Doctoral Students and Dissertations
Yet few resources, aside from the mentorship of faculty advisers, exist to guide most graduate students through the process and help them design and execute the most academically rigorous undertaking of their careers.
The only Doctoral Support Center in the nation, based at the USC Rossier School of Education, was established in 2005 to meet this need with one-on-one coaching, writing groups and academic workshops that support students throughout the process.
Cristina Salazar-Romo, an Ed.D. student at USC Rossier, said she started using doctoral support services when she was at her “lowest point” in the writing of her dissertation.
“I needed both the constructive feedback to improve my work and the emotional support to continue on this lonely journey of completing a dissertation,” she said.
The center’s success has been widely praised. The evidence is in the quality of the product supplied by USC Rossier’s Ed.D. and Ph.D. students who have utilized the service. Other schools on campus and elsewhere have taken notice.
This month, for the first time, the center invited Ph.D. students from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering for a four-day retreat in Alpine Meadow Village to face their dissertation-writing demons.
“We call it a workshop because they’re being worked,” said program director Ilda Jimenez y West. “Most of them work full time, have a mortgage, kids … They almost need to be sequestered to carve out the time to write.”
The five USC Rossier and eight doctoral students from the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering were secluded from all the distractions of everyday life and required to produce at least one draft of writing a day, with immediate feedback given by Doctoral Support Center advisers during the intensive retreat. Many of the students exceeded those daily requirements.
“They became more focused in their respective research areas,” said Evelyn Felina, a student services adviser in the Epstein department. “They were able to put their ideas in writing, and they seemed to become more confident in their work and research.”
Salazar-Romo, who also attended the retreat, said the workshop helped refocus her energy on the finish line.
“Being physically removed from the comforts of home forced me to spend hours and hours staring at – and ultimately making sense of – my data,” she said.
Another workshop is being planned this summer for USC Rossier and Epstein Department students, along with other students from USC Viterbi's Computer Science Department.
For information on Doctoral Support Center services, visit http://rossier.usc.edu/dsc/. To contact the center, call (213) 740-8099, or e-mail rsoedsc@usc.edu.
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USC in the News
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The Chronicle of Higher Education mentioned USC’s $6 billion fundraising campaign. The story noted that USC had already raised $1 billion in a “quiet phase,” including the $200 million naming gift from USC Trustee and alumnus David Dornsife and wife Dana Dornsife to the USC Dornsife College.
The Guardian (U.K.) highlighted two major gifts to USC in a list of the 10 biggest philanthropic benefactors in America. The list included the $200 million naming gift from USC Trustee and alumnus David Dornsife and wife Dana Dornsife to the USC Dornsife College, and the $110 million gift from USC Trustee and USC Viterbi School alumnus John Mork and wife Julie to create the USC Mork Family Scholars Program.
The New York Times featured the USC U.S.-China Institute documentary “Assignment: China — The Week that Changed the World.” The documentary, part of a series, examines media coverage of the 1972 Nixon trip that reshaped U.S.-China relations after a quarter century of isolation and hostility. “People look back now and take it for granted that the outcome was preordained,” said the institute’s Mike Chinoy, who produced the documentary. Voice of America also featured the story.
Los Angeles Times featured the Oscar Senti-meter, a tool developed by the USC Annenberg School, Los Angeles Times and IBM that analyzes thousands of tweets about the Academy Awards nominees. The story noted that Mexican actor Demian Bechir received an enormous boost on Twitter the day of the nominations, with a total of 6,893 tweets mentioning him, a 47-fold increase from the day before. The story noted the tool uses language-recognition technology developed in collaboration with USC Viterbi School’s Signal Analysis and Interpretation Lab.
The Times of India (India) featured a three-day medical emergency training workshop organized in association with USC. At the workshop, held at GCS Medical College in India, 50 doctors and more than 100 paramedics learned how to improve emergency support systems. William Mallon of the Keck School of USC said that discussion topics included the use of portable ultrasonic devices to scan patients. “The ultrasound applications help physicians make accurate and timely decisions,” he noted. Daily News & Analysis (India) also featured the workshop.
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