Workshop | Destination Dissertation: Practical Strategies for Writing the Thesis or Dissertation

Sonja Foss and Wiliam WatersPresenters: Sonja K. Foss, Professor, Department of Communication, University of Colorado Denver & William Waters, Assistant Professor of English, University of Houston-Downtown

Designed for master's and doctoral students, this workshop facilitates your progress on the journey that is the dissertation or thesis. In the workshop, writing a dissertation or thesis is presented as taking a trip—you are on vacation from normal routine for a fixed amount of time, you discover exciting things and develop new skills, and you know you'll be able to deal with whatever comes your way. The workshop focuses on those places where you tend to get delayed on your dissertation or thesis journey and provides practical and concrete processes for managing potential difficulties with ease.

The topics covered in the workshop include:

  • Preparing to go: Conceptualizing the dissertation as a trip and learning what Destination Dissertationqualities to pack to make the journey a more efficient and enjoyable one.
  • Planning the trip: Discovering the topic through a conceptual conversation that leads to the development of a pre-proposal.
  • Advice from other travelers: Learning how to manage all that literature and develop a conceptual schema for the literature review through efficient coding and categorizing 
  • Things to see and do: Coding data efficiently and developing an original and sophisticated explanatory schema from the data.
  • Useful phrases: Using fast writing and slow revising to make the writing and editing processes efficient and effective
  • Avoiding delays and annoyances: Avoiding the incomplete-scholar roles that prevent progress on the thesis or dissertation—roles such as the housekeeper, model employee, patient, and proxy critic The workshop can be of any length and can be modified to meet the particular needs of the participants.

Sonja K. Foss is a professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado Denver. Her research and teaching interests are in contemporary rhetorical theory and criticism, feminist perspectives on communication, the incorporation of marginalized voices into rhetorical theory and practice, and visual rhetoric.

William Waters is an assistant professor of English at the University of Houston-Downtown. His research and teaching interests are in writing theory and practice, the history of the English language, linguistics, and modern grammar.


To schedule a workshop, please contact Sonja directly: (303) 556-5526 or [email protected]