Student Handbook

Dissertation  

The dissertation is at once both the culmination of one's work as a student and the certificate of entrance into the scholarly community. Ideally, the dissertation represents a substantial piece of cutting-edge research, marked by originality with respect to subject matter and/or methodology, and constitutes a real contribution to--at the risk of sounding optimistically lyrical--humanistic learning.

For both composers (Ph.D. and DMA) and performers, the dissertation is a double-barreled affair: composition students must write both a written dissertation and a substantial composition, while performance students must complement their written dissertation with a full-length recital (on the nature of the recital, DMA-Performance students should see section VII). In both cases, the written dissertation may be related to the composition/recital in one way or another. To compensate for the composers'-performers' two-part dissertation requirement, there is a general understanding that their written dissertations are usually a good deal shorter than those written by students in the areas of musicology, theory/analysis, and ethnomusicology.

What follows is the step-by-step procedure that students follow from one end of the dissertation process to the other:

(1) Choosing a topic: The best thing students can do is to begin mulling over possible dissertation topics early in their graduate work, not with the idea of closing doors to certain topics but, rather, with the intent of exploring the widest array of topics with as much breadth, in as much detail, and as early on as possible. Students should use the "pre-dissertation" Independent Study as a way of digging around. If this paragraph has a moral, it is this: do not find yourself in the position of having completed both course work and exams and then wander and wonder for two years trying to decide on a dissertation topic. It is not easy to regain one's momentum. Finally, having settled--if even tentatively--on a topic, burrow into it and discuss it with a prospective advisor. Don't wait until it's time to submit a formal dissertation proposal.

Sample lists of completed CUNY dissertations

(2) Choosing an advisor (and "readers"): Each student will have an advisor and a principal reader. If the nature of the dissertation seems to justify it, a second principal reader can be added. The final examining committee will consist of a minimum of four faculty members: the advisor, the principal reader(s) and, in either case, two secondary readers. For students in composition, there is also a composition advisor who is included on the final examining committee. By Graduate Center policy, three members of the final examining committee have to be members of the doctoral faculty.

(3) The Dissertation Proposal: Once a student has completed both course work and the Second Examination, has chosen and precisely defined the dissertation topic, and has settled upon an adviser and at least one of the two required readers, it is time to submit a "formal" dissertation proposal--one that has been developed together with at least the adviser and one of the readers--to the Faculty Membership and Research Committee. To maintain Satisfactory Progress toward the degree, the dissertation proposal should be submitted in the semester following successful completion of the Second Examination, but in no case later than one year after completion of the Second Examination.

The proposal should, at the very least, cover the following points: the nature of the topic should be clearly defined, as should its relevance/importance to present-day scholarship; the methodology should be explained; and there should be some discussion of past scholarship on the topic (supported by an annotated bibliography). In writing the proposal, students should remember that a good dissertation--and therefore a good dissertation proposal--has both a point to make and a point of view with which to make it; that is, the dissertation should have an "argument." One way of arriving at that sense of "focus" might be to include a chapter-by-chapter outline (no matter how tentative) in the proposal. Click here for dissertation proposal guidelines.


A FEW OTHER THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND:

(a) The Faculty Membership and Research Committee, which consists of five faculty members and one student representative, meets three times each year, generally at the end of September, beginning of February, and end of May (precise dates are announced well in advance). Proposals must reach the members of the committee (and a copy to the Music program office) at least two weeks before the meeting. The chairman of the committee will then set up an appointment at which the student meets with the committee to discuss the proposal. Letters from faculty advisors and readers are due to the committee a few days before the meeting  to the chair of the committee and can be by e-mail. The letters should indicate  willingness to serve as advisor or reader, and may include any other comments.

Human Subjects Research: Any research that involves human subjects must be approved by the Human Subjects Committee prior to starting the research. The approval form, signed on behalf of the Human Subjects Committee, must be included with the dissertation when it is deposited. If no research on human subjects was conducted for the dissertation, a form indicating that must be included when the dissertation is deposited. No dissertation will be accepted without one of these forms. Please contact Ms. Hilary Fisher, Director of Sponsored Research, 212 817-7523, for information.

Dissertation Proposal Clearance: Human Participants Form
All students, who have advanced to Level 3 after September 1, 1999, must submit a Dissertation Proposal Clearance: Human Participants Form to Hilry Fisher in the Office for Research and Sponsored Programs. This requirement includes students from all programs, whether or not their research involves human participants. The form becomes part of the student’s file in Registrar’s Office. A student will not be able to deposit the dissertation unless this form is on file in the Registrar’s Office. The form requires that any research including human participants (even informal interviews or reviews of preexisting data) be reviewed and approved by the IRB before research commences. Approval cannot be given retroactively. Doctoral students and their advisers must work together to ensure that these requirements are met.

(b) Neither the proposal nor the meeting with the committee should be thought of as constituting an examination. The proposals are not graded; rather, the committee seeks to determine--and the committee can sometimes be more objective than either the student or the prospective adviser--that the dissertation topic is truly viable and that the student has the "smarts" to carry it out.

