Destination Dissertation: A Traveler's Guide to a Done Dissertation

Dissertations aren't walls to scale or battles to fight; they are destinations along the path to a professional career. Destination Dissertation is a handbook that helps students successfully develop and complete their dissertations. It uses travel as a metaphor framing the process as an exciting trip of 29 steps that can be completed in less than nine months. Designed for use by students in all disciplines and for both quantitative and qualitative dissertations, the book shows concrete and efficient processes for completing those parts of the dissertation where students tend to get stuck, from conceptualizing a topic to editing the final work. It includes a wealth of real-life examples from throughout the dissertation process, such as creating the proposal and coding data. This time-tested method comes from the authors' successful work at the Denver-based Scholars' Retreat. Essential for all PhD candidates!

Sonja K. Foss is professor of communication at the University of Colorado at Denver. She created and is co-director of Scholars' Retreat, designed to provide intensive, focused, and supervised writing time for dissertations, theses, and other writing projects. William Waters is assistant professor of English, coordinator of composition, director of the writing center, and coordinator of assessment at Northwest Missouri State University. He is co-director of Scholars' Retreat.