Graduate Program (MBD): Dissertation and Final Examination (FE)

Requirements and Events After Passing the General Examination

1. After passing the GE, you return to working on your thesis research [registering for PATH 800].  Continue to attend Path Presents seminars.  Write and submit manuscript(s).

2. After you and your committee agree that you have demonstrated that you can identify a significant scientific question, design experiments to answer the question, critically evaluate the results of those experiments, redesign experiments based on earlier findings, and have accomplished a sufficient research opus (see below), it is time to write the dissertation and take the Final Examination.  This important decision is usually reached at a formal committee meeting. At that meeting, your thesis committee should agree on what should be included in the Dissertation, how it the document should be organized [see below], and who should be on the Reading Committee.  Note that the thesis for a PhD is properly referred to as a “dissertation”, to distinguish it from a Master’s thesis or other sort of thesis.  However, it is common in practice to refer to a PhD dissertation as a “thesis”, hence “thesis committee”, etc.

3. Once you have a good start on writing your Dissertation you can agree on a possible time/place for the Final Examination.  Planning a couple months ahead makes it easier to arrange a date that your committee members can all attend.  This is a only a provisional date, because you cannot officially schedule a thesis defense until your Reading Committee has read and approved a complete draft of your thesis and all members of your committee have approved you to submit, via MyGradProgram, a warrant requesting a final examination.  You should submit the request for warrant to take the FE at least 3 weeks before the date that you wish to defend.  This deadline is not enforced by the Grad School (ie you can submit the request closer to the time of the intended FE) but the approval process does take some time, and needs several approvals, so if you cut it to short, it might not be approved in time.

4. Take/Pass Final Examination (aka Thesis Defense aka Dissertation Defense)

5. Turn in (to the Graduate School) your Dissertation document signed/approved by your committee.  This can be immediately after the Defense or up to 60 days later [see below]

The following provide more details of these final events, and you should be sure to refer to the Grad School website for the “official” grad school rules and the Dissertation/Thesis Defense Checklist. 

Publication Requirement

Your committee has the power and responsibility to determine what constitutes a sufficient research opus.  The pathology PhD program does require that you write, and submit for publication, at least one first-authored manuscript containing primary data (i.e. not a review) resulting from your research.  The program does not require that this manuscript be accepted for publication before you defend.  However, publications are extremely important for your future career and it is important that you and your advisor follow through to publication.

Dissertation

In the past, the Graduate School managed the quality of appearance for dissertations.  This role included setting formatting standards within their Style and Policy Manual for Theses and Dissertations, reviewing the documents, and the ever popular measuring of margins.  As of Spring 2009, the layout and appearance of the dissertation will be determined by, and the final document evaluated by, the student’s advisory committee.  Only the following pages must conform to University guidelines:

  • Copyright page (optional)
  • Title page
  • Signature page (signed by the committee members)
  • Quote slip
  • Abstract

At the meeting of your supervisory committee at which you get the go-ahead to write and defend a dissertation, you and your committee should come to an understanding as to the content and organization of your dissertation document.  Your committee could require adherence to the original Style manual, but the Pathology program recommends that the dissertation be structured to include the following [in addition to the “administrative pages” above]:

  • A general introduction/background chapter
  • Middle chapters/sections written as submitted (or submittable) manuscripts.  If already published, the publications can be included as “reprints” exactly as published.
  • A final discussion chapter that puts it all together and discusses what has been accomplished, what is still unknown or ambiguous, and what could be done to follow up on the on the work.
  • Citations
  • Table Contents
  • Page Numbers

Reading Committee

When you have written a complete draft of your Dissertation you provide it to your Reading Committee.  This draft need not be word perfect, but it must contain all of the substantive content that your committee had agreed would constitute a satisfactory opus.  When your Reading Committee members have approved your draft you should contact all members of your thesis committee to inform them of the reading Committee approval and to confirm that they approve a Final Examination.  If you have not gotten a complete draft approved in time to meet your originally planned date for Final Examination, you will need to contact your committee to choose a new date.  If you do have draft ready for your reading committee in a timely fashion, but one of the members of the Reading Committee will not have time to read, comment on, and approve, the draft in time to submit “Request for Final Examination Form” for the proposed Thesis defense date, you should contact your committee about replacing that reading committee member with an alternate member.  It is up to you to inform yourself about the status of your reading committee members so that this change can be made in time for the new member to read, critique and approve the draft.

When you finally have approval from your committee, you use MyGradProgram to submit a “Request for Final Examination form” to the Grad School.  You should submit this request at least 3 weeks prior to your proposed examination day (see above).

Scheduling the Dissertation Defense

When you have written a complete draft of your Dissertation you provide it to your Reading Committee.  This draft need not be word perfect, but it must contain all of the substantive content that your committee had agreed would constitute a satisfactory opus.  When your Reading Committee members have approved your draft you should contact all members of your thesis committee to inform them of the reading Committee approval and to confirm that they approve a Final Examination.    If you have not gotten a complete draft approved in time to meet your originally planned date for Final Examination, you will need to contact your committee to choose a new date.  When you finally have approval from your committee, you use MyGradProgram to submit a “Request for Final Examination form” to the Grad School.  You should submit this request at least 3 weeks prior to your proposed examination day (see above).

