how do you get them to say “Yes.” That’s
kind of what we’re going to talk about today.
And there’s no guarantee, you know– sometimes
if you go back to the drawing board several
times, that happens, that’s just kind of
part of the process, being a grad student
and what not. But there are ways that you
can kind of anticipate what’s going to happen,
and anticipate and prepare and plan so that
hopefully your committee will say “Yes!
I’m in love with your research topic.”
Okay? So that’s kind of how we are going
to start today.
There is a template for the thesis, and there’s
a template for the dissertation. There is
no template for the proposal. There isn’t
one size fits all for your thesis or your
dissertation proposal. Unfortunately, or fortunately,
that is the case. If you can get your hands
on proposals from other grad students in your
program, just to see what they look like–
what are the expectations of most of the people,
most of the people in your department, your
committee member, or your chair. The other
thing is if you don’t have a model to follow–
you guys all know the big journals in your
field, so I would just go back and look at
an article in your field because basically
an article from your field is going to be
the main skeleton you could work from, however
those articles are constructed. So let’s
take a social sciences or a hard sciences
article. You may have an introduction that
states the problem, a little background. If
you’re in social sciences, maybe a longer
background, a longer literature review, a
methodology, and you won’t have the results
or the discussion, right? So what you could
do in your proposal is you could have an introduction,
a little background, lit review, and then
what you are going to say though is instead
of saying, “I did” or “this research
did do this” everything is then flipped
into the future tense. “I will.” “I
propose.” “The problem I am going to look
at is this—.” “This is why that problem
is important—.” “I will, I will, I will,
I will.” And you outline all that.
You can go to the library website and you
can find theses and dissertations in your
program, okay? Have y’all done that? That
is so cool! Did you know you can find them
by your advisor, as well? If you go to the
library website, you go to the database- library.tamu.edu-
databases and put in “Proquest Dissertations
and Theses Full Text.” Alright? You get
this window, kay? Once you click on it you
get this window. You put in a topic, put in
an author, maybe what you would put in-maybe
as what you would put in somebody you know
who graduated before you if you wanted to
look at their dissertation or thesis. You
can put in your advisor! You put in Texas
A&M, and it brings up all the dissertations
or thesis that your advisor chaired. Kay?
What if they don’t have any? They maybe
a new professor or something like that- you
can put in a committee member. It’s nice
just to get a ballpark figure of what the
finished product will look like. They want
something that looks like it is academic.
It is a proposal that is not half baked. It’s
realistic.
We work with a lot of students who have a
great idea for topic, but it’s really important
for your committee to know that you know the
research that has been done before. There’s
a physics professor that I work with quite
a bit on campus. He said he had a grad student
who kept coming to him and saying to him,
“I have this great idea!” and the professor
says, my friend that is a professor says,
“Not really that was done in like 1986.”
“But it hasn’t been done my way!” “Not
really-that was done in ’98.” Right? So
what kind of credibility does that student
have with his advisor at that point? It- go
back and figure out what’s been so that
they know that you are going to contribute
to that body of knowledge and not just rehash
something somebody already did-right? So,
it’s kind of like-they’re going to ask
you, your advisors are going to ask you to
go back and do your homework. If you come
up with an idea and say, “Okay! I have a
new way of doing something and I know it’s
going to work.” They will probably say,
“That’s great. That’s a great idea.
Now go back and show me how that idea came
about. Where did that idea come from?” That
happens then in doing that literature review
or that study. Literature reviews, I find,
trip students up more than anything else.
The methodology seems pretty easy. Even the
results, if you’re doing a quantitative
study. You know, you go, “Okay. I will survey
this many students or I’m going to do this
many experiments. I am going to find out what
this happens. I’m going to run this statistical
test. I’m going to present these results.”
Pretty straightforward, right? But that introduction
background-“how much is enough?”-that
usually trips students up a little bit. So
figure that out. Look at sources that lead
to other sources.
One of the things that I like to do is- when
I am first exploring a topic-I don’t exactly
know who the big scholars are in the field
if it’s a new topic to me. Does that make
sense? You just don’t know. So what I’ll
do is I’ll look at a lot of literature,
but you can’t put all of that literature
into a literature review. That-oh my gosh!
