Avoid These Dissertation Defense Pitfalls NOW!
In this comprehensive advisory talk, Steve Tippins, Ph.D., walks graduate students through every stage of preparing for and delivering both proposal and final dissertation defenses. He stresses that admitting uncertainty can enhance credibility, and that the defense is a confirmation of research competence rather than a pass/fail test. Tippins outlines how to master institutional expectations—using official slide templates, adhering to dress codes, and understanding the format (in‑person or virtual) and allotted time. He advises rigorous rehearsal, concise slide design with bullet points, and using slides as “gutter guards” to stay on track. The role of the chair and committee is highlighted: resolve concerns early, respect hierarchy, and manage potential conflicts. Detailed guidance is given for proposal defenses (focus on feasibility, literature gaps, methodology justification, data access) and for final defenses (structured recap of chapters, results, interpretation, limitations, and future work). He provides tactics for handling tough questions, managing anxiety, and engaging politely with committee members, including how to disagree respectfully. Practical tips cover slide count, timing, equipment, attire, gifts, and post‑defense steps such as formatting, signatures, ProQuest submission, and celebrating with supporters. Throughout, the tone is instructional and supportive, with a confident yet measured sentiment encouraging students to view the defense as a celebratory milestone.
Chapters
Hi, my name is Steve Tippins, and we're here today to talk about dissertation defenses, proposal and final defenses. So what I want to talk about today is the defense process and how to prepare for it and what to think about it. Recently I posted something on LinkedIn about a student at a defense saying they didn't know the answer to a question. And a number of people think, well, if they don't know the answer, they say no, they don't know they shouldn't be passed in their defense. That is definitely not the case in every situation. In fact, in many situations, saying no is the correct answer or saying I don't know is the correct answer. Because you may get questions that are beyond the scope of your research. And yes, you're an expert in your research, but you are not an expert in everything, though you get in trouble when you start try to answer questions that are beyond what you've studied. And if you say, no, I don't know, it actually gives you credibility. Understanding the limitations of what you have done. And this can actually open up opportunities for engagement for people who ask you questions and even quite possibly open up opportunities for future research. I come from the belief that your chair and your committee should never, ever, ever let you go to a defense unless they're ready to pass you. Because they've read your material multiple times, they know what you've done. The defense of any type is confirmation that you actually know what you're doing. So it's an extra level of confirmation. Many people are incredibly nervous about their dissertations. If you come with the perspective of they're ready to pass you and prepare properly. Defense should be more of a celebr vibration than anything else. How should I prepare? One of the first things you want to do is understand your institution. What are the norms at your institution? For example, many times they'll give you a template of slides you need to use. So use that template. Don't recreate something. They're expecting that template. Also understand the setting. Is this going to be from a distance? Is it going to be with everybody in the same room? Understand that. Understand the attire that is the norm. Is it business casual? I kind of doubt it. Shorts and T shirts. What do they expect? If you can't find out what to expect, always overdress. It shows respect to your committee. Another step is in the process of doing a dissertation. Whether it's your proposal or prospectus or your final document, you're going to have committee members, and sometimes committee members will have concerns about certain parts you want to work with your chair before the defense. If you have committee members who may have concerns so that you can answer their questions, handle what they might bring up before they become questions in in the actual defense. This disarms people. It gets them on your side, showing that you have understood what they've asked and you have responded and showed them that you respect them. Going along with a template and what's expected is understand what they think the duration of this meeting will be. I have seen know defenses that have gone an hour and a half and I've seen defenses that have been 20 minutes. Many schools now are following in the we want a presentation in the 20 to 30 minute range. Just know what you're expected to do. If they're expecting an hour and you give them 18 minutes, they're going to be disappointed. On the other hand, if they're expecting 20 minutes and you're still on chapter one after 30 minutes, they're not going to be happy. Get a good idea of what's happening. And one way to do this is many times these defenses are recorded. Go into your institution, wherever the database is that holds this and look at one or two of these, especially