If the topic is approved, it is registered with the American Musicological Society's DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS IN MUSICOLOGY. Though topics are never dismissed outright, the committee may conclude that the proposal, as submitted, has problems, suggest that certain aspects of it be reconsidered, and ask that the proposal be resubmitted at its (the committee's) next meeting. This does not mean that the student should not get to work on the dissertation; on the contrary, it usually means that the student should define things more precisely or limit the scope of the dissertation or turn certain of its aspects one way or the other. Even if the committee "turns down" the proposal, get to work!

(c) The proposal is not a binding contract. Students can--short of submitting a proposal for a dissertation on Wagner and then writing one on Leonin--turn the dissertation in this or that direction.

(4) Working on the dissertation: Obviously, there is no single formula that defines either the student's method of working on the dissertation or his/her relationship with advisor and readers. However, A FEW TIPS might be worth keeping in mind:
   
(a) do not put off the task of getting down to the writing itself until you think you have read every conceivable item that there is to read: (i) that point never arrives, as there will always (read: the remainder of your scholarly life) be something else to look at; (ii) you can always revise what you've written; and (iii) a dangerous (in some cases deadly) "I-can't-begin-to-write-yet" state of mind sets in, in which case what should be a two- or three-year dissertation turns into one that might never get done.

(b) do not present your adviser with a 600-page dissertation after not seeing him/her for three years; it is much better to submit the dissertation in chapter-by-chapter fashion, even if you begin writing with what will eventually appear in the middle of the dissertation. The final draft should be distributed to all committee members no later than four weeks before the date set for the defense.

(c) some advisers do not appreciate receiving "rough drafts"; it is very difficult to respond to ideas that are not completely thought out, and it is virtually impossible to do any copy editing on fragmentary, telegraph-style prose; advisers generally prefer to "talk" about the earliest stages of a chapter or section; in general, students are probably well advised not to present a chapter until it is in what the student honestly believes will be its finished form.

(d) though opinions vary, some students find that it is better to maintain a hierarchy of sorts--no matter how softly defined--between the main advisor, on the one hand, and the readers, on the other; in other words: if you finish a chapter and present it to advisor and two readers simultaneously, you might just get back three rather different sets of responses, each of which suggests revising in a somewhat different direction (you are, in other words, between the proverbial rock and hard place); in the long run it is probably much better (in terms of both time and preservation of sanity) to (i) submit a chapter to the advisor only, (ii) make the suggested revisions, (iii) resubmit it, and then, when the chapter has the advisor's blessings, (iv) give it to one reader at a time; though readers certainly do not (and should not) act as nothing more than rubber stamps, they are a little bit less likely to make "arbitrary" demands for total revision if they know that what they have before them has been approved by the advisor; that is, they will tend to make constructive suggestions that reinforce and support the scholarly strategies that have already been decided upon.

(e) upon receiving a chapter, some advisers will put down what they are doing and turn a 40-page chapter around in two or three days; others take two weeks, some take a month; it is very much up to the student to discuss such matters with the adviser him/herself; students should remember that the adviser and readers are likely to be involved with other dissertations, have papers to read from other classes, have committee assignments with unmovable deadlines, are involved in their own research, and even have families/private lives of their own; remember: your dissertation adviser is very much on your side, otherwise he/she would not have accepted what can often be an overwhelming and daunting task in the first place.

(f) to receive a grade of "SP," students registered for 90000 (Dissertation Supervision) must submit to their supervisor, no later than the last day of classes, at least one paragraph describing the work they have carried out toward the dissertation during that semester. This requirement will already have been met by students who have turned in drafts of chapters or portions of chapters earlier in the semester. Note that this is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for receiving a grade of SP. It is up to the adviser to determine whether the student has made progress. The grade for any student
whose progress is not satisfactory is "NRP" (no reported progress), and students who receive more than two NRP grades in Music 90000 will be barred from further registration until they develop a plan for continuing their  work approved by the adviser, the Executive Officer, and the Vice President for Student Affairs.

(5) The Dissertation Defense: Once the adviser and reader(s) have read through and approved the entire dissertation, it is time for the defense. Students should keep the following in mind:

(a) to the adviser and reader(s) two more committee members are now be added; they should only receive the dissertation and after the adviser and first reader say that it is ready to be defended. The copy of the dissertation submitted to the final committee should include all elements that will be required in the deposited dissertation, including abstract, table of contents, footnotes, bibliography, etc. Members of the committee must receive their copies of the dissertation at least one month before the defense date.

(b) it is the student's responsibility--in consultation with the adviser, readers, Executive Officer, and/or Deputy Executive Officers--to (i) choose the final three committee members and (ii) choose a day and time at which all six committee members can convene for the defense; this latter task can sometimes be a little bit difficult, as when, after getting the first five people to agree to a day and time, the sixth person cannot make it; one then starts the process all over;

(c) students may fill out the six-person committee with someone from outside the department or even from outside the university; they should not do so, however, without consulting with the Executive Officer; in addition, students should remember that The Graduate Center does not provide outside readers with honoraria or travel expenses;

(d) although the Music program does not insist on any one format with respect to style, students must consult with The Graduate Center Dissertations Secretary well in advance to make sure that the dissertation is acceptable with respect to format, type size, quality of paper, size of margins, type of binding, number of copies, etc. A copy of instructions for the dissertation is in available in Appendix IV, the Registrar’s Office, or the Mina Rees Library.