You have to pick and choose because there
is so many articles out there. Have you been
kind of overwhelmed when you even go to Google
scholar or one of the TAMU databases and they
say, you put in a topic and says-you know-
“twelve million hits.” You go, “Ahh!”
It’s overwhelming. One of the ways you can
sift that down is saying, “Okay. Who are
the big players? I’m really only going to
refer to the big players in that field when
I do that background. Kay? Who did this? Who
did this? Who led to where I’m going to
take off with my research and what I do as
I go back to Google scholar and I’ll be
reading sources resources like I don’t even
know if I should include this. I kind of cross
reference. I go on, put it into Google scholar,
and it says “cited by” and there’s a
number. That gives you a number of all the
other journal articles that have reference
that journal article. This article’s been
cited by seven hundred other peer-reviewed
articles. Dang! You better take a look at
it. Now it may be cited because it’s that
bad because scholars are just talking to each
other, right? You know-this may be the worst
article ever written by this theorist or whatever,
and everybody’s bashing this poor person,
but for good or for bad, you’re probably
going to bring that up to your literature
review. Okay?
When I work with grad students, a lot of the
times their scope is– I would like to–
I would like to have world peace, solve world
hunger, find clean energy, and be better looking.
That’s what they are going to do in their
dissertation. Oh my gosh! What is attainable?
You know? Sometimes what you wanted do is
a life’s work and not a thesis or dissertation.
So think about scope; is this something you
can do? So one of the things you want to think
about is can I get the data? So if you’re
writing the proposal, think before your professor
asks you, “what kind of access do I have
on the data?” Now, y’all in the hard sciences,
you probably work in a lab. You probably know
what your topic is. In fact a lot of a lot
of y’all even kind of write the proposal
after you’ve done all the research. So the
proposal process is not that big of a deal
for y’all. I am going to say though I think
it’s important to do the literature review
up front, even if you don’t have to because
you have a much better idea of how your research-
your research-and your lab fits into the broader
context- that’s just me, even if your professor
doesn’t make you do it. I think it’s a
good idea to do it. Can I get the data in
the timeframe allotted for my dissertation,
so maybe you will graduate? We all want to
graduate. Would you like to graduate sooner
or later? So think about that-can I get that
data in the timeframe that I have for my research?
Am I addressing one research problem or multiple?
That’s that world hunger thing and clean
energy. And can I articulate my research probably
in a sentence or two? This is really important
because in your head everything make senses.
In my head, everything makes sense. It is
only when I start talking about it that I
realize that I have some problems with my
logic or my thinking. Okay? Because everything
makes perfect—boy! I tell you. I wake up
in the morning and have an idea and I’m
brilliant! You know? And then, “What’s
your idea?” And I start talking about it
but I start talking in circles and circles
and circles and people start getting more
and more confused. Okay? That’s something
to think about. As a matter of fact, we’re
going to do an activity. The person next to
you riding up the elevator, friendly sort-usually
we don’t talk on elevators, but it happens
to be a friendly sort- turns to you and says,
“Oh! Your graduate student? What’s your
research topic? What are you working on? What’s
your dissertation about?” and I want you
to tell that person in no more than two-if
you’re really struggling three sentences.
Were you two talking to each other? Okay.
I would like you to tell me what her research
is about. So when you can say that in a couple
of sentences, you go to your chair and you
go, “Yep! I’m going to blah blah blah.
And I am going to do it this way, blah blah
balh.” And they say, “Okay. See ya later.
Write it up. See ya later.” Part of the
process is thinking that through just because
you’re looking at minors on the ocean all
of that and the tools and that kind of stuff.
That doesn’t mean that it came easily to
you just because you can say it now-I want
to make this point for those of you who are
still in your heads about everything-that’s
a natural part of the process if it were easy,
it wouldn’t be grad school. You have ideas
that are new ideas that are forming and forming
and forming. That’s part of the process.
Keep digging. Keep reading. It will happen.
You will get there. You will be able to explain
your research very, very clearly, but make
sure that you go through the whole process-don’t
bypass.
Now let’s talk about methodology. Your committee
is going to want to know why you chose to
look at the problem in the way you chose to
look at the problem. That’s important because
there are lots of ways to look at a problem.
There are lots of ways to look at a problem.
There’s not one way to look at a problem.