one or two where your chair was the chair so you can see how things proceeded while she or he was in charge of the dissertation defense. When you're going to do your defense, you most likely want to practice. I'm a big proponent of practicing. You don't want to have this be the first time. You do not want read what you have verbatim to people. Because if you've ever been in a class where a professor has thrown up PowerPoint slides and then read them to you word for word, you know that that's pretty boring and you lose interest pretty quickly. Same thing's going to happen with your committee. So be comfortable with what you have. You don't want to be going along and say Jones and Smith did found that the titration rate was equal to another level. You want to be comfortable with the words no gaps, no stopping. It's okay to have an every once in a while. We all do. You want to have a level of comfort. So that means go through your material, go through it more than once. I don't recommend you do it 20 or 30 times though, because you're going to get stale. Get to the point where you're comfortable. Now let's talk about the slides themselves. In my mind, these slides are boundaries or guidelines for you. And I like to think of bowling. And when you're bowling and you're just starting bowling, you have gutter guards on the side. So the ball will come over here and come over there, but it'll still stay there and get to the pins. What that means for you is your slides become your gutter guards, meaning I can always get back to them and see what's going on. If I get a question, this will bring me back. That said, that means you do not want your PowerPoint full of 175 words, a paragraph, a huge long paragraph that you're going to read first, you don't want to read it second, it's not going to allow you to jump back into it. And third, and this is pretty important, your committee members read faster than you do. You throw that up as a slide for them to look at and they're reading and they're reading and they're reading and they're way ahead of you. And they get done and you're still talking and. And they're looking on their computer for airline reservations to Fiji or finding out when the next game is or something. You have lost control. If you're just putting lots of words up there, bullet points are great. Allows you to come back, oh, where, oh, I was on this. Bullet point. Great. And I move forward. Your presentation helps you convey what you know. Also helps you keep in control of. Of what's going on. One of the things I've mentioned is how you dress. This is a level of showing respect to the committee members. I understand there may be a committee member or two that you may not like even because they've slowed you down, or they've asked you for things you didn't think were reasonable. But you still need their signature to be done with this. So show them respect that the position that they have earned deserves. Always refer to them as doctor until they tell you otherwise. I've seen too many people get too familiar too quickly and it puts people off. And then they start saying, well, wait a second, I'm a doctor, I better ask some questions to reestablish my control here. Battles you don't want. Work with your chair, as we mentioned about faculty members who may have some issues. Also work with your chair about if there are faculty members on your committee who have opposing views. Try to avoid things where they can have conflicts because you don't want your dissertation or your defense to be a battlefield between two people trying to strut and show how important they are. Your defense is the purpose of you finishing, getting done, showing them. Now let's talk a little bit about the difference Between a proposal or some people just have a prospectus defense versus a final defense. In my experience, the most difficult part of a dissertation is the proposal, and that is creating something out of nothing, coming up with an idea that's never been done, and getting a group of sometimes strange people to approve it. Your proposal defense is where you come in and your committee is checking to make sure what you want to do is doable and what you want to do is reasonable. So they're going to be asking you questions. And this is the type of thing I get asked frequently. What type of questions am I going to be asked in a proposal? They're going to be asking questions predominantly around the concept of feasibility. This is your problem, this is your purpose. Great. Tell me more about that. Where did it come from? Show me in the literature, where there is a gap in the literature. Have you fully developed the literature? Sometimes you might even get, well, why haven't you cited me from committee members? Because everybody likes to think their research is the best ever, but the whole idea revolves around feasibility. So you get comfort. Presentation is going to follow basically your first three chapters. Let me have an introduction, let me have my problem statement, my purpose. What's the literature? Why is this important? And how am I going to go about doing it? What's the methodology? They may question you about your problem, may question you about your purpose or your research questions. Look into your literature review, which you're going to present, just like your literature, going