Students are required to enter a request for the General Examination in MyGrad. The formal scheduling process through MyGrad must be completed at least three weeks prior to the oral examination, but students are strongly encouraged to schedule the meeting much earlier than that (contact committee members late in the quarter before the examination or early in the quarter of the examination to reserve a defense date). Notify the Program Coordinator of the oral examination date, and ask the Program Coordinator for assistance if you need help locating and scheduling a meeting room for the oral examination. Schedule two hours for the oral examination.
Prior to conducting the oral examination, Supervisory Committee members must agree that all written responses to the examination are sufficiently satisfactory to allow you to move on to the oral portion of the exam. In the case when one or more of your written responses to your exam questions are rated as unsatisfactory, the oral examination will be postponed, and the meeting time will instead be used for your Doctoral Supervisory Committee to meet with you to discuss necessary steps. Note that moving to the oral examination does not mean that you have automatically passed the written examination or that you will not be asked to make changes in the written responses. Moving to the oral examination means that the committee members feel the written responses are sufficient to allow the oral examination to take place, but they will make the final decision based on passing the examination and any needed revisions to your work based on the combination of the written work and oral defense.
During the oral examination, your committee may ask you to begin the discussion of each question by providing a brief summary of your work and what you have learned. This is not intended to be a formal or lengthy presentation, but instead to provide a brief (very few minutes) overview of your work. The bulk of the time is dedicated to the defense in which members of your committee may ask any questions they choose related to the broad area of Rehabilitation Science, your research preparation, your cognates, and your written responses. By design, the oral examination gives you an opportunity to respond extemporaneously to the questions of your Doctoral Supervisory Committee. Formal presentations are not part of the oral general examination process.
By majority vote, your Doctoral Supervisory Committee will determine whether you have passed the oral examination. If any Supervisory Committee members do not agree with the majority opinion, they will be encouraged to submit a minority report to the Dean of the Graduate School. If the committee feels that further revision or work is needed to successfully pass the General Examination, they will discuss that with you at the end of the defense. If your performance is judged by your Doctoral Supervisory Committee to be satisfactory, a signed warrant certifying successful completion of a General Examination will be returned to the Program Coordinator who then submits this information to the Graduate School. The Program Coordinator typically prints the warrant prior to the examination and gives it to the Committee Chair for the oral examination; however the Committee Chair can also access and print the warrant from MyGrad.
After successful completion of your RSI, you will be designated as a Candidate for the PhD in Rehabilitation Science and will be awarded a candidate certificate by the Graduate School. Candidacy is conferred on the last day of a quarter. The Graduation and Academic Records Office issues certificates approximately 4 months later. At this point, as a Candidate in the doctoral program, you will primarily focus on moving forward with your Dissertation.
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You must enter a request for General Examination in MyGrad. The Program Coordinator will approve the request, and an email indicating the date/time approval will be sent to all Doctoral Supervisory Committee members. This must be accomplished at least three weeks prior to the proposed examination date. |