So is it important than for you to say when
you’re reading these journal articles in
your literature review, you are not just reading
them for content- I mean, you are reading
for content you’re looking at the results
and so forth. You’re also looking at the
methodology they use to get to that result
because it will inform your decision making
a lot in the process. Now a lot of you will
only use quantitative methodologies; what
information does method capture? What information
presented this way is important to my study?
Why is the information-? I use an article
on hay bale feeders quite a bit when I work
with animal science students. Very simple
article in terms of like a study that they
use they said, “ok forage loss. The problem
stated is forage loss- it’s one of the most
important losses a farmer can have in terms
of the inputs, outputs economically. So how
do they reduce the loss for cattle forage
in hay bale feeders. And what I’m talking
about is those round things you always see.
They put the big round bales in that then
the cows eat it and that way it doesn’t
go to waste. So what they were looking at
is “How much waste does the design of the
feeder make a difference? Do aggressive cows
get to it? If this is the design-allow for
aggressive cows versus non-aggressive cows?”
Right? And what they did is there were studies
that were done before, but they would tweak
the methodology. They said, “Well what this
person did-what these guys did is great. They
really looked forage loss and that was really
good, but nobody’s looked at the design
of the bale feeder in terms of the aggressive/non-aggressive
cows getting enough forage.” So they also
tested the cows to see how much forage they
were getting in that. See what I’m saying?
So they took a –kind of like- okay-lots
of people have looked at forage loss, but
tweaked it and made it like with a few different
methods-changed it and made it new. Kay? So
what you’re looking at your methodology
is what has everybody else done to look at
the problem and why isn’t the problem solved
yet?
Qualitative methodologies basically is the
discovery process. You are kind of going along
discovering it. So you’re guided by research
questions instead of hypotheses. How do people
perceive their experiences in “X”? I know
that sounds a little fuzzy to those of you
in engineering. That’s okay. That’s what
we do. How do people perceive? What’s the
perception? And what kind of theory am I looking
at through social capitalism? Or my social
capital? Or am I looking at it through feminism?
Or am I looking at it through critical race
theory. There are all kinds of ways to overlay
that. The thing is when you pick those you
just need to know why you picked them because
you’re committee is going to ask you that.
Kay? So how do you organize all this information
in a way that your committee will understand?
I’m giving you a couple of different templates
here that you can go by that kind of depends
on what your research questions are and how
you want to do this, but one way if you have
no guidance from your advisor and you have
no clue-this, is a shot. Give it a shot. One:
do a little introduction and review of the
literature. You don’t even need to necessarily
go crazy. If you haven’t gotten a lot of
advice from your advisor, I wouldn’t do
a forty page literature review. Do enough
to where you think you can talk about it.
Give it to your advisor and let him or her
kind of guide you-say, “You know what? I
like the way started on this, but you need
a whole lot more information on this.” This
is not your proposal defense; this is just
the initial conversation, right? Okay?
“Statement of the problem/ purpose of the
study:” what the heck are you doing this
for? Cause they may ask you that too. “Why,
why, why, why?” And you don’t want them
to tell you, “Oh yea. That was done in 1986.
That was done in 1998.” You want them to
go, “Yea! I’d buy that. I would totally
marry that proposal.” Okay? What is the
research question? What research questions
do you have? What questions are you going
to ask to get at that information? And how
best- what methodology am I going to use to
answer those questions. What will it mean?
Now- you can’t do the significance yet because
you don’t have the data yet- it’s your
proposal. But in your head, in your head-what
might this do? What could this do? Is it important?
Alright. That’s a thought.
Here’s another template. Just do IMRAD.
You scientist know this one. Lab reports,
you know? IMRAD. Introduction: including a
little background review of literature. Methods:
you don’t have the results and you don’t
have that discussion. Kay? But you maybe have
the hypothesis or something like that. So
you want to understand the problem, why that
problem is important to solve, what’s been
done before to try and solve the problem,
why that problem hasn’t solved yet, and
what you’re going to do to solve it.
So what are these scholars all about? You
think about your committee and you think about
how you’re going to talk to your committee
on paper with your proposal. You want them
to say, “Yes!” You want them to say “Yes!
I love your proposal! I love your proposal!
I will marry your proposal!” How do you
get them to take you seriously? You have to
show them that you can do that work in your
proposal because that’s going to lead to
that conversation where they call you that.
