Theses and Dissertations

No One Tells You "How" to Write Your Thesis

Students usually find thesis and dissertation writing challenging because:

• Many (most?) people struggle with writing.
• There's no single right way to write a thesis or dissertation.
• Neither the thesis writing nor the research that supports it is a linear process.

Countless pages of writing and hours of development classes are devoted to framing the graduate school process as a straightforward set of steps: (1) read a lot of literature, (2) synthesize that literature to identify a knowledge gap, (3) propose a set of testable hypotheses to fill said knowledge gap, (4) design and conduct a set of experiments to test those hypotheses, and (5) report on the outcome of those experiments and the ramifications for the broader field. It is almost never that clean and students often grow frustrated when

Tips for Making Thesis Progress

• Keep an annotated bibliography: As you read literature, keep a document that a brief summary of . In all likelihood, not all of the papers you read will ultimately be referenced in your thesis or manuscripts.
• Use a reference management system:
• Keep a methods document:
• Write 3-5 bullet points about each figure you create:
• The above look a lot like a lab notebook:

A Note on Competing Incentives

Although rarely said directly, it is important for me to note here that the incentive structures for me as your advisor are different than, and sometimes in conflict with, those of a graduate student. Because this is frequently not clearly articulated, I want to compare the evidence that is used to evaluate the success of students and faculty in the table below. In the case of faculty, these pieces of evidence are often used in decisions regarding tenure, promotion, and awards.

Evidence of Faculty Success	Evidence of Student Success
Peer-reviewed journal articles	Timely completion of degree
Grants funded by NSF, NASA, DOE, etc.	Career advancement
Invitations to speak at conferences	Grades
Seminar invitations at other institutions	Involvement in professional networking activities

You can quickly see that there is some misalignment between how you and I are evaluated! Also, the items above on which I am evaluated are fairly traditional measures and metrics. Whether they are the “right” pieces of evidence to measure research impact is currently under heavy scrutiny. There exist entire books on alternative ways of measuring the success of academic scholarship, including works that attempt to classify different kinds of scholarship, the success of which are measured in different ways (e.g., Boyer XXXX). In the context of the kind of research LEAF group does, for example, the following have been argued to be additionally relevant pieces of evidence for faculty success:

• New datasets that are of use to other scientists and practitioners,
• Functioning and well-documented scientific software,
• Educational materials that can be used by other instructors,
• Fact sheets and other materials for use by community partners like water management agencies

Although this debate is active and outcomes may fundamentally change academia, we are “stuck” with the current structures for the time being. Having said that, it is my belief that there are ways to structure the thesis experience to result in a product that is mutually valuable, given these competing incentive structures. A particularly clear way forward is to identify a way of documenting a well-defined research project conducted by you under my (and your supervisory committee’s) supervision that satisfies a few incentives from both the student’s and advisor’s perspective. In particular, a scientific manuscript that could form the basis of a submission to a peer-reviewed journal is such a document.

Why is a Scientific Manuscript a Useful Compromise?

A scientific manuscript that is close to being ready for submission to a peer-reviewed journal satisfies a number of intended learning outcomes for most graduate degree programs. It can also serve to illustrate a number of technical and non-technical professional skills. Specifically, the manuscript:

• Presents a concise and self-contained summary of a research project,
• Requires identification of a knowledge, information, or capability gap in the literature,
• Demands the application of both technical and non-technical skills to address the identified gap and summarize the work,
• Demonstrates the framing, completion, and summary of a significant body of work in the form of a project,
• Satisfies many requirements of an MS thesis and multiple manuscripts (see below) can constitute the bulk of a PhD dissertation,
• It can be completed in an amount of time that should not prolong the degree program beyond nominal expectations (e.g., 2 years for an MS, 3 years for a post-MS PhD), and
• It is potentially important to your career, depending on the organization with which you gain employment.

Example Outlines

Based on the above discussion, I provide here an example outline of what an MS Thesis and PhD Dissertation might contain. In all cases, the scientific manuscript (multiple for PhD dissertations) serves as the centerpiece of the thesis itself.

MS Thesis

• Chapter 1: Introduction (5-7 pages + references)
• Chapter 2: A Scientific Manuscript (15-25 pages + figures, tables, references)
  • Introduction
  • Methods
  • Results
  • Discussion and Conclusion
  • References
• Chapter 3: Conclusions and Future Directions (3-5 pages + references)
• Appendices (as needed, may refer to external resources like datasets and code repositories)

PhD Dissertation

• Chapter 1: Introduction (5-7 pages + references)
• Chapter 2: A Scientific Manuscript (15-25 pages + figures, tables, references)
  • Introduction
  • Methods
  • Results
  • Discussion and Conclusion
  • References
• Chapter 3: A Scientific Manuscript (15-25 pages + figures, tables, references)
  • Introduction
  • Methods
  • Results
  • Discussion and Conclusion
  • References
• Chapter 4: A Scientific Manuscript (15-25 pages + figures, tables, references)
  • Introduction
  • Methods
  • Results
  • Discussion and Conclusion
  • References
• Chapter 5: Conclusions and Future Directions (3-5 pages + references)
• Appendices (as needed, may refer to external resources like datasets and code repositories)

What are Hallmarks of a Successful Thesis/Manuscript

Quickly converge of a knowledge, information, or capability gap for which incremental progress can be made Identifies a smaller component of a larger project that Potential project outcomes (e.g., generated datasets, plots with hypothesized axes) can be identified quickly and early