The submitted request will be routed to the Grad School to check to make sure you have satisfied Grad School requirements: You must have at least 60 credits of graduate level courses earned at the UW. For full-time grad students, who register for 10 credits/quarter, the 60 credit requirement is satisfied within 2 years.  If you are a second-degree student, however, and do not usually register for quarters during which you are not taking classes, you need to be careful to register for enough credits to accumulate 60 credits.

The request will then be routed to our department, to check that you have satisfied Pathology program requirements.  Since almost all of our program requirements must be met before taking the GE, we will be looking to make sure you have satisfied the requirements for attending the Pathology Presents department seminars (PATH 520), attending the twice-yearly Grad Student Retreats, and satisfying any requirements postponed at the time of the GE.

If the above requirements are satisfied, the Grad School will issue a “Warrant” for Final Examination.  You print this out and bring it to your FE.  After the FE, your committee records its decision and signs the Warrant.  You bring the signed Warrant to Steve Berard and he will submit the results using MyGradProgram.  He will keep the signed Warrant for our files.

The Final Examination (aka Thesis Defense aka Dissertation Defense)

At least four members of a supervisory committee (including the Chair, Graduate School Representative, and two additional Graduate Faculty members) must be present at the FE.  Beyond this required quorum, if a committee member is not present, no signature will appear after his/her name.  This is not a problem.

The FE consists of a formal and public seminar, at which you present your research project and answer questions from your committee and from the audience.  You should plan to give a talk of approximately 40 minutes.  After the public question period, the public will be asked to leave the room and you may be asked additional questions by your committee members.  After this, your committee may ask you to leave the room so that they can continue their deliberations in private.  Finally, your committee will record their decision and sign the warrant and you will be told the result and given the signed warrant.  Bring it to Steve Berard to be submitted to the Grad School using MyGradProgram.

Submitting Your Dissertation

Bring Dissertation documents twice to The Graduate School located at the Communications Building ( G-1 Communications Building):

First: For a “Preliminary Review” of Draft copy.  As soon as you have a draft of your dissertation, for example after your Reading Committee has approved you to take the Final Exam,  you should print the 5 required “administrative pages” and bring them to the grad school office for a preliminary review.  Don’t bring them anything except the 5 administrative pages.  They review them and, after a few days, you can pick up marked up-copies along with a written notification of changes that need to be made.  Keep all of this.

Second: When you have completed your final copy of the complete Dissertation, bring the corrected administrative pages to the Grad School for final approval.  You must also bring the marked-up drafts and the sheet noting the corrections required.  You do not need to bring the body of the dissertation.  The Grad School never needs to see this.  You have 60 days after passing your FE in which to submit the final copy of these documents to the Grad School.  If you submit it after that date, you may be asked to take the FE again.

Note that you need to turn in your final Dissertation on/before the last day of the quarter you took the FE (even if that is earlier than 60 days after passing the FE).  If you don’t turn it in before the end of the quarter, you will need to register for at least 2 credits for next quarter and submit it then, or you may be eligible to pay the Graduate Registration Waiver Fee which allows you to pay $250 and submit the Dissertation next quarter without registering (see details on the Grad School web site).

When you turn in your final Dissertation, you will be required to pay for “microfilm publication” of the thesis.  This is currently $95.  See the Grad School web site for current details and procedures.

The Pathology Program also asks that you provide us with a PDF or Word version of your final Dissertation.  You can email these as attachments to Steve Berard.

Checklist for Dissertation

  • 2 copies of the dissertation
  • Signed Final Examination Warrant
  • Check to pay for the binding and publishing fee
  • Graduate School Exit Questionnaire
  • Survey of Earned Doctorates
  • Microfilm agreement form
  • Diploma card

A copy (word document or PDF) of the thesis should be provided to the Graduate Advisor. It will be copy will be placed in our electronic archive.

Getting Your Ph.D.

You will be awarded your Ph.D. at the end of the quarter that you pass the Final Exam and turn in your final Dissertation.  If you will be starting before that date in a position that requires a Ph.D., e.g. a postdoctoral fellowship,  the Grad School will provide a letter for you that states that all requirements have been met and the degree will be conferred at the end of the quarter.  After the end of the quarter, the Registrar’s office provides a letter stating that you have been awarded the Ph.D.

Dissertation Copyright Information

Important information about how copyright issues affect you:  Copyright policies for dissertations are evolving as the Grad School considers legal issues.  At the heart of the problems is the fact that the university requires that your dissertation be “published” and publication involves copyright issues.  UW dissertations are published via ProQuest UMI. The current policy is:

  1. In order to include a published manuscript in your dissertation, you need to get permission from the publisher of the manuscript.
  2. If your dissertation contains material that you plan to publish in the future, or plan to patent, you should request the 2 year “embargo” on publication of your dissertation.  This gives you 2 years to publish the work in a scientific journal [or submit a patent] without infringing on the copyright held by the publisher of your dissertation.  It is not currently possible to request that your dissertation not be published at all. 

Please visit the Graduate School website for detailed information about the rules.  From there you can get to the ProQuest UMI site to get specific  information about publishing your dissertation.  The key link on this page is: 2010-2011 UMI Dissertation Publishing Paper Submission Agreement (PDF) .  This is the document that contains the option for requesting a 2 year embargo on publishing your thesis.