Dharma's Notes from Dissertation Proposal Discussion:
Have committee together before selecting proposal
Proposal defense not adversarial, more of a meeting to get suggestions, etc. can bring a friend to take notes
Proposal serves as a sort of contract, though not binding.
While there is no time requirement, you need to have it 6 mos to a year before you plan to defend
Field prelim is a good time to sort of try out possible people for dissertation committee (once you reach candidacy is the time to start really thinking about forming committee)
Aim for 3rd or 4th year for getting proposal in, but this is variable. Depends a lot on the work.
With 3-paper option you must show results, whereas with main thesis you just need to do the work (even if you don’t get results)
No deadlines after prelim.
Important to pick something that your advisor is interested in and make sure it’s a manageable size. Bad proposal is about something, good is what are you going to answer and how are you going to do it.
Dissertation is not determining what you want to be it’s just what your next project is.
Proposal is a plan—what are you doing, why choosing to do it the way proposed. How are you going to do it. Compare to a grant proposal
Anna recommends using LaTeX and subversion for thesis creation

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Brett's notes:
"Dissertation Proposal", presented by Sue Schuon, Oct. 17/2008

* Before proposal, need a 4-member committee, dont' wait until last moment
* Eligibility of committee members:
- Rackham departmental appointment
- cognate member: Rackham needs to ensure quality, so no slackers from law or med school allowed.
- one member must be a cognate
- can still have med school faculty as one of the 4 members of committee, but they cannot be chair, co-chair, or the cognate
- only really need one SI faculty on committee (as chair)
- for details, see Rackham's "Guidelines For Dissertation Committe Service" document.
* Field prelim a good place to "audition" committee members
* Don't have to read/work through everything, but need to demonstrate ability to work through them
* After field prelim, you become a candidate
* If you do the shorter 3 page proposal, then later dissertation chapters must be publishable and have results, so more flexibility but tougher requirements.
* After field prelim, there are no deadlines, your are responsible for self (it took you this long?!!)
* 5th year student (I'm keeping them anonymous):
- officially, proposal is not a contract, but in reality it is.
- it's where committee forms a consensus on what your dissertation will consist of, so it becomes an informal contract. It's where, given that all individuals have different ideas about what satisfies the dissertation, all members must agree.
- by doing proposal early, gives them time to review material that will be in dissertation, to challenge you to fix stuff early rather than during/after the defense.
* Best to get all committee members in one room for the PRE-proposal meetings, especially for cognate members who may have a very different (department-based cultural) idea about satisfying dissertation. Same is true for field prelim.
* Recent SI dissertations upstairs SI library, useful to get a sense of content and presentation (but of course you'll just read them to edify yourself).
* Use LaTeX, not MS Word. Word is impossible for completex documents
* No rules about proposal presentation, but Rackham has strict, unusual rules for dissertation