The two semester minimum is intended to ensure that all graduate students acquire teaching experience. This typically includes examination construction and grading, consultation with individual undergraduates, and classroom teaching.
Students who get external fellowships that require 5 years of support, or students who get NSF fellowships for 3 years, must serve as a teaching assistant in their fifth year in order to be supported by the School in that year.
Students who wish additional teaching experience can usually teach undergraduate courses offered in the summer session. This involves either full or shared responsibility for a course. Occasionally, advanced graduate students may also be able to teach undergraduate courses offered during the regular academic year by the College of General Studies or the College of Arts and Sciences. Such assignments will be made by the Chair, with the advice and consent of the student's Advisory Committee and the Director of Graduate Studies. Upon request, a student involved in teaching will be assigned a faculty consultant selected from among the faculty members who ordinarily teach the course in question
No later than six months before the examination is to be completed (that is, not later than early November in the third year), the student must submit an initial examination proposal to his or her Advisory Committee, with a copy to the Graduate Chair. (See the section on administrative details for a discussion of the general function and composition of the Advisory Committee.) After a period of consultation (with input from the Graduate Chair, if needed) which should not exceed four weeks, the student and committee will submit a final proposal to the Graduate Chair. The Advisory Committee and the Graduate Chair must approve the final plan, taking into account the student's preferences. The plan typically includes a list of readings for which the student is primarily resposible. All final proposals will be available (from the grad chair) for reading by any faculty member or graduate student.
The examination should be planned so that, over the course of the academic year, the student should be able to spend roughly as much time on research as on preparing for the examination.
The Advisory Committee chair must notify the Director of
Graduate Students in writing whether the student has passed or
failed this examination. (See below
for a definition of "pass.") A student has at most two
opportunities to pass the Qualifying Examination. If a second
examination is necessary, the student must submit a new proposal
within two weeks of the failure of the first exam, so that the
new exam can be completed six months thereafter. A student who
fails the qualifying exam for the second time will be asked to
leave the graduate program.
The purpose of the qualifying exam is to demonstrate
competence as a specialist in an area of psychology. A student
who passes the exam in a field should be qualified to teach
courses in that field at all levels. Although students may have
more than one field, the fields are usually related.
An examination always has an oral component. The committee
asks questions. A short presentation may be helpful but is not
required. Before the oral, the student may do the written
component by taking a time-limited examination, by writing
papers, or by a combination of papers and time-limited
examination. For a time-limited examination, the committee makes
up questions; it may choose questions from a larger set of
possible questions submitted by the student. If the student
write only papers, the examination typically consists of two very
ambitious papers, or two papers of more moderate ambition plus a
shorter paper, perhaps a course outline. Students may wish to
make one or both of the ambitious papers into something with
another purpose, such as a publishable literature review or a
submittable grant proposal. One of the papers may also serve as
background for a subsequent thesis.
While preparing for the written exam or writing the papers,
the student should consult frequently with his or her advisor and
with other committee members. Advisors and committee members may
provide general comments on drafts, especially about literature
that should be included in a review, but not close editing. And their
involvement should not be so great as to warrant the status of co-author
or co-principal-investigator. Because this is an examination, it must
reflect the student's knowledge, some of which may be acquired from
input while working on the exam.
A student's Advisory Committee will function as the dissertation
committee. It will evaluate and approve the dissertation
proposal.
University
rules limit the time for completing a dissertation. If the
dissertation is not completed in time, the student must re-take
the qualifying examination.
The Director of Graduate Studies or someone designated by him or
her will preside at each seminar. The student will be given a
more or less uninterrupted hour to present the research,
following which there will be substantive questions and
discussion. There is no necessary connection between what
transpires at the dissertation seminar and approval of the
dissertation, which is still entirely in the hands of the
Advisory Committee. However, before finally approving the
dissertation, the Advisory Committee will be expected to give due
consideration to points raised by the audience at the
dissertation seminar.
The Thesis
The Ph.D. thesis is the single most important component of the
graduate program. It is in most respects like a high quality
publishable paper reporting the results of the student's
research. The thesis should not differ at all from a published
report except insofar as the high cost of space in journals
forces them to sacrifice clear exposition to economic
considerations. A thesis, being unaffected by the cost of
printing, may be redundant when redundancy is an aid to
clarity. It may indulge in speculations that are interesting but
that would be deleted by an editor who is unable to find room
even for all the truths that are submitted to the journal. But
the writer of a thesis should remember that it is only its pages
that are unlimited, not the reader's time. To put things into a
thesis for no better reason than that some pedant might want them
is to distract all the readers from the real point of a
thesis. The purpose of the Ph.D. thesis is to communicate the
results of the student's doctoral research. Research
uncommunicated is for all practical purposes indistinguishable
from research undone. The thesis is the place where the student
demonstrates his or her competence in the conduct and
communication of scientific research. It is not the place where
the student proves that he or she has worked long and diligently
on research by recounting all those activities that he or she
thought at the time might be relevant. It is, in short, not a
special literary form, unique in that it is written expressly not
to be read.
Dissertation Seminar
A dissertation seminar must be given by each student sometime
prior to the final approval of the thesis, but after a
substantial part of the research has been completed. This
presentation will be open to all members of the Graduate Group;
the student's Advisory Committee is expected to attend, as well
as other interested faculty and students. The seminar will be
scheduled wherever possible in the Wednesday or Friday afternoon
"open slots" to maximize attendance. The student must supply the
Director of Graduate studies no later than 10 days before the
seminar is to take place with an abstract of the seminar (100-150
words).
Dissertation Defense
The Coordinator of the Graduate Program will notify the Graduate
Division of Arts and Sciences that a student's dissertation has
been approved only when the following sequence of events has been
completed: First, the Director of Graduate Studies confirms the
occurrence of the dissertation seminar. Second, the student's
committee meets as a whole with the student to conduct a
Dissertation Defense. At the conclusion of the Defense, the
committee must decide to:
Acceptance, or acceptance
with revision, requires unanimity of three committee members, or,
if the committee has more than three members, a majority (not a tie).
The same rule applies to passing the qualifying examination.
Committee chairs should send the Director of Graduate Studies a note specifying when the committee met, who was in attendance, and what decision the committee reached. If the committee rejects the Dissertation, then it must meet again after a new version has been submitted to the committee. Students are required to submit a final copy of the dissertation to the Psychology Library. This is in addition to the copies required by the University's Graduate Division Office. Students are also required to pay all bills owed to the Department.
July, 2007