The final milestone is the submission of the final version of your dissertation. This is known as the ETD process. Since the time your D5 was approved, you should have been working to polishing up and finalizing the dissertation. In addition, during your defense, your committee likely made recommendations on how to improve the work and what to add or change in your manuscript. In this final step, all of these issues need to be addressed and incorporated into the final draft of your dissertation. There is also an immutable deadline from UGS concerning this milestone. This deadline, however, is fixed for every term, which leads to fewer questions and confusion.

When: As soon as the student has the final draft ready, it can be submitted through panthersoft. Pay close attention to the deadline, as it too is immutable.

• Step-by-step procedure: (UGS corresponding webpage)
  1. Student (panthersof): The student initiates the request for an submission of the final draft of the dissertation by: selecting the “Final Electronic Dissertation Approval” in my.fiu.edu. The student uploads the final draft of the dissertation and follows the instructions provided by the form.
  2. Faculty and dissertation committee (panthersoft): The faculty review the final draft and other material uploaded to the form and given their approval through panthersoft.
  3. GPD (panthersoft): The GPD reviews the final draft one last time and gives his approval. It is then moved on to the Dean of the College and then to UGS for their approval.
• Program (GPD) Deadline: The Final ETD deadline approval reported on the UGS website is the deadline for UGS, not the deadline that the panthersoft form and final draft of the dissertation need to be on the GPD’s desk. The college also needs a week to review the final draft, so the actual deadline is computed similarly to the D5 deadline, just add 1.5 weeks to the UGS deadline for the program deadline. Again, I provide below a little JavaScript to do the calculation for you. This time, go to the UGS website and enter in the date next to the “Final ETD Approval milestone due to UGS“.