AMU Senate has approved the standardized guidelines for Master Thesis and PhD Dissertation that will serve as a clear roadmap to those pursuing Master and PhD studies. This arduous task was executed by a 4-member Special Task Force headed by the deceased Dr Anto Arkato.
Adhering to Senate Legislation’s Article 132 (1) & (3), that ask Research and Development Committee to issue guidelines that will ease conduction, supervision and evaluation processes of theses, Graduate Guideline Designing Team carefully scrutinized every aspects and laid out guidelines for Master Thesis and PhD Dissertation.
The Master Thesis Guideline will provide students, supervisors, examiners and other staff with necessary information to ensure best practice in the management of the research process.
It states Master Thesis will be accepted by the Board of Examiners based on the written report, presentation and capacity to defend it. If candidate is dissatisfied upon its rejection, he or she can appeal to SGS by paying ETB 3000 for re-examination of thesis.
It further has laid out specific directives for each component i.e. thesis proposal, eligibility, topic selection, approval, advisor assignment and funding. Dwelling deeper into thesis, it has outlined specific provisions on title, introduction, background, statements of problem, objectives, research questions, delimitation, literature review, methodology, financial needs etc.
Guideline for PhD dissertation will assist students to integrate academic learning with their research endeavors. Advocating uniform procedures for proposal development and dissertation, it will ease out the process of supervising, reviewing, assessing and approving proposal and dissertation.
Ultimately guideline empowers students to have access to research facilities, libraries, laboratories, workshops, chairs, tables, internet etc. He/she can get a supervisor/s and appeal for change.
Guideline’s stipulated timeframe for PhD is 3 to 5 years; a candidate with CGPA of 3.00 or higher and masters’ thesis/project rated as ‘good,’ higher or equivalent makes one eligible. If medium of instruction of studies wasn’t English, then one must provide minimum of 6.0 in IELTS or equivalent TOFL result.
Plagiarism is forbidden and the details of its testing shall be worked out by respective DGCs in consultation with ICT Directorate. A maximum of three chances will be given if the percentile exceeds the approved 15% limit; breaching the limit shall result in automatic rejection.
Candidates will be given 30 to 60 minutes to defend dissertation and overall marking shall be the sum of oral and written presentations; the cut-off points below 50 will result in rejection.
Task Force for Master Thesis and PhD Dissertation Guidelines were constituted of Dr Anto Arkato as Chairperson; Dr Mekonnen Ayana, Mr Tesfaye Alemu and Dr Tesfaye Habtemariam (secretary) as members.
Dr Gemechu Nemera, Dr Simon Shibru, Dr Tewodros Birhanu and Dr Yishak Kechero were reviewers for PhD guideline; while Dr Zenebe Mokonnen and Dr Tolera Seda reviewed Master Thesis Guideline.
(Corporate Communication Directorate)