COLLEGE OF COMMISSIONER SCIENCE

DOCTORAL GUIDE

DOCTORAL GUIDE

Established September 1980

Heart of Virginia Council

Boy Scouts of America

Mike Menefee

Dean of the Doctoral Program

Bill Chaffin

Assistant Dean of the Doctoral Program

Revised Nov 2011

PAST DEANS FOR THE DOCTORAL PROGRAM

Thomas Johnson

Sam Berry

David Talley

Tom Ryan

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page #

Purpose...... 5

Goals and Degree Requirements...... 5

Thesis Requirements...... 5

Candidate Thesis Advisor...... 6

Planning Ahead for Your Thesis ...... 7

Who is your Audience?...... 7

Order of Writing...... 7

Thesis Development...... 8-9

Thesis Structure...... 10– 15

1. General...... 10

2. Title Page...... 10

3. Text Formatting...... 10

4. Margins...... 10

5. First Page...... 10

6. Footnotes and Endnotes...... 10

7. Page Numbering...... 11

8. Acronym Usage...... 11

9. Table of Contents...... 11

10. List of Figures/Tables...... 11

11. Introduction...... 12

12. Discussion...... 13

13. Conclusions...... 13

14. Appendices...... 14

15. Recommendations...... 14

16. Acknowledgements...... 14

17. References...... 15

Thesis Examples...... 16

Example 1 – Cover Page...... 17

Example 2 – Thesis Approval Form...... 18

Example 3 – Explicit and Implied BSA Use of Material...... 19

Example 4 – Table of Contents...... 20

Example 5 – Body of Thesis...... 21

Example 6 – Appendices...... 22

Example 7 – Bibliography...... 23

Developing your Presentation...... 24

Presenting with PowerPoint: 10 DOs and DON’Ts...... 25 – 28

PURPOSE:

To provide a learning opportunity for Commissioners leading toward practical solutions for the concerns of the Scouting units of the Heart of Virginia Council.

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES:

The Doctoral Program strives to:

  • Produce a cadre of highly trained Commissioners.
  • Strengthen the commitment of the Council Commissioner Staff to service units.

DEGREE REQUIREMENTS: Doctorate in Commissioner Science

Awarded to all attendees at the College of Commissioner Science who:

  • Complete the Masters in Commissioner Science and attend a minimum of four college sessions.
  • Earn the Commissioner Arrowhead Honor Award.
  • Earn the Commissioner's Key or Scouter’s Training Award specified for Roundtable Staff members.
  • Complete PhD seminars outlined in the college catalog and participate in MCS-402and DCS-610.

THESIS REQUIREMENTS:

  • Select and execute a thesis approved bythe Dean of the Doctoral Programor the Council Commissioner and the Commissioner Staff Advisor. Thethesis must have an acceptable council-levelScouting application.
  • The thesis must be completed within three years of approval. Any exceptions must be approved by the Dean of the Doctoral Program.
  • Minimum Required Length: 20 pages.
  • Paper Format:
  • White paper,8 ½ inch by 11 inch (standard letter size)
  • Typed, double spaced, and in a 12 point font (Times New Roman).
  • Thesis Submission:
  • Final thesis should be bound. Only the presentation copy should be in a presentation binder (your choice of style). This is the only copy that must be in color if you use colors in your thesis for charts, etc.
  • The other copies can be in Black & White / Greyscale (no color), stapled and put in a folder.
  • Four printed copies to be reviewed by the Doctoral Thesis Committee.
  • An electronic copy in .doc or .rtf format.
  • Submit thethesis(electronically) to the Dean of the Doctoral Program by December 1 for the next session the degree is conferred.
  • Appear before the Doctoral Review Board for an oral presentation ofyour thesis.

Candidate Thesis Advisor:

  • Assigned by the Dean of the Doctoral Program to assist the candidate in the development and presentation of their thesis.
  • Provides real-time feedback to the thesis development and gives you someone to talk with and get background material from. If you're unsure about the selection of a project, let us know and we'll try to connect you with someone.
  • Serves in an advisory capacity only. The development and presentation of the thesis is the responsibility of the candidate.
  • Must be requested by the candidate. NOTE: Once a group of doctoral graduates desire to serve in this capacity on a regular basis, the Thesis Advisor may be assigned upon approval of the Thesis application.

Planning Ahead for Your Thesis:

  • If at all possible, start your thesis thought process early.
  • Decide on a Topic.
  • The best strategy is to pick a project that you are interested in.
  • What is the concern/problem? What benefits can result from implementing your solution?
  • Draft a general outline to organize your thoughts and develop your thesis concept.
  • Submit your thesis concept for approval before you spent too much time developing a concept that does not get approved. The thesis concept must be approved by the College and your Council Commissioner Staff Advisor.

Who is your Audience?

  • Scout Leaders working in your field area, but with different techniques.
  • All other Commissioners using the same technique you have used.
  • Reviewers of your thesis (Doctoral Review Board).

