Academic Dissertations in the News

NEW JERSEY (WABC) -- This Mother's Day will be especially poignant for a New Jersey woman who will not only celebrate being a mom, but also becoming a doctor.

Tamiah Brevard-Rodriguez was working on her doctoral dissertation presentation from Rutgers when she went into labor on March 25. She was only eight months pregnant and was scheduled to deliver her dissertation defense that day. "I was physically prepared for a pregnancy, mentally my brain was not on a baby," she said. "So I was having a very emotional response to knowing I was in labor, knowing I had this defense. I was literally shaking."

She had everything planned out with staff and faculty at Rutgers to examine standards Black women face on historically white college campuses.

A program for Ph.D. dropouts embeds thesis writing into courses to get doctoral candidates back on track.

The Problem: Completing a doctorate takes years. Not every student has the endurance – or the time – to finish. Over the past decade, attrition rates for U.S. programs have remained near 50%. Around half of learners complete coursework requirements but can’t get over the dissertation hump, which can feel overwhelmingly open-ended and isolating.

Read article at usnews.com

Misuse of ‘cumulative PhDs’ should prompt debate over whether stacking research papers is really equivalent to writing a dissertation, says Brian Bloch

Few countries can compete with Germany in their respect for the doctorate, with those found misusing the revered “Dr” or “PhD” titles facing severe penalties. So it may surprise readers that the spiritual home of the PhD (invented in Berlin in the early 19th century) is increasingly turning its back on what most regard as its cornerstone: the doctoral dissertation.

Yunting Zhu, PhD, of the Department of Neuroscience and Physiology has been honored for writing the best PhD dissertation in the SUNY System.

Zhu's dissertation researched the biological changes in the human brain that lead to the development of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, including brain inflammation and tissue-damaging immune cells. This research could then be tested further to develop early detection and new treatments targeting the immune system.

A Cambridge Ph.D. student has solved a grammatical problem that has befuddled Sanskrit scholars since the 5th century BC.

Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī is an important work for understanding classical Sanskrit. But for centuries, a grammatical problem surrounding a meta-rule has risked readers misinterpreting the text. Rishi Rajpopat, a Cambridge Ph.D. student, has solved the grammatical problem by rediscovering Pāṇini's original intention.

Since 2022, the egyptologist, archeologist, and PhD candidate has been working with Princeton University and the Ministry of Antiques in Egypt on an excavation in Abydos. Here, she along with her team made the discovery of a previously unknown cemetery that could fundamentally change our understanding of the time period from which it’s from.

We had no idea that these burials were occurring at this site.” Smith-Sangster said. “That’s a really significant data point…for as much as we know, we still know very little.

A Cambridge Ph.D. student has solved a grammatical problem that has befuddled Sanskrit scholars since the 5th century BC.

Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī is an important work for understanding classical Sanskrit. But for centuries, a grammatical problem surrounding a meta-rule has risked readers misinterpreting the text. R's original intention. By solving this grammatical problem, Rajpopat ishi Rajpopat, a Cambridge Ph.D. student, has solved the grammatical problem by rediscovering Pāṇinihas given modern scholars a fresh means to interpret and understand this wealth of human achievement.

A Russian student who sparked controversy for defending his thesis written by the fast-growing artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT will be allowed to keep his diploma.

Alexander Zhadan said Wednesday he had successfully used the U.S. company OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot to write his work and receive a passing grade.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has called critical race theory a “Marxist” ideology that has no place in public schools. But a top official in his administration had previously taken a very different stance.

Eric Hall, who DeSantis recently appointed to head Florida’s Department of Juvenile Justice, used critical race theory as the bedrock of his 2014 dissertation examining alternative schools.

Read story at Politico.com

By Jack Grove for Times Higher Education.

Oxford rejected her request to delay release of error-strewn dissertation.

Naomi Wolf attempted to block the publication of her error-strewn doctoral thesis for a further year after submitting it to the University of Oxford’s digital archive more than five years late.
According to internal emails seen by Times Higher Education, the American feminist requested an additional extension to embargo her D.Phil. dissertation after depositing it, alongside a lengthy corrections sheet, with Oxford’s research archive at the end of December 2020.

Read more at Inside Higher Education