Requirements for the Degrees
Individualized plans of study are created to serve the interests of both the student and sponsoring faculty member. Core courses for all areas of study include 2 semesters of BIOMS 865, a statistics course, an instrumentation course, a research methods design/analysis course, and BMSC 622.
The PhD program requires 33 credit hours of coursework, plus nine credit hours of dissertation. The student is expected to submit a plan of study by the end of the first semester, created with their primary advisor. This program of study must be reviewed and approved by the Executive Committee of the BIOMS Program.
The dissertation committee must consist of at least three BIOMS faculty membersm one of whom must be from a department different than that of the advisor, and one committee member from outside the BIOMS program. Please refer to the program policy statement for more specific details regarding dissertation committee membership.
Students will be required to successfully complete a Qualifying Examination, containing both written and oral components, after the end of the second full semester in the program. The exam will be evaluated by a committee of 3 faculty members and graded as Pass, Conditional Pass, or Fail. The Qualifying Exam must be completed by the end of the third full (not including winter or summer terms) academic semester, including remediation.
The University requirements for admission to doctoral candidacy are that the student has (1) an approved Plan of Study, (2) completed one academic year of full-time graduate study in residence at the University, (3) fulfilled the foreign language requirement, if any, (4) passed the Qualifying Examination, (5) shown the ability to do research, and (6) had a research project accepted by the advisory committee with human/animal subjects approval (if appropriate). For BIOMS PhD students, successfully defending the Dissertation Proposal, serves as the final acceptance of the research project.
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