Order of Writing:

  • First organize your paper as a logical argument before you begin writing. Capture all your thoughts. You can evaluate their worth and organize them into an outline later.
  • Make your figures to illustrate your argument (think skimming).
  • The main sections are: introduction (background to the argument); research (describing the information to be used in the argument), observations(making points about what is actually happening now), analysis(connecting the points regarding the information and observations), and conclusions/recommendations(summing up the results).
  • Outline the main elements, sections, and sub-sections.

Thesis Development:

General:

  • Decide on a thesis topic. Consider "Commissioner" (but not limited to) type topics of known areas within your council that may need some closer look or improvement, research for a possible solution to known problem areas, or topics that needs more clarification or information to provide to Scouting Leaders.
  • Submit your thesis for approvalto the Dean of the Doctoral Program and your registered council. Do not start on your thesis until approval has been received.
  • The final submission should be “ready for publication.” This means that the final thesis should be in a format that the college or council could immediately implement or distribute without having to re-format the thesis. All spell-checking and format standards have been applied and no additional effort needs to be made.

Topic:

  • Draft an outlineto develop your approach to solving the problem. Use your thesis advisor and other Scouters to add items for consideration. When developing an outline, do not consider formatting at this point. Brain storm ideas and write them all down on paper. Do not evaluate the ideas, you will do this later.
  • Once completed, start organizing the ideas/suggestions into groups. Take one group at a time and evaluate each idea for acceptance. Reject any idea that does not have any bearing on the thesis.
  • Start/complete review of literature; i.e., your source material and bibliography. Give credit to sources not your own.

Research:

  • Organize your outline and begin to fill it out with additional details (i.e. sections/subsections to the main points), review with Thesis Advisor.
  • Lay out your thesis format, based on the outline and using the required format/standard. Develop a plan to begin drafting the document(s); review with Thesis Advisor.
  • If you quote or reference a source of information, indicate the footnote and give credit to the source.

Proposed Solution:

  • Begin the Draft, just write, donot edit; either go by chapter/section or do the whole thing all the way through, whatever works for you.
  • Review the Draft, begin the editing process, start out chapter by chapter, and then line by line (this will be the blurry eyed stage, very tedious work for most). (Have your Thesis Advisor review the draft after completing this step). Get other Commissioners/Scouters to review your draft.
  • Perform Final Editing process, based on inputs from others, you may find that you will have to add or subtract areas or content that is different than what you had anticipated in the outline - this is OK. (Have Thesis Advisor review draft after completing this step).
  • Submit Final Draft of the thesis for review and acceptance, gaining all the signatures on letters, etc.
  • Perform any required edits and review with your Thesis Advisor.

Upon Completion:

  • Read and re-read your thesis. Have someone else read your thesis for clarity.
  • Check for spelling, punctuation, and format.
  • Have your Thesis Advisor review it in person with you to help form your arguments and defense thoughts for the presentation phase; take notes. NOTE: Consider this phase as a “Murder Board”. Look for “what ifs” and “whys” to your proposal. This will help prepare you for your presentation to the Doctoral Review Board.

THESIS STRUCTURE:

1. General:

  • Final thesis should be bound. Only the presentation copy should be in a presentation binder (your choice of style). This is the only copy that must be in color if you use colors in your thesis for charts, etc.
  • The other copies can be in Black & White / Grayscale (no color), stapled and put in a folder.
  • The thesis should be cleanly printed on white paper.

2. Title Page: (Example 1)

  • Include a separate title page with authors' name, commissioner position and council.

3. Text Formatting:

  • Be consistent in the document formatting.
  • All text within the document should be double spaced using a 12 point Times New Roman font (including footnotes).
  • Use font size 14 for Titles/Headings.
  • Include page numbers.

4. Margins:

  • Margins should be at least 1.25 inches on the binding side and 1 inch for the non-binding sides.

5. First Page:

  • The first page of the text should start with the title and be on a new page of text (after the title page).

6. Footnotes and Endnotes:

  • Use footnotes to cite materials of limited availability, expand upon the text, or to add information presented in a table. Endnotes are used more frequently than footnotes, but both should be used sparingly.
  • In the text, footnotes should be numbered consecutively throughout the thesis with superscript Arabic numerals. At the end of the paper in a separate section following the references, type the footnotes in numerical order, double-spaced, as a separate section.

7. Page Numbering:

  • Pages should be numbered consecutively (1, 2, 3...) starting with the title page and including the references page(s). Any appendix should start with the appendix letter and numbered consecutively (A-1, A-2, B-1…).

8. Acronym Usage:

  • The first time you use an acronym, give the full name with the acronym in parenthesis.
  • Afterwards, you can use only the acronym. Example:

According to the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) manual....

Later in the text:

The BSA suggests that... .