Or if it’s your master’s degree-it’s
a little tighter, a little smaller, but your
masters may lead to your PhD. You know I’m
saying? So what they want to see is that you
have a solid knowledge of your topic, and
when they send you out, you can talk to anybody
about here about research you’ve done.
When you go to a party you maybe don’t know
everybody there. You go into a party and you
get there late. And there are people talking
in the living room- you all remember what
that was like, right? So people talking in
the living room- I’m not talking about an
undergrad party either. Talking in the living
room. Talking in the kitchen. And there are
little groups of people talking, right? So
if you come in late and you approach a group
of people, what do you do first- what’s
the first thing you do? You introduce yourself,
“Hi, hi, hi, hi.” But if there’s a conversation
already going, what do you do?
Audience: Listen
Candace: Yea- you do. Listening is the literature
review. You need to find out what the big
dogs in your field are saying about that topic.
So what if you just come in and you’re completely
socially awkward. I’m not looking at anybody
in particular here, but you come in and there’s
a conversation going on and you just interrupt
the conversation and say, “Well, my ideas
are blah-blah-blah.” And you say something
completely dumb and inappropriate. What happens?
And they look at you like, “You are really
awkward.” Okay-that’s what happens when
you don’t do your literature review and
you just decide that’s your idea and you
just spout it out for your committee. Is that
a good analogy? So what you do is you go hit
the books and you read everything there is
to read about that topic and you figure out
the different approaches people have taken
to solve that problem. And then- once you’ve
finished listening then you enter the conversation.
That’s the time. So if your committee says,
“But what about so-and-so?” “Yeahh!
I thought about so-so when I read that, but
the way that so-and-so approaches this problem
doesn’t factor in this.” Now you’re
having a conversation with your chair, aren’t
you? That’s the back and forth there, ok?
So when you write that background-which seems
to trip people up in the proposal more than
anything else- when you write it, you’re
just listening to what happens. You’re listening
to the events. You’re finding who the big
players are because you know there’s somebody
that you know they can say something crazy
and everybody laughs-“hahha! Oh! That’s
great! That’s great!” You know that’s
a big dog in the field. You know that’s
a big dog-everybody’s listening. Whoever
everybody is listening to, using that Google
scholar as well, but then you find out what
hasn’t been done in your field. A-ha! You
will fill that gap and research. You know-everybody’s
looked at this problem, yet they haven’t
solved it because they haven’t looked at
it this way. If you know that and can articulate
that, that proposal almost writes itself.
I’m kind of teasing. It doesn’t. But you
know.
Everybody has an outside member on the committee,
is that correct? Okay? I write-My audience
is the outside member. My audience, in my
head, when I’m writing- I’m not writing
to my chair who is an expert in my particular
topic. I write to the outside member because
if the outside member on your committee can
understand your proposal than everybody in
your committee can understand the proposal
and that means explaining a lot of things
that you want it shortcut, “Everybody knows
that!” Using these acronyms and these things
and blah blah blah. Uh-no. If your outside
committee member doesn’t understand it-explain
it. So explain everything: theories, methodologies,
key terms, your committee members-you’ll
be surprised they may not be experts on the
theory that you are using so explain it. Two
things: one- it informs committee members
who aren’t familiar with your research about
what you’re doing, but there’s even something
more subversive. It also tells your committee
that you know what you’re talking about
as well.
This- I’m going to get into the nuts and
bolts- if you guys don’t mind- how to write
it because a lot of people can talk in abstraction
about how to do your proposal, but I want
to talk about some of the things that trip
people up and help you with that if I can.
So really what you’re doing in that background
is you are saying, “What do other people
say? What do experts in the field say about
‘X’?” “Well a number of studies have
suggested that?” “What are commonplace
opinions on ‘X’?” It is accepted practice
in- and that may be assumptive, but that “accepted
practice too.” You have to be careful about
that, but what does everybody buy? What does
everybody believe? What is the standard practice?
What are people imply or assume? What are
both sides of the argument? And those are
things to find in the literature and then
you want to indicate back to your committee.
Kay? But what are people talking about? What
are people talking about?
Then you position yourself in that argument.
