Requirements for the Master’s Degree
To be eligible for the degree an M.S. candidate must complete 30 credits of course work beyond the Bachelor’s degree. The student must maintain a GPA of 3.0 or better. These thirty hours of course work must be at or above the 600 level exclusive of certain courses designated in the catalog.
Students may count 3 credits of coursework at the 600 level or above taken outside of the department, and may count up to 3 credits from a reading course (MATH 870 ). Exceptions to these restrictions require permission of the Graduate Studies Committee.
All requirements above must be fulfilled by any student enrolled in the 4+1 BS/MS program. However, a student may count up to six credits of graduate courses in the mathematical sciences towards both the B.S. and the M.S. degrees.
The thesis option for the M.S. degree consists of 24 credit hours of course work plus 3 credit hours of research via MATH 868 and 3 credit hours of thesis via MATH 869 , leading to a Master’s Thesis. The purpose of this option is to assess the student’s ability to conduct and report original research on a particular area within the field of specialization and/or synthesize and critically analyze important issues in the field of specialization. The particular form of the thesis project (e.g., report of original research or critical review of and exposition on the literature) will be determined by the student in consultation with his or her Thesis Advisor and the Thesis Committee. The Thesis Committee shall consist of three faculty; it is not required that a member of the committee be from outside mathematics. After the topic(s) and project format have been determined, the student will have a maximum of one year to complete the written thesis (typically 50 to 60 pages). An oral defense will be scheduled following the Thesis Committee’s evaluation of the thesis.
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