Your Dissertation & Final Examination

After successfully completing the proposal defense and preliminary examination, you must register each regular academic term until you have met the 96-hour credit requirement. Thereafter, if you are away from campus, you need not register each semester until the term of your defense as defined below. You may take a maximum of 32 hours of UP 599 Thesis Research or as few as 8 hours if you want more flexibility in your course work.

Keep in close contact with your advisor and other individual committee members to discuss ideas and findings regularly. Do not wait until substantial portions of the work are completed; your committee members can help you avoid unnecessary and unproductive effort. Committee members should respond promptly with constructive criticism and assurances, when appropriate, that you are making good progress. Meet with the director of your dissertation research at least monthly (typically weekly) to discuss your research progress.

You are expected to complete your dissertation within one year, but not more than two years, from the date of your oral proposal defense. An exception occurs if at the proposal defense you and your committee explicitly agreed on the additional time needed because of factors inherent in your research plan. One year after passing your proposal defense, and subsequently at six-month intervals, you must demonstrate to the full committee that you are making reasonable progress on your dissertation research.

You must successfully defend your dissertation in a final oral examination, which evaluates the quality of your dissertation research. Procedures for the final examination are governed by the Graduate College. You must register during the entire term in which you have your final dissertation examination. For this purpose only, term is defined as extending through the day prior to the first day of the following term. If more than five years elapse between the oral preliminary and final Ph.D. examinations, you must pass another preliminary examination.

Generally the same committee that administered the oral proposal defense examines the completed dissertation, but substitutions may be made. The same membership requirements as for the oral proposal defense committee apply to the final examination committee. At least one month prior to the examination, the chair of your committee requests that the Head recommend to the Dean of the Graduate College that the members of this committee be designated as the examining committee. The committee chair and the defending student must be physically present at the final examination and all voting members should be physically present. In exceptional cases up to two voting members (other than the chair) may participate via electronic communication media if preapproved by the Ph.D. Program Director or Department Head.

The chair is responsible for scheduling the examination and notifying committee members. The examination is open to the public, and the chair of your committee arranges for the time and place of the examination to be announced to the department faculty and graduate students at least 10 days in advance of the exam via e-mail. You must submit the dissertation as a PDF file to committee members and the Ph.D. Program Director at least one week prior to the examination unless all committee members agree to a shorter reading period.

Although the examination is open to the public, deliberations of the committee are held in an executive session. The committee must reach a unanimous decision of pass with a satisfactory thesis, pass pending revision of thesis, decision deferred, or fail. The chair is responsible for submitting the Certificate of Result of Final Examination with original signatures of all voting members to the Department. The decision is communicated by the Department to the Graduate College. If the committee cannot agree on a decision, the chair confers with the Ph.D. Program Director and the Head.

After passing the final examination and having your dissertation approved, you must provide a copy (electronic version in PDF format accepted) for format review to the Department thesis reviewer at least one week before the dissertation is due to be deposited in the Graduate College. Graduate College guidelines for dissertation preparation and deposit are described in Thesis Handbook (www.grad.uiuc.edu/ thesis/thesishandbook). You must also provide to the Department a final copy of your dissertation as accepted by the Graduate College. An electronic version in PDF format is preferred.

Ph.D. degrees are awarded in May, August, and December. Students must apply to be on the degree list and deposit the dissertation by deadlines established by the Graduate College. These deadlines are available from the Graduate College Academic Calendar (www.grad.uiuc.edu/calendar.html) and the Department Office. If more than one year elapses between your final Ph.D. examination and depositing the dissertation with the Graduate College, the dissertation must be accompanied by a signed petition and a statement from the Head to the Dean of the Graduate College. The statement must address whether the dissertation being deposited is essentially the one that you defended and whether an award of the degree is appropriate under the circumstances.