PhD Program Policies and Procedures

The Academic Advisor
The Academic Advisory Committee (“3-Person Committee”)
Progress Review Process
Meetings for Students Not Progressing
Departmental File
Role Of The Dissertation Chair
Forming an Examining Committee
Program Approval
Sequence of Examinations
Written Comprehensive Examination
Passing/Failing Comprehensive Examinations
Oral Doctoral Examination (Proposal Defense)
Registration for Dissertation Credits
Dissertation Format
Final Oral Examination (Oral Defense)
Dissertation Submission
Typical Benchmarks For A Full-Time Program
Annual Review

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ACADEMIC ADVISING AND PROGRESS REPORTING INFORMATION

The Academic Advisor

Students are assigned a faculty academic advisor by the Director of the doctoral program upon entering the doctoral program. Consideration is given to student preference, match of faculty and student research interests, and faculty availability in assigning advisors. The academic advisor is responsible for approving activities that satisfy course requirements. If appropriate, either the student or advisor may decide later that another faculty member is more suitable as academic advisor for that student. These types of changes occur routinely, with the only potential barriers being the availability of a graduate faculty member qualified and willing to serve as advisor, and approval of the director of the doctoral program.

Doctoral students are expected to work independently to make appropriate progress in the program; at the same time, students do work closely with their advisor and other faculty. The advisor provides the student with assistance in identifying courses and helps with any problems affecting the student’s relationships with faculty, colleagues, or the doctoral program as a whole. Students are responsible for seeking meetings as needed with their advisors. We encourage students to get to know and work with a range of faculty during their first two years of the program.

The Academic Advisory Committee (“3-Person Committee”)

By the end of the student’s first year, the student and academic advisor form an academic advisory committee to assist both the student and advisor in formally reviewing the student’s progress in the doctoral program. The academic advisory committee has three members: the student’s academic advisor and two other faculty members approved by the faculty advisor. This committee is also referred to as “the 3-person committee.”

The academic advisory committee guides the student in developing a plan of study, reviews the need for transfer of equivalent courses, and facilitates the student’s development of research competencies. By the end of the first year of doctoral study, the student should be able to:

• Articulate a focused area that could generate a researchable question
• Select courses that relate to the general problem area
• Complete assignments in each course that develop justification of the focus on the general problem area, portions of relevant literature, and potential methods to address the problem
• Articulate a researchable question in the problem area

Progress Review Process

Toward the end of the student’s first and second year: The student has a formal progress review with their advisory committee. At least one week before the review, the student must give committee members a printed summary report including (1) educational and professional objectives, (2) completed and proposed coursework, (3) materials from independent studies (if available), (4) a description of other involvements and responsibilities (e.g., research assistantships, fellowships), (5) information on current funding, funding applied for and status of application, (6) presentations and publications during the year, (7) a list of questions for the committee, and (8) a current curriculum vitae.

Within a week after the formal progress review, the student must prepare a brief summary statement of the committee’s evaluation and recommendations. The student must provide a copy of the summary statement to the advisor, each committee member, the director of the PhD program, and the graduate program assistant for inclusion in the student’s permanent file. This process occurs again during the student’s second year in the program. If the faculty advisor deems it appropriate, she or he may activate the academic committee for additional meetings at any time.

At the end of the fifth semester and every semester thereafter until graduation: The student must provide a written progress report via email to the academic advisor (or dissertation committee chair, if one has been selected), the director of the PhD program, and the graduate program assistant for inclusion in the student’s permanent file. The report should be submitted no later than the beginning of exam week for the Fall and Spring semesters and should be no longer than two pages.

For students who have not yet passed the defense of the dissertation proposal, the report should identify the following: (1) the dissertation topic or progress toward identifying a topic; (2) the research questions or progress toward formulating research questions; (3) the likely chair or possible candidates and faculty with whom students have met to discuss their dissertation topics and/or their research question(s); (4) plans over the next 4 to 6 months to move closer to being ready to defend the proposal; (5) barriers to progress; and (6) how the director of the PhD program can help the student achieve the goal of progressing to, and ultimately passing the defense of the dissertation proposal. For students who have passed their defense of dissertation proposal, the report should include the following information: (1) date of the defense; (2) names and department affiliations of dissertation committee members; (3) subject area or working title of the dissertation; and (4) report of progress since the defense(or since the last end-of-semester progress report, whichever is more recent), including what stage(s) of the dissertation process the student is in (e.g., data collection, analysis, writing up results); (5) expected date (month and year) of the dissertation defense; and (6) any problems, special circumstances, successes (e.g., wrote and obtained a grant) since the last report.