9. Table of Contents: (Example 4)

  • List all headings and subheadings with page numbers
  • Indent subheadings

10. List of Figures/Tables:

  • The actual figures and tables should be embedded in the text, generally on the page following the page where the figure/table is first cited in the text.
  • All figures and tables should be numbered and cited consecutively in the text as figure 1, figure 2, table 1, table 2, etc.
  • Include a caption for each figure and table, citing how it was constructed (reference citations, data sources, etc.) and highlighting the key findings. You are encouraged to make your own figures, including cartoons, schematics or sketches that illustrate the processes that you discuss. Examine your figures with these questions in mind:
  • Is the figure/table self-explanatory?
  • Are your axes labeled and are the units indicated on tables?
  • If the data are fit by a curve, indicate the goodness of fit.
  • Could chart junk be eliminated?
  • Does the figure distort the data in any way?
  • Are the data presented in context?
  • Does the figure caption guide the reader's eye to the "take-home lesson" of the figure?
  • Figures should be oriented vertically, in portrait mode, wherever possible. If you must orient them horizontally, in landscape mode, orient them so that you can read them from the right, not from the left, where the binding will be.

11. Introduction:

You can't write a good introduction until you know what the body of the paper says. Consider writing the introductory section(s) after you have completed the rest of the paper, rather than before.

Be sure to include a hook at the beginning of the introduction. This is a statement of something sufficiently interesting to motivate your reader to read the rest of the paper, it is an important/interesting Scouting problem that your paper either solves or addresses. You should draw the reader in and make them want to read the rest of the thesis.

The next paragraphs in the introduction should cite previous research in this area. It should cite those who had the idea or ideas first, and should also cite those who have done the most recent and relevant work. You should then go on to explain why more work was necessary (your work, of course.)

What else belongs in the introductory section(s) of your thesis?

  • A statement of the goal of the thesis: Why the thesis study was written?
  • Sufficient background information to allow the reader to understand the context and significance of the question you are trying to address.
  • Proper acknowledgement of any previous work on which you are building. Sufficient references such that a reader could, by going to the library, achieve a sophisticated understanding of the context and significance of the question.
  • The introduction should be focused on the thesis hypothesis. All cited work should be directly relevant to the goals of the thesis. This is not a place to summarize everything you have ever read on a subject.
  • Explain the Scope of your work, what will and will not be included.
  • A verbal "road map" or "table of contents" guiding the reader to what lies ahead.
  • Is it obvious where introductory material ("old stuff") ends and your contribution ("new stuff") begins?

Remember that this is not a review paper. We are looking for original work and interpretation/analysis by you. Break up the introduction section into logical segments by using sub-sections.

12. Discussion:

Start with a few sentences that summarize the most important results. The discussion section should be a brief essay in itself, answering the following questions and caveats:

  • What are the relationships, trends and generalizations among bearing on this topic?
  • What is the value and benefit for Commissioners and Scout Leaders to implement this project?
  • Is there agreement or disagreement with previous methods?
  • Interpret results in terms of background laid out in the introduction - what is the relationship of the present methods to the original question?
  • What are the things we now know or understand that we didn't know or understand before the present work?
  • Explain howthis topic should be applied throughout the council.

This section should be rich in references to similar work and background needed to interpret results. However, interpretation/discussion section(s) are often too long and verbose. Is there material that does not contribute to one of the elements listed above? If so, this may be material that you will want to consider deleting or moving. Break up the section into logical segments by using sub-sections.

13. Conclusions:

  • What is the strongest and most important statement that you can make from your research?
  • If you met the reader at a meeting six months from now, what do you want them to remember about your paper?
  • Refer back to problem posed, and describe the conclusions that you reached from carrying out this investigation, summarize new observations, new interpretations, and new insights that have resulted from the present work.
  • Include the broader implications of your results.
  • Do not repeat word for word the introduction or discussion.

14. Appendices:

  • Include all your data in the appendix.
  • Reference data/materials not easily available (theses are used as a resource by the department and other students).
  • Tables (where more than 1-2 pages).
  • Calculations (where more than 1-2 pages).
  • You may include a key article as appendix.
  • If you consulted a large number of references but did not cite all of them, you might want to include a list of additional resource material, etc.

Note: Figures and tables, including captions should be embedded in the text and not in an appendix unless they are more than 1-2 pages and are not critical to your research.

15. Recommendations:

  • Include when appropriate (most of the time)
  • Remedial action(s) to solve the problem.
  • Further research to fill in gaps in our understanding.
  • Directions for future investigations on this or related topics.

16. Acknowledgments:

  • Advisor(s) and anyone who helped
  • Remember this is your work and not a group action.
  • Give credit to others that made contributions towards the results and interpretations presented in your paper by referencing, authorship, and acknowledgements. Different types of errors:
  • Direct quotes or illustrations without quotation marks, with or without attribution
  • Concepts/ideas with sloppy attributions or without attribution
  • Omitting or fabricating data or results
  • Check references carefully and re-read reference works prior to submission. The first time you read something, you will consciously remember some things, but may subconsciously take in other aspects. It is important to cross check your conscious memory against your citations.

17. References:

  • Cite all ideas, concepts, text, and data that are not your own.
  • If you make a statement, back it up with your own data or a reference.
  • All references cited in the text must be listed.

THESIS EXAMPLES