The General Procedure of Completing a
M.S. Thesis in your CS/CIS Degree Program:
Note: Informaton on this page are supplementary to the official
information and procedure as published by the School of Science and
Computing Engineering (SCE). Please contact the SCE office at Bayou to
obtain official forms and documents about the thsis option.
- During the first or second semester of your M.S. degree program
(the sooner the better), identify a faculty member whose research
interests match yours.
- Take an Independent Study (CSCI
5939) with the faculty member, in order to perform a survey of your
thesis topic. At the end of that semester, submit a research proposal
to the SCE. In the proposal, you will need to identify the topic of
your research area, give a survey of relevant research projects and
published work in that area, and what you plan to do in your thesis,
etc. For a sample thesis proposal, check out this link.
At the time of submitting the thesis
proposal, you also need to identify two additional faculty members to
form a three-person advisory committee.
- Once the thesis proposal is approved, it usually takes two long
semesters (9 months) to complete the thesis. Depending on the nature of
your thesis, you may need to do more detailed survey of a specific area
related to the proposed thesis topic, perform theoretical analysis,
conduct empirical or simulation-based experiments, aggregating the
results, writing research papers, and eventually, completing the thesis.
- At the last semester of your thesis work, once the thesis is
completed, give an oral defense of your thesis to the CS/CIS faculty,
and your fellow students. Sample copies of completed thesis are
available at the UHCL Library.
So, the thesis option takes about 3 semesters (one semester of
Independent Study, plus two semesters of thesis work), and at the end
you obtain research experiences and technical publications which are
typically not available in the project option. If you are a person who
enjoys challenges and innovations, or would like to cultivate these
aspects of your capabilities, you should seriously consider taking the
thesis option. For more information, feel free to contact me at yang@uhcl.edu.
For a list of potential thesis topics, please go back to my research page.