Meetings for Students Not Progressing

Beginning at the eighth semester: Students who have not successfully defended their dissertation proposal must schedule an annual progress review meeting with their advisor, advisory committee and the director of the PhD program or a designee. The student is responsible for contacting committee members to schedule the meeting and for reserving a meeting location. Students should submit copies of the written progress report to all committee members one week prior to the meeting. Students who require a progress meeting but who have formally scheduled defense of dissertation proposal may request a waiver of the progress meeting by emailing the director of the PhD program.

The committee is responsible for determining whether students are making adequate progress toward completion of the doctoral degree and are demonstrating sufficient promise expected of those to be awarded the doctoral degree. If warranted, the committee may recommend more frequent meetings with the student than annually. Also, if there are committee concerns about student progress, the committee may establish written expectations and a timetable for benchmarks that the student must meet for successful completion of the degree. If a majority of the committee determines that the student has not met these expectations, it may determine that there are grounds for the director of the PhD program to recommend to the Graduate School that the student become ineligible for further study toward the degree. The committee is responsible for determining whether students are making adequate progress toward completion of the doctoral degree and are demonstrating sufficient promise expected of those to be awarded the doctoral degree. If warranted, the committee may recommend more frequent meetings with the student than annually. Also, if there are committee concerns about student progress, the committee may establish written expectations and a timetable for benchmarks that the student must meet for successful completion of the degree. If a majority of the committee determines that the student has not met these expectations, it may determine that there are grounds for the director of the PhD program to recommend to the Graduate School that the student become ineligible for further study toward the degree.

Departmental File

The graduate program assistant maintains a permanent file for each student. Copies of progress meeting materials, progress reports, practicum contracts, and all other paper work related to the student’s academic career are stored in the file. It is the student’s responsibility to provide copies of these documents to the graduate program assistant.

Forming the Dissertation Committee

Preferably in the first or second year of coursework, but prior to taking the written comprehensive examination, the student must choose a five-member dissertation committee. Usually the dissertation committee membership remains the same through the dissertation defense, but sometimes the membership changes because of changes in a student’s research focus.

First, the student selects a chair who may or may not be the academic advisor. The chair should be a nursing faculty member who has been approved to chair dissertations. The Office of Academic Affairs publishes a list of doctoral faculty each semester. If the student selects someone other than the academic advisor, a Graduate Advisor Change form must be submitted to the Office of Academic Affairs and be signed by the student and the proposed chair. No signature or permission from the current academic advisor is needed, but the new advisor’s signature is required.

With the advice of the chair, the committee members are chosen. Dissertation committees will have five or more members. The majority (three) of its members, including the chair, must be School of Nursing faculty and have regular graduate appointments. At least one member must be from the minor department or, in the case of a student taking a secondary area, from a substantive area outside the School of Nursing. At least three must hold regular Graduate Faculty appointments; that is, be tenure-track faculty at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill or specially approved for a regular graduate faculty appointment. All must be approved for the functions they provide (directing or serving on dissertation committees). The committee must be approved before the comprehensive examination is scheduled. It is the student’s responsibility to submit the names of the committee members and chair to the director of the PhD program for approval, using the >Report of Doctoral Committee Composition form (first part of linked document).

Each faculty member teaching in the Graduate Program is approved to teach graduate courses and all tenured and tenure-track faculty at the ranks of Assistant, Associate and Full Professor are automatically members of the Graduate Faculty. Some faculty members are approved to chair doctoral research committees, and some are not approved to chair student research committees but are approved to serve on committees at the doctoral level. Functions for which faculty are approved change periodically as faculty member reviews are conducted, so students should inquire in the Office of Academic Affairs as they plan the committee to guide their research.

