dissertation introduction outline

I’m currently working on the introduction section of my PhD dissertation (subject is physical oceanography; mostly ocean modelling), and I’m not sure what to title the subsection describing the structure of the rest of the document. So far, Chapter 1, the Introduction, contains the following:

• Three opening paragraphs
• Section: Background (i.e., Lit review/motivation)
• Section: Research Cruise (brief description of research cruise and project my work is associated with)

The purpose of a proposal is to convince your dissertation or thesis committee that you are ready to start your research project and to create a plan for your dissertation or thesis work. You will submit your proposal to your committee for review and then you will do your proposal defense, during which you present your plan and the committee asks questions about it. The committee wants to know if your research questions have academic merit and whether you have chosen the right methods to answer the questions.
The proposal, sometimes called the prospectus, is composed mainly of the Introduction, Research Questions, Literature Review, Research Significance and Methodology. It may also include a dissertation/thesis outline and a timeline for your proposed research. You will be able to reuse the proposal when you actually write the entire dissertation or thesis.

References:

http://guides.library.unt.edu/proposal
http://library.leeds.ac.uk/dissertation-examples