from broad to narrow. So we end up down to, and this is the problem, how it's going to be addressed and the methodology. And I find this is a point where people may stumble a little. Your goal here is to say, this is the methodology I'm going to use. Here is why. It's the appropriate methodology, and here's why I didn't choose other approaches to this. And what that does is it allows you to share with the committee that you understand methodology. You understand why one approach has been chosen and, and why others have not been chosen. So it lets them understand that you have a grasp on the process of doing research. If you have a really good committee and some really good members, they're going to ask you questions like, okay, methodology seems great. What kind of data? Where are you going to get your data? And that's a good question to be asked because you want to know that and you want to be able to share that with them. And, and a really good committee is going to say, and do you have access to that data? I've seen too Many people get approved without ever asking that question. And then spending months or longer trying to get data which may not even be available and, or having to go back to the committee and back to get IRB approval or reapproval to approach this in a different way because they never thought, do I have access? Can I get access to this data? Even if they don't ask you that question, sharing that information with them is going to really help them understand and make it easier for them to approve you. Sometimes you'll get questions, okay, when are you, how are you going to move forward on this? When are we going to see you back again, you know, with your final product? And that's a reasonable question to ask. You don't want to say three weeks because you're going to need IRB approval. Then you got to collect the data, then you got to write it. You know, a reasonable answer and they're not going to hold you to, this is three or four months. They'll say, great or wow, that might be a little challenging, but wish you luck and let's go. And you know, you, you get approval and then you get to do the fun stuff. You get to actually do the research. The final defense, you're gonna, let's say you've got a 25 minute time frame. Your first five minutes is going back over the first three chapters. It's kind of like, hey, remember, this was my problem and this is my purpose. And here's a little in the literature and here's the methodology that we all agreed I would take from there on. It's looking at the traditional chapter four and chapter five. Hey, here's what I found. Maybe some graphs or charts that you're going to present them, but I found this. And these themes approached or these variables were significant whether you're doing a qualitative or a quantitative study. So you get to share all of that with them. What does it mean? Your chapter five, Tell me. Great, this was significant, but what does it mean? How does it fit in with the literature? What are you going to do about it? What future research needs to be done at this level? It's not feasibility, it's okay, what did you achieve? What stumbling blocks did you come across? Not everything goes perfectly as expected. So how did you change things? Oh, I see that this variable wasn't normally distributed. How did you modify it? Oh, I took the log and you know, this brings up an important point. Many times when people do quantitative research, they hire a statistician and that's fine to hire a Statistician, it's not fine to say when they ask a question, well, how did you adjust this variable to get it back to be normal? Oh, well, Dr. Tippins did that for me. That's not a reasonable answer because Dr. Tippins isn't going to be in the room with you to answer that. It's your research. You have to understand this. So if Dr. Tippins did it, you have to have a conversation with Dr. Tippins as to say, okay, what happened here? Why was this done? And you have to understand that. So when your committee says, why was it done? You can say, oh, well, it wasn't normal, and this was the appropriate modification. If you get outside help, not a problem. As long as you learn what they have done and you can explain what they have done. You may get questions about, well, why didn't you use this other approach? And this is where you go back to, well, it was this type of data or this fits best with the research question. All of this shows you've integrated the knowledge. Because the ultimate purpose of a dissertation isn't to change the world. It isn't to get significance. It is to show you understand the research process so that your committee can then give you the, you know, big gold star on your forehead or whatever it is saying, yeah, okay, this person can go do research. We think they're ready to do research. And that's what you want. You want to get done so that you can get to the table that having this union card allows you to. So you can be involved in decisions and research and ultimately, I hope, go change the world. We've been through a number of things about the defense. Well, it's human nature when you get questions to say, oh, my God, I don't know what they're asking. I can't handle that question. And it feels like it's an hour, but it's really almost instantaneous. And ask them a question back, saying, oh, if I