One of the last steps to obtaining your doctoral degree is to defend your dissertation. Defense processes vary depending on whether your degree is conferred through IU or Purdue.
Purdue Defense Requirements
The details for defending a thesis or dissertation for a Purdue graduate program at IU Indianapolis can be found here, in the Purdue Graduate Student pages of our website. Select information on Exams and the Deposit Process.
Go to the Purdue Graduate Students pageIU Defense Requirements
Once your research committee has read a final draft of your dissertation and agrees that it is ready to be defended, provide each member of your committee with a full, unbound copy of the dissertation and arrange a mutually agreeable time and place for your defense.
You should allow at least four weeks between the time you give the committee members their copies and the date of the defense so that they will have sufficient time to read and critique your work. The four-week waiting period will also allow other faculty members who might be interested in your work to plan to attend your defense as well.
Forty days prior to your scheduled defense, submit to the IU Graduate School Indianapolis via the PhD Defense Announcement Submission eDoc.
The announcement must include:
- The time and date of the defense.
- The location of the defense.
- Your educational career data (e.g., B.S., IU, 1986, etc.–the major area is not needed).
- A description, in layman's terms, of your thesis (300 words or less)
The eDoc will route to your department and the chairperson of your research committee for approval.
Once announced, the time and place cannot be changed without the approval of the dean of the IU Graduate School Indianapolis.
Have your acceptance page and abstract available to be signed. The committee should not sign the acceptance page and abstract until their post-defense revisions are completed and approved..
Learn more about acceptance page and abstractsIn case your committee should insist on extensive revisions before giving its full approval, your dissertation chairperson will probably hold on to the acceptance page and abstract until you fulfill the committee’s recommendations.
Students are rarely required to go through a second oral examination.
If you know in advance that any member of your committee will be absent, you should, with the approval of the dean, arrange to have another faculty member sit on the committee. Occasionally an absent committee member can participate by telephone or video link.