PROMISE: Maryland’s AGEP.”

_____________________________________________

The text content of this post was compiled and written by the staff of PROMISE: Maryland’s AGEP and may not be copied without referencing the PROMISE organization, as “PROMISE: Maryland’s AGEP”.

PROMISE AGEP Online Information by PROMISE: Maryland’s AGEP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Every season during the Dissertation House, we discuss ways to improve communication with your advisor and your dissertation committee. This year, we have several people from the DH, past and present participants, who are planning to defend their dissertations very soon. 2012 will be a big year! One question that seems to be looming is nailing down a dissertation defense date. How does one do that with 4, 5, or 6 committee members? How do you respectfully let them know that you really want to finish this thing and that you need their assistance? Ladies and gentlemen, this is a process of negotiation. Here are some tips that might assist you. Different people have different methods, and this is not an exhaustive list, but here are some things that work:

1. Find a month where you are flexible. Pick a month where you can say with 98% certainty that you can be available at anytime of the day, Monday – Friday. If your flexibility is limited, you know in advance that you are reducing your probability of finding consensus. (We have had defenses at 8:00 AM on a Friday morning, and the room was packed!)
2. Map out your committee members’ schedules in advance.  Start with your advisor’s schedule, then work your way through the rest of the committee.  You need to know what their obligations are in advance without imposing your desired dates upon them.  Know and respect their immovable events.  Mark off their teaching days, the entire week before their grant or paper is due, conference days, and more.  Some people have their calendars online, some have their calendars managed by the department’s administrative assistant or their lab manager.
3. Give email a break, go and visit them in person.  Before you try to work everything out with a bunch of emails, make an appointment with your committee members (individually) and talk about their schedules for the month that you’re interested in. Remember that your faculty members are people too. They are juggling their teaching, research, service, grants, conferences, publications, external committee obligations, and more. Some have families at home, are caring for aging parents, or are taking care of their own health needs.
4. Let other committee members know about your advisor’s availability first. Don’t try to make the schedule by starting with your outside member. Find your advisor’s availability, then work in the availability of those in the department.  Chances are that there may be some similarities with schedules of those within your department. As you talk with your other committee members, let them know about your advisor’s schedule.  For example, you can say, “Dr. Jamison, my advisor, Dr. Corles, is open on April 3, 5, 10, or 12 after 2PM.” Schedule your external member last. Your advisor may allow your external member to participate by conference call or Skype.
5. Request that your defense be a “feature” for a standard department event. Perhaps your department always has a lecture on the third Friday or the month at 2PM, or your advisor always has a group meeting on Wednesdays at noon. Perhaps the department’s weekly faculty meeting is on Mondays at 1, and you can ask if you can schedule the defense at 11.
6. Make plausible suggestions. If teaching schedules are the bottleneck, talk with some of your friends (advanced grad students, postdocs, alumni) and ask if they might consider facilitating a class for your advisor or committee member on your defense day. If the friends agree, bring this up to your advisor or committee member. For example, you can say, “Dr. Jones, I know that you teach Math 202 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays this semester.  I’d like to suggest a possible way to free your schedule on one of those days. One of your former top students, Dr. Maria Harris, is a Senior Analyst at NSA and has agreed to come in on my defense day to cover your class. She said that she can also tell the students about some of the unclassified projects and how the content that they are learning applies to national security.”

These are just a few suggestions, six out of many that have worked for doctoral students over the years.  Yes, everyone is busy; perhaps people are more busy than ever these days. But in this age of technology, remember to invoke the human connection. Do not try to do everything over email. This may work for some people, but it doesn’t always work for the whole group. You may need to schedule a conference call with each person. Solidify things with your advisor first, and let those dates guide you. Good luck and best wishes!

_____________________________________________

This post may be copied, but please reference “The Dissertation House — http://www.thedissertationhouse.com, a program of PROMISE: Maryland’s AGEP.”

_____________________________________________

The text content of this post was compiled and written by the staff of PROMISE: Maryland’s AGEP and may not be copied without referencing the PROMISE organization, as “PROMISE: Maryland’s AGEP”.

PROMISE AGEP Online Information by PROMISE: Maryland’s AGEP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Dr. Wendy Carter-Veale started today’s Dissertation House at UMBC at exactly 9AM EST! There are 19 people in today’s Dissertation House in the Commons on UMBC’s campus. They’ve just taken a break to have a buffet lunch in the Skylight Room.  This afternoon, Dr. Susan Han from UMBC’s University Counseling Services will be giving the DH Mini-lecture this afternoon.

We welcome all of the people who are joining us online: http://dissertationhouse.wordpress.com/blog-online-challenge/winter-challenge-2012/; we have several students who have participated in our Dissertation House at College Park joining us virtually to post their own goals and provide encouragement.   Our online blogs range from January – June (“Winter”) and July – December (“Summer”) to coincide with the annual “Winter Dissertation Houses” in January, and the “Summer Dissertation Houses” in July.  During the Summer 2010 range, there were 428 blogged comments in our Blog-Online Challenge section, 266 for Winter 2011, a whopping 912 blogged comments for Summer 2011, and as of this morning, there were 58 for Winter 2012.

Congratulations to all of you who have joined us today to make a commitment to work on your documents. We have people who have taken time off from their jobs to be here, busy Moms with young children (and a mom with a son who is also in grad school!), people who are working through balancing work and health, people from all walks of life.  We have engineers, computer scientists, physicists, psychologists, public policy experts, environmental scientists, biologists, teacher education specialists, information technologists, etc. in the room today, and an even wider range of varying disciplines online.  Thank you for joining in.  You can do this! Go ahead … get it done!

Dr. Wendy Carter-Veale started today’s Dissertation House at UMBC at exactly 9AM EST! There are 19 people in today’s Dissertation House in the Commons on UMBC’s campus. They’ve just taken a break to have a buffet lunch in the Skylight Room.  This afternoon, Dr. Susan Han from UMBC’s University Counseling Services will be giving the DH Mini-lecture this afternoon.

We welcome all of the people who are joining us online: http://dissertationhouse.wordpress.com/blog-online-challenge/winter-challenge-2012/; we have several students who have participated in our Dissertation House at College Park joining us virtually to post their own goals and provide encouragement.   Our online blogs range from January – June (“Winter”) and July – December (“Summer”) to coincide with the annual “Winter Dissertation Houses” in January, and the “Summer Dissertation Houses” in July.  During the Summer 2010 range, there were 428 blogged comments in our Blog-Online Challenge section, 266 for Winter 2011, a whopping 912 blogged comments for Summer 2011, and as of this morning, there were 58 for Winter 2012.

Congratulations to all of you who have joined us today to make a commitment to work on your documents. We have people who have taken time off from their jobs to be here, busy Moms with young children (and a mom with a son who is also in grad school!), people who are working through balancing work and health, people from all walks of life.  We have engineers, computer scientists, physicists, psychologists, public policy experts, environmental scientists, biologists, teacher education specialists, information technologists, etc. in the room today, and an even wider range of varying disciplines online.  Thank you for joining in.  You can do this! Go ahead … get it done!