understand what you're asking, is this what you're looking for? Or can you reframe that in another way? And this process of just taking a few seconds to do that, I find for most people, the panic leaves and they can get to, oh, I know, yeah, okay, that's what they're looking for. And then they reframe the question, or they get it to you. You then, so you've clarified now you answer the question. And a really good step after that is, did I give you what you were asking for? Or does that answer your question? Because you don't want them to Think you're not answering your questions or blowing it off. Look, I said, I've done over 300 of these. Only seen two people not pass. And both of them were allowed to do it again and passed the next time. But basically those two people didn't put time into preparing and couldn't answer questions. And the committee said, you're not ready. You were ready. We thought you were ready, but you're not showing us that you actually know this. And it's just my feeling that with the advent of AI, their defenses might become a little more important for people to show that it really was me. And I really understand if you get a question that you think you can answer about your topic because you've become an expert in this. That's why it's okay to say, I don't know if it's beyond the scope. Now, if it's an expert on this and someone asks you something that you hadn't thought of, it's okay to be honest, wow, I hadn't thought of it that way. And then give your thoughts and try to engage them in a conversation. And academics, you may not know this, but academics have egos. And it's always a good ploy to say, that's a really good question. I haven't thought of it that way. And what that's doing, it says, you're really smart. Now, if somebody tells you that you are smart, obviously the other person's smart, because they realize that you're smart. Engaging with people, respecting them, showing them that you understand how their level of intelligence and knowledge makes you seem like a better person, and it makes it easier for your material to be accepted. So the most common questions in a final defense, in no particular order, what was the hardest part of doing this? What challenges did you face in doing this? How did you overcome these challenges? Because data collection can be difficult. And we want to know what thought process you went through and how you handled that. One, to make sure you did it ethically, which I'm sure you would have. But two, to understand that you are able to think about things and approach them from different directives and perspectives. Questions about your methodology. Okay, I see that you found these themes. Explain to me how you developed those themes. So they're looking in a qualitative study, and how you actually coded and did things to get to a theme or, wow, this variable was significant in a quantitative study. That seems a little counterintuitive to me. Can you explain why you think this is. So they're digging into your analysis and your Understanding of analysis. It's relatively typical to get questions like, what advice would you give to somebody now at the beginning of this process? And that's a question that just allows you some space. I find this question a lot, too. Okay, now what. What are you going to do with this? And understand that the people asking you this question, they live in a world where publishing is incredibly important to their careers. So if you say, you know, I'm going to explore publication, they like that. And it's relatively typical if you are going to publish. Coming out of a dissertation is to put at least your chair's name on the publication. Sometimes people put other committee members on, too, but the chair's name, it's kind of a tip of the hat. Thank you for helping me get this from far. But those are typical types of questions based upon your methodology and based upon how it fits in the literature. Now, this brings up an interesting point. You started this process a long time ago. You got approval in the proposal and you did all your literature review, and now it's six months later. Keep up with the literature. Because somebody on your committee may say, yeah, that's great, but, you know, Jones and Jones last month came out with this and how do your results, you know, go along with there? And if you say, well, I don't know, that's a case where I don't know isn't probably the appropriate answer because it's within your purview of research. Keep up with the literature so that you don't get surprised with a question about recent literature. Gosh, how deep are they going to go into this data thing? First of all, when you're doing your dissertation and you're writing chapter four, you're going to say, here's my model, or here are the themes that were developed. And many times there's an appendix which is more supporting information. Typically, they're not going to go into. In the defense. Okay, how did you code this and give me all the codes you used that's in the appendix. Tell me, you know, show me each data point. Typically, they're not going to go that deep. If something that deep is going to happen, it's going to happen in the review of the document itself beforehand, and you're able to handle that. It's also where you're talking to your chair ahead of time to know your committee members