Instructors generally shall not be appointed to the Graduate Faculty. Clinical or research professors in the School of Nursing can receive fixed-term appointments or, in special cases, regular appointments to the Graduate Faculty. Other individuals can receive special, fixed-term appointments, which may include: faculty emeriti, scholars from other institutions, independent scholars and practitioners. They shall be appointed for terms no greater than five years in length, though such terms may be renewed indefinitely. If a student wants to include such an individual on the dissertation committee, the individual’s curriculum vitae should be submitted to the director of the PhD program at the time the Report of Doctoral Committee Composition is submitted. The director of the PhD program will review the prospective appointee to ensure that he or she meets the high qualifications necessary for serving on a dissertation committee. If the prospective appointee does not have a doctoral degree, the committee chair needs to write a letter to the director of the PhD program justifying the unique qualifications of the individual for serving on a dissertation committee. The Associate Dean for Academic Programs shall forward nominations for fixed-term appointments to the Dean of the Graduate School who makes the final decisions on Graduate Faculty Appointments.

Each doctoral student is expected to consult with members of the dissertation committee at frequent intervals throughout the progress of his or her research.

Program Approval/Readiness for the Comprehensive Exam

Students must meet one or more times with their Dissertation Committee to have them approve the plan of study, discuss areas to be included in the written comprehensive examination and begin preliminary planning for the dissertation. No later than this meeting, any transfer coursework and exceptions to course requirements must be approved. Exceptions also must be approved by the director of the PhD program and the Doctoral Executive Committee. See Course Transfer Policy.

To help the committee develop the written comprehensive examination, the student needs to present a summary of the content taken in courses. Often, at the request of the chair, students do this by giving the committee members a portfolio that includes representative syllabus pages, papers directly related to the dissertation and research proposals. The exact format of this portfolio depends on chair and student preferences.

Sequence of Examinations

The University of North Carolina Graduate School has the following examination requirements for doctoral degree completion: a doctoral written examination, a doctoral oral examination, and a final oral examination covering the dissertation and other topics as required by the dissertation committee. The School of Nursing refers to these examinations as follows:

• The doctoral written examination is referred to as the “Comprehensive Exam”
• The doctoral oral examination is referred to as the “Dissertation Proposal Defense”
• The final oral examination is referred to as the “Dissertation Defense”

The Graduate School Handbook says schools/departments determine the order of the first two examinations (the written comprehensive examination and the oral proposal defense). In the School of Nursing, the doctoral examinations will be given in the following sequence:

• Written Comprehensive Examination
• Dissertation Proposal Defense
• Dissertation Defense

The committee chair may put forth an explanation to justify deviation from this pattern; however, the Dissertation Defense must be the last exam.

In the School of Nursing, the written comprehensive examination is usually taken after course work is completed.

Before the proposal defense is completed, the student must have fulfilled, or will have fulfilled by the end of the semester in which the defense is to be completed, all required coursework and the minimum residence requirement for the doctorate (see Graduate School Handbook, Residence Credit Requirement.

In addition, the student must be judged by his or her committee to have made significant progress in achieving the program research competencies.

Written Comprehensive Examinations

Purpose: In the School of Nursing, the written Comprehensive Exam is aimed at assessing the adequacy of the students’ skills and knowledge to begin the dissertation process. It is not intended to assess the students’ knowledge of course material that has already been evaluated in each course. Rather, the Comprehensive Exam is intended to assess the students’ ability to synthesize and integrate concepts, skills, and knowledge gained in coursework and the scholarly literature in their area of interest. The exam tests the ability of the student to critically evaluate the strengths and limitations of the methodological and substantive literature. Students are expected to be able to make a logical argument that illustrates synthesis to justify their conclusions.

(See Graduate School Handbook, Doctoral Degree, Comprehensive Examinations)

Process: The written comprehensive examination shall consist of questions prepared by the Dissertation Committee and given to the student by the Office of Academic Affairs. A time limit of two weeks is established for answers to be completed and returned to the Office of Academic Affairs.

Students may use any inanimate source (e.g., books, articles) they need to answer the comprehensive examination questions. However, they may not consult any person about the questions except their committee Chair and, with the consent of the committee Chair, other member of their committee.

An exception for ESL students is as follows: If an ESL student’s committee agrees, that student may use an editor for comprehensive exams. At the end of two weeks, the students will return the unedited version of the comprehensive exams to the Graduate Programs assistant and also take a copy to the approved editor. Before the end of the third week, the student will get the edited version and revise the original submission based on the editor’s suggestions. At the end of the third week, the student will return the edited version to the Graduate Programs Assistant.

The edits that have been made must be identifiable in the final version for the chair of the committee. The committee members will be given a clean version of the comprehensive exam, and may request to see the identifiable edits held by the chair upon request.

