PhD Completion Milestones
Dr. John-Paul Ore (adapted with thanks from Laurie Williams)
Here are
some milestones for completion of a PhD dissertation with me as your advisor. It is important for you to stick to this schedule
to have a high-quality dissertation, to contribute valuable research to
the community, to obtain feedback on your work from lots of smart reviewers, and to be as competitive as possible for the job you want upon graduation.
Years 3 can overlap with any of the years below if you plan to graduate in four years.
Year |
Activities |
Year 1 |
If you are considering me as your advisor, we need
to get to know each other and work together in some capacity.
Come to our graduate student weekly meeting so you can meet your peers and learn about the work we do. In addition, you could be a student in a class I teach, be a teaching assistant for , or we have
an independent study project that we work on together. At the end of this we can mutually decide
whether or not we feel we can have a productive research relationship. I will not sign any plan of work to be your
advisor before the completion of this activity.
It's a good idea to have an industry internship during your first and second summers to get experience in industry before needing to really focus on your research. |
Year 2 |
Fill your schedule with courses*. Take your two 700-level classes; finish your statistics courses for your statistics.
Take 3 credits of CSC890 in the fall semester and 3 credits of CSC690/CSC890 in the spring semester. Your CSC890 research should focus on an early study of the area you would like to research for your dissertation or on research you are doing for your RA assignment. Plan your CSC890 research to complete early enough such that you can submit it to a conference during the spring semester.
Submit your CSC890 research to any of the following conferences: ACSAC, Agile, ASE, CCS, ESEM, FASE, FSE, ICSM, ISSRE, ISSTA, ICRA, IROS, RE, RSS or other jointly-agreed substitute. Of these, ASE, CCS, FSE, ISSTA, RE, and RSS have very competitive acceptance rates, so the others may be a better choice for your first paper: ACSAC, Agile, ESEM, ICSM, ISSRE. Not to worry if the paper is not accepted :-). You will be learning about what is expected from the community in terms of research rigor, salience/novelty of topic, and writing.
Plan to submit a paper to one of the following conferences based upon your work from spring paper time through the summer, could be on your summer internship if you have one: ICST (due October), ICSE (due August/September). Note that ICSE is very competitive so you may consider ICST (or its short paper track) for this paper.
It's a good idea to have an industry internship during your first and second summers to get experience in industry before needing to really focus on your research. |
Year 3: |
Submit papers according to the following schedule:
This plan has you writing three papers/year, four months/paper**. You should be able to write really strong papers if you focus on writing three really great papers/year. Some of these may be revisions of previously-submitted papers if they had not been accepted earlier. Plan your year such that you have these three breakpoints with something to report and get feedback on. In Year 3 or 4 (but at least one year before your graduate), submit to a doctoral symposium at a relevant conference, such as ICSE, ICST, FSE, ASE or ESEM. Through this submission (and hopeful participation) you will obtain valuable feedback on your research idea from respected researchers. |
Year 4 thru (Graduation - 1) year
|
Same as above, except you should write for ICSE and you should write a journal paper should be to TSE, TOSEM,or EMSE (preferably) or JSS, IST. One year you should write a paper for IEEE Computer or IEEE Software as a means to get your research out beyond the academic audience of most conferences so that you can influence the state-of-the-practice.
|
Graduation - 1 year | 1. Write your proposal document.
2. Hold your proposal defense at least one calendar year prior to expecting to graduate. 3. Same publication requirements as above except you should focus on publishing in the most competitive conferences (ICSE, ASE, CCS, FSE, ISSTA, OOPSLA, RE) and journals (TSE, TOSEM). |
Graduation semester |
1.
2. Defend your dissertation.
3. Revise your dissertation
and obtain approval from the thesis editor.
|
* To be my student, you must include Software Engineering (CSC510) in your core courses, and take Software Testing and Reliability (CSC712) and Software Engineering as a Human Activity (CSC710). If you have already taken Software Engineering, you must take a course that has CSC510 as a prerequisite. You must also take at least two statistics class to prepare you for the validation efforts of your research (STAT 511 and STAT 512). Having an adequate statistical background is essential for the types of model development we do and for the validation of our work.
Suggested core courses
Suggested 700-level: CSC710 and CSC712 (discussed above).
Also recommended: CSC522 (Automated Learning and Data Analysis)
** A continual stream of submissions is essential for obtaining external feedback on your ideas and to copyright the progress of your research. Of course, you would love to get all your papers accepted, but please realize that periodic paper rejection is generally inevitable. You are learning and getting feedback on your work regardless of whether the paper is accepted or rejected.