Dissertation Proposal Guidelines

  • All IGERT students are required to have an IGERT Dissertation Proposal Defense. This may be the same as the formal departmental proposal defense, or it may be separate. Students are asked to schedule their IGERT proposal defense by the end of their second year in the program.
  • The requirements for the IGERT proposal defense are that (1) the IGERT community is invited; (2) at least one representative from each of the three thrust areas (Engineering, Environment, Policy) is present at the public part of the defense and the private questioning part of the defense.
  • We urge students to defend an early stage proposal, rather than a late-stage version that contains many results and is nearly done.  Since it is traditional in some departments to defend a late-stage proposal, it is fine to do the IGERT proposal defense separately and perhaps much earlier than the department defense.