and say, this is the type of information Dr. Smith is going to be asking. So you make it part of the presentation, presentation, and then the questions don't have to happen. So how Would I handle tension from a member of the committee? Either my chair or a committee member with my chair, Hopefully I'm going to have conversations ahead of time. You know, your chair's job is to help you get through. And the least minimizing resistance from committee members helps you finish. And your chair gets accolades or compensation or however from their institution. So a good chair is going to have conversations with you. And hopefully any tension with your chair is eliminated at the proposal stage. Because once they've approved it, they've already approved it. It's not like they're going to go backwards and say, no, no, no, you got to use a different methodology. No, they signed in effect a contract that this is what they said you could do. Committee member tension. First of all, if you're at an institution that people work full time and get tenure, you always want your chair to be tenured. And the reason is your chair, if they're tenured, isn't worried about a promotion too much. But if they're not tenured and other members of the committee are tenured from their department, those other members get to vote on your committee chair for tenure. Their job. It makes it a little more difficult for your chair. You'd say, hey, okay, interesting point, but let's move forward to try to, you know, they've got their own self interest there too, so they may not be as much of an advocate for you. Which is why I always propose that if wherever possible, you have a chair who's tenured. Question I get every once in a while is how many slides should I have? Well, if your institution has a template, that's the number, whether it's 18 or 25. But I like to think of around a minute per slide. Some slides are going to be pretty quick, some slides take a little longer. But if I'm doing a 25 minute presentation and somebody shows me 72 slides, you're not A going to get through it or B, they're going to go so fast that nobody's going to understand what you're doing. So again, going back to my slides are my boundaries that allow me to keep control. Think of a minute. A slide somewhere around there is going to help you understand what you're going to need on the slides in order to have the leaping off point for your presentation. How do I handle it if I go over my time limit or under my time limit? Let's assume you have a 30 minute time limit. You're at 29. You realize you're at 29 minutes and timing yourself ahead of time. Great idea. And having some sort of clock off in the distance that you can see that they can't. Also a good idea. You're at 29 minutes and, wow, I still got five slides left. First, practice is going to help that. Second, understand that some information you may need to skip and be ready, say, okay, I'm going to need three more minutes just to wrap things up. Just to let you know, let them know, get tacit approval to do that. One of the worst things you want to have happen is you've been given 30 minutes. You're at 35 minutes, you still have five or six slides to go, and your chair says, okay, you got a minute and a half to wrap this up. When it's forced on you, then it's an issue. But when you keep, again, keep control. Now, on the other hand, you got 30 minutes and you took 18 practice. Understand that if I only show 18 minutes, that my committee may say, hmm, they don't really think much of what they've done. So if you're practicing in timing, you're going to go back and say, okay, what can I add? Having someone you can practice with who's been through this before can be a really big advantage of saying, yeah, maybe you need to explain more of this or maybe you need to show more of that to allow you to get to where, hey, it's 30 minutes and you've gone to 27. Okay, that's okay. But if you're at 18, the response from the committee, again, might be, wow, they didn't. Weren't that interested in what they did. How do I politely disagree with a committee member during my defense? And this is a really potentially legitimate concern. I present my material and somebody says, yeah, okay, but you know, there's another approach that should be used that's totally different than it should be, or however they explain it, first validate their opinion. You know, that's an interesting way to approach it, see what you're saying, and there's a couple of ways to go with this. And moving forward, I think I'm going to be looking at things in that direction, but that's a little beyond the scope of what we've done, you know, what was expected or set up here. But moving forward, that's going to be a very valid point. I see what you say. And because, you know, faking your death in the middle is okay, too. I understand what you're saying. And based upon the data that I had or the approach that the problem here, the underlying data, means that this approach was the appropriate one as approved in the proposal. It's validating what they're saying and then saying, yeah, that's an interesting approach. However, based on the underlying assumptions of the test or what was approved by the committee, this is the approach that most appropriately worked in this situation. But in another situation, this, you know, what