Guidelines for Faculty/Student Responsibility for MA/MS Thesis

It is recognized that both the faculty members on a thesis committee and the student have obligations related to the smooth conduct of the MA/MS process.  To that end, it is expected that the following guidelines will be observed:

Preliminary Orals 

  1. The committee should be given a minimum of one (1) week to read and review the thesis proposal before the date of preliminary orals can be officially announced (for a minimum total of two weeks prior to orals date).  If a committee member cannot meet this deadline, she/he must inform the student and the chair immediately and negotiate an alternative acceptable to all parties.
  2. The proposal should contain the introduction, which includes a literature review, statement of the problem to be investigated, and the methods and analyses to be used.
  3. The distributed abstract for preliminary orals should contain clear statement of the problem, methodology and planned analyses of the study.
  4. The preliminary oral should review the proposal.
  5. The committee’s department approval signature page (provided by the Graduate Advisor to the Thesis Chair) should contain the abstract, the required analyses, and a general statement regarding expected outcome(s) of the study – accomplished through the orals announcement and additional notes by the Committee.

Final Orals

  1. It is the responsibility of the student to inform his/her faculty committee during the first week of the semester that she/he intends to submit a thesis during that semester.
  2. It is the responsibility of faculty to inform their graduate students of plans to be on leave of absence or sabbatical leave as soon as those plans are known, and no later than the end of the semester prior to the period of absence.  A faculty member’s “graduate students” are defined as all of those individuals for whom the faculty member has agreed to serve as either a thesis chair or a committee member (and Faculty Mentor for the MAPR program).
  3. It will be the responsibility of the thesis chair to see that the thesis draft for final orals contains all the required analyses and appropriate interpretations prior to distribution to the thesis committee.
  4. The committee should be given a minimum of two (2) weeks to read and review the thesis draft before the date of final orals is officially announced.  If a committee member cannot meet this deadline she/he must inform the student and the thesis chair immediately and negotiate an alternative acceptable to all parties.
  5. The committee members should write and submit to the student their comments, suggestions, changes, etc. regarding the thesis draft so that the student may go over them with the committee chair prior to orals.  Any major substantive changes requested by committee members should be presented at this time.  (Major, substantive changes will include any of the following: extensive new data analysis, extensive alternative data analysis, or extensive alternative interpretations.)  It is the student’s responsibility to provide the committee members with a current draft of the thesis prior to final orals.
  6. Major, substantive changes requested by committee members (Item 5) which have not been previously brought to the student’s attention, should not be required at the time of final orals.  Minor changes or additional analysis may be required at this time, however.
  7. Final orals should be primarily a review of the results chapter and the discussion chapter of the thesis.