Exceptions for non ESL students can be made by the dissertation chair at the discretion of the director of the PhD program. The student and his/her committee will complete the same procedure and forms as noted above within the same amount of time.

• Approval Form for Editing Comprehensive Exams [doc] [pdf]
• Editor Honor Form for Editing Comprehensive Exams [doc] [pdf]

Passing/Failing the Written Comprehensive Examination

• The distribution of the exam for readership is a committee decision. Committees may decide whether all answers are read and graded by all members of the committee or whether each answer is only read by a subset of the committee.
• The exam should be graded based on the following criteria: (a) the answers involve a comprehensive and accurate citing of the literature; (b) the literature is cited using APA format; (c) the students’ response addresses the question asked and clearly identifies the component of the question being addressed in each section of the answer; (d) the responses demonstrate synthesis and integration of concepts, skills, and knowledge gained in coursework and the scholarly literature in their answers; (e) the responses include a critical evaluation of the strengths and limitations of the methodological and substantive literature; and (f) the responses illustrate synthesis and make a logical argument to justify conclusions made.
• Exams should be graded in a timely fashion by the committee. Under ordinary circumstances (e.g., exams given within the regular school year), results should be given to the student in about 3 weeks.
• Decisions about exam grading can be done through individual contact between the chair and members or through a meeting of the committee. Meetings are important if the committee members have differing perspectives.
• Advisors are expected to meet with the student to discuss the results.

Prevailing practice.Many committees will offer the student a chance to rewrite one or more written comprehensive exam questions without reporting a no pass to the Graduate School, and many committees will, beyond that, offer the student an opportunity to further improve a response verbally as part of the first oral exam.

Within 2 months after the written comprehensive examinations are begun, the Chair will forward to the director of the PhD program, the decision of the committee—pass, fail, or pass contingent on acceptable remediation (rewriting question and/or verbal responses) and the type of remediation required. The Chair will inform the director of the PhD program when the remediation is complete. Generally, the student will then have 6 months to complete the remediation, or a failing grade will be assigned. Exceptions to this policy will be individually negotiated between the committee Chair and the director of the PhD program and are contingent on evidence of student progress. The Committee maintains the right to pass the student with weaknesses and require additional coursework or other defined activities, such as integrative review of specific literature, prior to writing the dissertation proposal.

Forms. The Doctoral Exam Report Form, Part I is completed after the written comprehensive exam.

First Oral Doctoral Examination: The Dissertation Proposal Defense

When a student is ready for the second doctoral examination, the dissertation proposal defense, it is his or her responsibility to request their Doctoral Exam Report Form from the Office of Academic Affairs. The student must have passed the written comprehensive examination, all required coursework and the minimum residency requirement for the degree and made significant progress on Doctoral Program Research Competencies before scheduling the proposal defense. When the dissertation proposal is successfully defended, the student’s committee completes the Report of Oral Examination (Part II of the Doctoral Exam Report Form. If not already signed, Part I: Report of the Doctoral Committee Composition form, and the Research Proposal IRB Tracking Form must be submitted to the Office of Academic Affairs at this time as well.

• A student who fails either a doctoral written or oral examination may not take the examination a second time until at least three months have elapsed
• A student who fails an examination for the second time becomes ineligible for further graduate work. No student may continue in a program or take an examination a third time without approval by the Administrative Board of the Graduate School.
• A student passes the Comprehensive Examination upon approval by a majority of the examining committee. A dissertation must be approved by at least two-thirds of the members of the committee. The vote of a committee is considered by the Graduate School to be final.

Registration for Dissertation Credits

After completing all required coursework, doctoral students may register for N994 (dissertation credits). A total of six credit hours are required for graduation. During each term that a student is working on the dissertation (including comprehensive examinations, writing the dissertation proposal, conducting the dissertation study, and writing the dissertation), he or she must register for a minimum of 3 credits of N994 each academic semester (fall/spring) until the degree is completed in order to use University resources (including faculty time).

Students must be registered for a minimum of three credit hours of dissertation (994) during the semester(s) or summer term in which the comprehensive exam is taken, the dissertation proposal is defended, or the final dissertation is defended. Registration for the prior semester will cover events that occur during a break between semesters. This registration covers a student from the first day of class in a semester until the day before classes begin for the next semester. For example, if a student is registered for a minimum of three credit hours of 994 in the fall semester and intends to defend in the same term, s/he must defend between the first day of fall classes and the day before the first day of spring classes. Similarly, summer registration would cover a defense occurring anytime between the first day of summer session I classes until the day before the first day of fall classes. If the defense takes place during a summer, students must be registered for a minimum of three credit hours of 994 during either the first or second summer session to be covered for the entire summer term.