(e) the dissertation defense is a "public" event, and students are encouraged to invite colleagues and friends to attend the defense; in most cases (there have been exceptions!) the defense is a friendly affair.

The dissertation defense can have one of four results:

(a) ACCEPTED AS IS: this rarely happens, since there is almost always something that needs to be fixed;

(b) MINOR REVISIONS: this is the most frequent outcome; the student receives a list of more-or-less minor revisions, carries them out, and then shows the "revised" dissertation to the chair of the defense committee (appointed by the Executive Officer and always one of the three "final" committee members), who then signs off on the dissertation;

(c) MAJOR REVISIONS: the procedure is like that for "minor revisions" except that (i) the revisions that have to be made are on a larger (more substantive) level, and (ii) the "revised" dissertation must be submitted to the chair of the defense committee plus two other members of the committee, all of whom must be satisfied with the revisions;

(d) REJECTED: it is time for some humor: depending upon the student's faith, a Requiem Mass (with its deep, somber, even murky colors, Pierre de la Rue's is a favorite) or the Kaddish or something else will be sung or chanted; let's just say that everyone hopes it doesn't happen--and, indeed, defense committees will go to great lengths to avoid it!!!

Finally, a TIMETABLE in connection with the dissertation defense and the granting of degrees: The Graduate Center grants degrees three times each year-- October, February, and at the traditional commencement at the end of May or early June. For the degree to be granted, the dissertation must be submitted, defended, revised, re-submitted to the chair of the defense committee, approved and "signed-off" by that chair and the Executive Officer, and then submitted to the Dissertation Secretary. The deadlines are on or about the following (check the official GC Student Handbook for exact dates):

    for the October 1st degree..............September 15th
    for the February 1st degree.............Last day in January GC is open
    for the May/June degree.................April 30th

To meet these deadlines, students should bear in mind that--despite everyone's good intentions--things generally move as slowly as possible. The following outlines--in reverse chronological order--a series of deadlines to which a student should try to adhere in order to receive the degree at Spring commencement:

(a) last few days of April: submit revised dissertation to chair of the defense committee, get all necessary signatures, and deliver the requisite number of copies of the dissertation to the Dissertation Secretary.

(b) no later than the end of the first week of April: defend the dissertation, leaving a good two or three weeks to make "minor revisions" and correct the usual typos; a dissertation that is accepted with "major revisions" at an April defense will probably not make the May 1st deadline. Meet with the Dissertation Secretary to ensure style guidelines are met.

(c) no later than the end of the first week of March: distribute the completed and adviser/readers-approved dissertation to the final three members of the defense committee and set the date and precise time for the defense; as soon as you have the full committee, date, and time set up, notify the Music program office of such, this in order that we can reserve a room and notify the Provost, who will communicate the information to each committee member); NOTE THE FOLLOWING: the final three members of the committee must be given at least thirty (30) days in which to read through the dissertation before the defense can take place.

(d) no later than the end of the first week of February: distribute the completed and by-now-adviser-approved dissertation to the two readers in order that they can give it a final reading; remember: this may well be the first opportunity that the two readers have had to read through the dissertation from cover to cover.

(e) no later than the end of the first week of January: give the completed--and to this point, perhaps, only chapter-by-chapter-approved--dissertation to the adviser, so that he/she can give it one last reading before it goes to the readers for the final time (step d) and then on to the final members of the committee for the first time (step c).

(f) students should set a personal deadline of about New Year’s at the latest for dotting the final "i" and crossing the final "t" if they intend to receive the degree at commencement the following Spring;

NOTE: The program will not schedule a defense until it receives confirmation from the adviser that the dissertation is ready to be defended; that is, that it has been judged ready for a defense both by the adviser and by the two readers.

(6) Timetable for the dissertation in its entirety: there is none! Some students can write a 500-page dissertation in a little over two years or so; other students find the experience little short of being traumatic, and move along at a much slower pace.

A TIP OR SEVEN: (i) choose a topic that you can handle; don't choose a topic that requires a year in European archives if you can't get to Europe (see Section IX on dissertation-level fellowships and awards); (ii) choose a topic in which you will truly remain interested over the long haul; you will not complete a dissertation on a topic in which you lose interest; (iii) choose an adviser with whom you can strike up a good, collegial relationship; as with a marriage, sometimes it just doesn't work out; (iv) keep your goal before your eyes; don't get distracted; no one said that writing a dissertation is hassle-free; (v) try, if it is at all possible, to avoid taking on a full-time job, whether teaching or otherwise; it will slow you down; (vi) don't pull a long-term disappearing act; advisers have been known--and with some justification--to walk away from dissertations of students who turn up on door-steps after having disappeared without a word for a few years (after all, faculty members' interests and commitments also change, and the last thing you need is an uninterested, unsupportive adviser), and (vii) take advantage, if you need it, of The Graduate Center's counseling service for those for whom the dissertation has become overwhelming.