About the Defense

Before you schedule your defense and submit your complete thesis, dissertation, or equivalent for format review, the following requirements must be met:

1. Minimum 3.0 GPA (iPOS and graduate GPA).

2. Have an approved iPOS including your full committee on file.

3. If you are a doctoral student, you must have achieved candidacy.

4. You must be enrolled for at least one credit hour of appropriate graduate level credit during the semester in which you defend.

5. Make certain all committee members will be in attendance (required). If you have members that cannot be physically present at the defense because of extenuating circumstances, please refer to the Absent Committee Member Procedures.

6. You must have a completed, defense-ready document for format evaluation. Please refer to Formatting your Thesis or Dissertation for more information on this process.

7. Apply for graduation through your MyASU.

8. Please refer to Graduation Deadlines to ensure you meet all deadlines and requirements.

You are required to hold a public defense of your thesis or dissertation as part of your degree requirements. 

Your defense must be scheduled in the iPOS at least 10 business days before your anticipated defense. Please see the 10-Day Calendar for permissible defense dates. You will schedule your defense by navigating to the defense tab in your iPOS, inputting the necessary information (i.e., date, location, dissertation title, etc.), and submitting for approval. The SOLS graduate office will verify the information you submit with your committee chair/co-chairs and the appropriate program director(s) before processing in the iPOS. Once approved, you will receive a follow up email with a request for information for your defense announcement, to be sent to various distribution lists in SOLS.

Once your defense is approved, it will show up on the Defense Calendar. In addition, you must upload your complete, defense-ready document to your iPOS for format review at least 10 business days prior to your defense. Refer to Formatting your Thesis or Dissertation for more information on this process.

One week before your scheduled defense, an email will be sent to your entire committee and your graduate support staff reminding them to submit their results via the iPOS. Your committee will indicate the defense results, any revisions needed and submit them within 10 business days of your defense.

To change, reschedule or cancel your defense, navigate back to your iPOS defense tab and cancel or edit the field(s) you wish to change. This will push a request to the SOLS graduate office for review.

If your defense is still pending SOLS approval, no changes can be made. You cannot change your committee after your defense has been scheduled, so please be sure this is accurate before scheduling.

1. Consult ASU Graduation Deadlines to ensure you know when your revised document is due, when you need to complete your ProQuest upload, and more.

2. Complete any revisions required by your committee, if applicable, and submit to your committee for an additional review.

3. If revisions were required by your committee, the Chair or Co-Chairs will submit “Revisions Complete” in the iPOS once you have successfully completed them. If no revisions were required, then your committee will issue a full “pass” as the final result for your defense.

4. Complete your format revisions. Check your ASU email regularly for communication from the Format Advisors. You can email them at gradformat@asu.edu with any questions. 

5. Submit final document to ETD/ ProQuest. You must have completed the following before you can upload to ProQuest:

   • • All final defense results must be submitted by the committee with a full “Pass” or “Revisions Complete” (indicating that all revisions required by committee/chair were completed).

     • Received approval from the Graduate College (Ready for ETD/ProQuest) to upload to ProQuest.

     • Be in compliance with the semester's graduation deadlines.

At the time of your defense, your committee should determine if public release of your document will be delayed for a maximum of two years to protect any of the following reasons:

1. Information of commercial value

2. Patentable rights

3. Sensitive or classified information

4. Academic or commercial press from acquiring publishing rights

5. Other relevant scholarly issues related to the release of your work

The Delaying Publication of Your Theses/Dissertation (Embargo Status form) must be submitted along with your completed Pass/Fail results being entered in iPOS in order for your Thesis or Dissertation to be embargoed.

Once the 2-year ASU embargo expires, full documents are available through the ASU Digital Repository and ProQuest. If you would like to extend your embargo through ASU for 2 additional years, please contact the Graduate College by sending an email to gradformat@asu.edu. To extend embargos with ProQuest, please contact them directly at disspub@proquest.com. 

*Please note: The maximum allowed time to embargo your document is 4 years. As a product of Arizona State University, all ASU Theses/Dissertations will be released through the ASU Digital Repository once the embargo time limit has expired.

IMPORTANT: Embargoing through ProQuest is separate from embargoing through ASU. If you would like to secure an indefinite embargo from ProQuest on your theses/dissertation then you must have successfully completed all requirements and graduated. You may then submit a request directly to ProQuest, either by email (disspub@proquest.com) or by telephone (800-521-0600, ext. 77020).

Submission Instructions: Please scan and electronically send the form (only chair/co-chair or academic unit support staff) to grad-gps@asu.edu OR the student may hand-deliver the signed form to the Graduate College, Interdisciplinary B-Room 288 (Tempe Campus). Please ensure the graduate support staff receives a copy for departmental records.