Students who are not able to complete a dissertation proposal in CNBH or HPED 670 Proposal Development may take one additional semester of Proposal Extension, which is a non-credit-bearing course. The student will receive a grade for the Dissertation Proposal course only after successfully defending the proposal. Registration for this extension will result in an additional fee equal to one credit.

During this course, the student will complete the research and pass an oral defense of the dissertation. Students enter this phase when ready for data collection, meaning that a written dissertation proposal has been defended, approved, and revised, if needed, and all IRB permissions have been obtained. The six credits for this course are generally spread over two semesters.

If the dissertation is not defended after the completion of the allotted dissertation credits and the student has exhausted the 48-credit program of study, the student will be required to register for 1 credit per semester of Dissertation Extension for each semester of continuation. This fee is beyond the 48 credits assigned to the PhD program. Such students will register for CNBH 699-Dissertation Extension each semester until the dissertation is successfully defended and following time limits as defined in the HPED Handbook.

This course is intended to allow students to synthesize and apply the knowledge gained from their prior human services coursework culminating in a systematic review-style research project. This course is designed to be taken in the student�s final semester. It will prepare students to enter the human services profession upon completion by engaging students in job readiness skills such as resume writing and practice interviews.