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The General Procedure of
Completing a M.S. Thesis in the CS/CIS Degree Program:
Note: Information
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 3611 or visit SCE’s master
thesis page to obtain official forms and documents about the thesis option.
You may also find more information about the thesis option on the thesis page.
- 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 or CINF
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 the
general format of a sample thesis proposal, check out this thesis proposal. 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. See selected
sample theses at the bottom of this page.
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.
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Sample Theses