you're suggesting is totally the appropriate method to move forward. What if I A, didn't get all the data I planned, or B, results weren't as expected? Let's handle B first. The purpose of a dissertation is to show that you've done research and understand how to do research. The purpose isn't significance, it isn't to change the world. Yeah, everybody wants to have great results, but not every study ends up with great results. So if I didn't get what I expected, this gives me lots of opportunities in chapter five to talk about limitations of the study, how it ties in or disagrees with other research from the past and future research. So it gives me lots of opportunities to show I understand research. I understand this didn't do exactly as expected. However, now, wow, look at all these other new things that are open from this. I didn't get enough data. I needed my power test said I needed 172 responses and I got 140. Well, the first question is going to be, well, what did you try? You know, what alternative did you look at? And you're going to explain all that, and that's going to be in your document as well. And again, you aren't supposed to get to the defense unless they're ready to pass you. So if you've fallen under on the data, this is a conversation you've had with your chair and then ultimately your committee to say, okay, here's what we're going to do. So that's all going to be addressed ahead of time, all going to be approved ahead of time. It shouldn't just come up last minute in the dissertation defense and then you can remind them about, okay, yes, we got 140 instead of 172, and it was agreed that I'd move forward in such and such a manner. What materials should I have ready during the defense? You probably don't want to have a hard copy of your dissertation there where you're flipping through to say, on page 42. I said, you know, that's not what we're looking for. We're looking for you to be able to stand comfortably in what you're doing. And if that means I need a pointer or a clicker or Something like that. Great. But the idea is, what do you know? How comfortable are you with it? So, you know, you might want a glass of water there. That's, you know, because your voice gets tired if you're at home, you want to have set up your material ahead of time so that you're not looking like this at them or like this at them. You know, you want to be where everything's in the eye level and it's all ready so that, you know, you're not adjusting whatever. You want to make sure that you're in a private location so that you're not saying, you know, rover, stop, the kids are somewhere else. So there's not interruption. Your phone's turned off so that you know you're there giving them full attention. But typically, you don't see a lot of extra stuff brought into a dissertation. Sometimes if it's in person, there is some sort of celebration after. I wouldn't do it in the same room. You're doing a defense, you know, go out to lunch after or something like that, as a committee. Great. This brings up something totally tangential. Some people give gifts to committee members. That's okay. You don't want it to be, hey, here's a new car. Because then people are going to question whether you actually did the work. I've had people give me copies of their dissertation to me. I've already read it. I don't need it. I don't even have a copy of my dissertation anymore. Some people might want that to put on their shelves to see what everybody, you know, what's been done. You know, a pen, something reasonable, something in the IRB would approve as, you know, something that wouldn't be overly compensating people to be involved. I wouldn't do $5 at Starbucks. But, you know, just something to show that you value them. What happens after the defense? Yay, you're a doctor. Congratulations. Actually, some institutions, you're a doctor once, they say you've passed. Other institutions, it says, no, not till something happens. The dean signs or you've actually gone to graduation. But typically, I tell people, hey, it's a month after the dissertation, meaning you're going through whatever departments your institution has. Somebody checks the abstract. Somebody checks the spacing. Somebody checks. And there can be little teeny questions that come back, but they're not about the major, what you've done in research. They're just saying, here's our format, and you've got to follow it. I know an institution that years ago would take the turn in the paper and then they would have somebody have a cutout template and they'd turn the page and put the template on it, turn the page and put the template on it. And if any word went over, it was rejected. So you had, you know, understand the template and follow it. If they want 10 point font, you give them 10 point font. Don't say, oh I need 11, you know, for my. No, it's their institution, that's what they want. Just understand that you're going to get signatures from people. The approved copy if you go to ProQuest, takes a while to get it through there, but once you're done, you're done. Now another thing that happens after the dissertation defense is those people that supported you, you go thank them, take your family out, say hey, I'm back or understand that you didn't do this alone. There were other friends and family that supported you. Now go thank them.