“Well this is what so-and-so says, and I
agree with that, but here-” Even in the
life sciences and so forth, you’re going
to put up the debate because you’re going
to find that gap in the research. Well this
study showed- this study demonstrated that
laying hens at three days have X amount of
salmonella, but what was done in that was
taking the sample this way or whatever- see
what I am saying? So the next thing to do
after what other people say, is you put yourself
or you place yourself in the context of all
of the existing literature out there. Where
do I fit in? Where does mine-what came before
me? Where do I fit in? What’s lacking? What’s
out there? How does my research fill the gap?
And why is it important? Because you want
to answer the big question: “So what!?”
Your committee is going to be nicer than that
and more polite. But what they want know-
“So what? So what’s the big deal if you
do this research or not? Who cares? So what?”
You answer that question, that’s getting
you closer.
How did they say it? You can do summary: this
person said; this is person agreed with this
person; this disagreed with this person; this
study showed this; this study is similar in
this way. Paraphrasing is really good when
you are translating technical jargon into
more of lay persons terms. It’s really good
for that or defining things. Paraphrase is
not a great writing strategy. It’s not.
So you guys who love those PDF and you highlight
them all the time and carry them around with
you. And you start writing your paper from
the PDFs? Usually that lends itself to kind
of like chunky writing. Thuddy, you know like,
“uh!” You know? It’s not in your voice,
maybe changed a few words or whatever, but
it’s paraphrase. Paraphrase is elegant when
you’re actually just presenting a fact in
science or translating it- not translating
it- but making some kind of very complex idea,
simple. Most people don’t use quotations
unless you’re in the humanities, some social
sciences do, and actually quotations in the
humanities you using the quotes as evidentiary
support. And maybe history, too?
Alright so this is for paraphrasing: you repeat
something. You need new words. You don’t
just right click and pick another word; it’s
writing to the varied audience. Really useful
when you present specific results and then
tuck information. Direct quotation- it’s
really used sparsely in most of your areas,
except for English or history or some of this,
but if you do use it, make sure that you introduce
the quote, put the quote in, and then explain
the quote. What I see a lot of times when
people quote is they introduced the quote,
put the quote, say, “but I’m really too
lazy to explain this quote to you, so I’m
going to move on to my next topic.” You’ve
got to come back and explain that quote and
move on- it’s your burden, your burden to
explain the quote to the reader, not anybody
else’s. Okay?
How you say something matters as much as what
you say, right? If you want your advisor to
say, “Yes!” to your proposal, how should
you write? What do you think they’re looking
for? Easily explained, clear, straightforward,
don’t hide, don’t be subtle. One of the
things I do? Go to my journal. How do journals-how
do academicians write in my journal? Copy
that style. Do they use passive voice? Do
they use active voice? Do they do this? Do
they do that? Some of you guys will use active
voice in the introduction and background and
passive voice in the methods. Or vice a versa.
I can’t answer that for you. It’s not
a one size fits all, at all.
Get organized. You’re about to amass a huge
number of PDF files. Get organized. How many
of you guys use Ref Works or End Note? If
you don’t-get it. It’s great. If you don’t
use one or the other, Ref Works tends to be
a little easier to learn how to use. Go the
library website. Library.tamu.edu. EndNote:
a lot of people in the human sciences use
EndNote. You can download that from the university
as well. Either way. Okay? Whatever works
for you is great. But organize yourself. I
use Zotero sometimes when I’m searching,
searching, searching and I find something.
And I’ll download the citation in Zotero.
It works in Firefox as a Firefox plugin. It’s
not quite as hefty as Refworks, but it’s
real quick and dirty.
So what you don’t want to do is waste time
because if you – how many of you guys have
had to go back- you read an article, and then
you had to go back and find it again- and
gosh! Where was that article? You guys don’t
have time for that. Don’t you want to graduate?
Get organized. Just put everything so in a
location where you are going to find it, attach
it. You can go ahead then and if you want
to use one of these tools to write your paper
and insert the citations as you go, you can
do that. I just used it for my reference pages.
I just kept it because I like to do the citations
myself. I just kept it and I said “APA fifth
edition-BOOP!” and it turned it into the
APA! It’s magic! I don’t know how it works!
It’s fantastic.
And just stay organized. Know what style your
writing in and then remember Texas A&M University
Writing Center, even Reveille comes to us
for writing assistance. Even Reveille! So
you should be able to also. Come see us. Come
see us at the Writing Center anytime. Y’all
have fun. Take care. Good luck. Thank you-
thank you so much.
