|
Students should receive continuous supervision. Ordinarily,
dissertation sponsors—and in some programs, second readers—are expected to read
chapters or groups of chapters rather than insisting on reading only a complete
draft of the full dissertation. The approved dissertation proposal should
provide readers with a sufficient sense of the whole to make the review of
drafts of individual chapters valuable.
Faculty members should provide written or oral responses to
drafts within a reasonable time period. Generally, during the academic year,
three weeks to a month should be sufficient time to permit a detailed response
to a single chapter. Six weeks should generally be sufficient time to review a
group of chapters. A full draft of a dissertation should generally be responded
to within two months of receipt of the material.
Absence from campus during the summer months may cause some
unavoidable delays. If dissertation sponsors plan to be absent for long periods
of time, they should inform their doctoral students well in advance and
endeavor to continue to provide some supervision while absent.
When on leave, faculty members should make arrangements for
continued, regular supervision of the doctoral students whose dissertations
they are sponsoring (by mail, telephone, email, or through occasional meetings.)
Where this is impossible, the faculty sponsor has the responsibility for ensuring
that during his/her absence, the second reader will take on the primary
responsibility for such supervision during the period in which the faculty
sponsor cannot be reached.
Regular full-time tenured and untenured faculty who are
approved sponsors may choose to continue in their sponsor role if they leave Columbia University.
As part of the annual departmental review of graduate
students' academic progress (which is normally undertaken for purposes of
determining students' continued eligibility for financial support and
enrollment in their program,) all sponsors must provide by the deadline an annual
online report on the progress of doctoral students whose dissertation research
they are guiding. The annual progress report is completed online early in each spring
semester at https://ssol.columbia.edu/.
Although some students may misconstrue encouragement and
civilities or misinterpret the meaning of the phrase "approved for
defense," it is important, while students are writing the dissertation,
that sponsors make clear two fundamental features of the final examination
procedure:
- Preliminary approval of the thesis for examination by the
sponsor (and second reader in some departments/programs) and Department/Program
does not guarantee that the thesis will be passed, nor does it necessarily
indicate the vote.
- Preliminary approval does not deprive the sponsor or the
second reader of the right to press questions and criticisms during the final
examination. Many departments schedule a departmental seminar in advance of the
final examination, which provides the student with an opportunity to discuss
his/her research findings with the departmental faculty and other graduate
students.
Additional information about the mentoring of Ph.D. students
can be found on the GSAS web site at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/gsas/sub/dissertation/rules/supervision/index.html.
| 
