18th Annual OMT Dissertation Proposal Workshop Report
Peer Fiss, University of Southern California
OMT Past Division Chair
As in previous years, the annual OMT Dissertation Proposal Workshop offers an opportunity for students at the pre-proposal stage to draw on the wisdom and expertise of a group of established OMT scholars to develop a defensible dissertation proposal. Like all of the program, this year the workshop for the first time went online, and this provided an opportunity to create more flexibility in scheduling while retaining its nature of providing the students with individual, in-depth developmental feedback from mentors and peers with similar research interests at the critical research stage of developing a dissertation proposal.
This year, 17 students had a chance to interact with an outstanding group of mentors who generously spent their time giving individual feedback to small groups on their individual proposal ideas. This year’s mentors were
- Christine Beckman, University of Southern California
- Diane Burton, Cornell University
- Matthew Kraatz, University of Illinois
- Michael Lounsbury, University of Alberta
- Bill McEvily, University of Toronto
- Nelson Phillips, Imperial College
- Marc-David Seidel, University of British Columbia
- Wendy Smith, University of Delaware
- Myself
Each mentor hosted an intimate conversation with one or two students to give in-depth feedback and discuss each students’ ideas to create a defensible dissertation proposal with the potential to grow into a high-quality dissertation. Some of the feedback from the participants included “an incredible learning opportunity,” “very valuable,” and “really helped me identify what my next steps are and what I should focus on.”
For those of you interested in participating next year, keep your eye out for an announcement from our new OMT Division Chair, Renate Meyer, for details of next year’s Dissertation Proposal Workshop.
On behalf of everyone at OMT, I would like to sincerely thank all of the mentors and the students for helping make this important OMT tradition an ongoing success!
Peer Fiss
2020 OMT Past Division Chair