Destination Dissertation: A Traveler’s Guide to a Done Dissertation

Your dissertation is not a hurdle to jump or a battle to fight. It is a stimulating and exciting journey that can be completed in fewer than nine months and by following twenty-nine specific steps. Sonja Foss and William Waters--your guides on this journey--explain concrete and efficient processes for completing the parts of the dissertation where students tend to get stuck: conceptualizing a topic, developing a pre-proposal, writing a literature review, writing a proposal, collecting and analyzing data, writing the last chapter, defending the dissertation, working with your advisor, and avoiding delays and annoyances that can upend your progress. Crafted for students in all disciplines and for both quantitative and qualitative dissertations and theses, the book incorporates a wealth of real-life examples from every step of the journey and provides guidance useful for a lifetime of post-graduate research writing.

The third edition discusses how best to make use of new technologies now available to assist in the dissertation process. It also features a new final chapter on how to successfully publish research from your dissertation.

Sonja K. Foss is professor emerita of communication at the University of Colorado at Denver. She created and is co-director of Scholars’ Retreat, designed to provide intensive, focused, and supervised writing time for dissertations, theses, and other writing projects.

William Waters is associate professor of English at the University of Houston, Downtown and co-director of Scholars’ Retreat.