The dissertation writing process can be an intimidating and isolating experience for many doctoral students.

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.