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The student
must defend the dissertation in a final examination before a committee of five
faculty. The chair of the department or subcommittee, in consultation with the
student’s sponsor, appoints the examining committee, subject to approval of the
dean. Its members include the student’s sponsor and constitute an independent
jury that represents the faculty of the Graduate School. No defense shall be scheduled
until the dissertation sponsor and second reader have signified that in their
judgment the dissertation is acceptable and thus warrants a defense and final
examination.
Students
intending to defend the Ph.D. dissertation must file an Application for
Dissertation Defense at their departments. The defense application is used in
place of a Ph.D. degree application. See the Academic
Calendar in section II.A. for application and distribution deadlines
associated with a particular conferral date.
The
dissertation officer is responsible for scheduling dissertation defenses in all
departments except in the natural sciences and the doctoral program
subcommittees, where responsibility for the scheduling of dissertation defenses
rests with the department or program chair. Defenses for which the student does
not distribute until after March 31 are scheduled by the department. Scheduling
begins after a proposed defense committee has been approved by the dean and
after copies of the dissertation have been distributed to members of the
defense committee. The student is responsible for distributing copies of the
dissertation for the defense at least four weeks before it is to take place,
and for notifying the dissertation officer when all members have received their
copies. Notification of distribution is critical to the scheduling of the
defense date. Students do not schedule their own defenses.
At the
defense, the candidate will be given all materials necessary to complete the
deposit of all copies of the postdefense revised dissertation at the Graduate School.
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