Dissertation Format

The purpose of the dissertation is to demonstrate research competence as a culminating project of the graduate program. Working under the supervision of the Dissertation Committee, the student’s work must be original and rigorous and approved by the student’s Committee in order to graduate. Publishing research is an important element of the scientific research process.

In order to encourage publication of the dissertation research findings, the Doctoral Program will accept either a publishable/published manuscript dissertation format or a traditional monograph dissertation format and consider them equivalent. The Graduate School Thesis and Dissertation Guide (http:///gradschool.unc.edu/etdguide) must be followed with either option. All other dissertation requirements of the School of Nursing apply.

While the work of the dissertation is the same for either option, students may use the publishable manuscript format as a way to enhance dissemination of their scholarship and further peer review of their research. Either way, the student will select the format in consultation with their Committee prior to the Proposal Defense; the committee chair will provide direction for the proposal development. Using the manuscript option, at least three manuscripts are required for the dissertation (at least one of which must present original data based findings) in a five chapter dissertation. The first chapter of the dissertation is the proposal, chapters 2-4 are publishable manuscripts agreed upon with the Committee, and chapter 5 is a synthesis and discussion of the findings with implications for research and practice (see table). Chapter 1 for the manuscript option will include the background and significance of the problem, study aims, proposed methods, and description of each of the three manuscript topics and proposed journals for submission. If the dissertation format changes (from  monograph  to manuscript options or vice versa), the student must obtain approval from the Committee for the change.

For PhD dissertations submitted in the form of publishable manuscripts (e.g. ready for submission), the three publishable/published manuscripts addressing the dissertation aims are typically related, either by their substantive content or methodology, and constitute a cohesive whole. Each manuscript should be accompanied by its own abstract, references and appendices, if needed. It is strongly encouraged that at least one of the three publishable manuscripts is submitted for publication by the time of the student’s Dissertation Defense. All committee members must approve each manuscript prior to submission to any journal if that occurs before the final defense and all of the manuscripts for the final dissertation.

Journal Publication: Two to three high-quality peer reviewed journals must be identified for each planned manuscript in the initial proposal and approved by the Dissertation Committee.  If the focus of the manuscript shifts in topic during the dissertation process, the student must inform the Committee and obtain approval for the change. On occasion, a paper may have been published prior to submission of the final dissertation, in which case the published version may be included in lieu of a typescript if it meets the UNC Graduate School formatting requirements. If a manuscript has been published prior to completing the dissertation, the student must obtain a signed waiver from the copyright owner (usually the publisher) and submit this to the Graduate School with the final dissertation.

Authorship[1]: The dissertation must be the intellectual work and primary responsibility of the student. The student will be responsible for writing of the manuscript(s) and be either sole author or first author if co-authors are included for all the manuscripts. If the publication option will include co-authors, the student should discuss publication order and credit prior to submission with co-authors and Dissertation Committee. According to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, the Authorship credit should be based on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) final approval of the version to be published. All authors should meet conditions 1, 2, and 3 to be included. Since the relative contributions of co-authors may change over the course of a project and across manuscripts, this can be revisited as appropriate prior to actual manuscript submission. All authors must review and approve the manuscript prior to submission.

Format: The organization of this format is described in the Table below. While publishability is not necessary for acceptance of the dissertation, the fact that a paper has been published in a peer-reviewed publication does not, in itself, make it acceptable for the purposes of the dissertation. The committee may require expanded content to be included in the appendices (e.g. expanded literature review, methodology, results, any tools or techniques such as decision models, data collection forms, code books, etc), if not fully described in the manuscript.

The second format alternative is a traditional monograph-style dissertation. The organization for this format is described below and must follow the requirements of the UNC Graduate Program and can be found at http://gradschool.unc.edu/documents/paperguide.pdf  and http://gradschool.unc.edu/etdguide/format.html

Final Oral Examination (Oral Defense)

The final oral examination shall be a defense of the dissertation. It may be open to the public, limited in attendance to the candidate and the committee, or a combination of the two. The dissertation defense must be registered with the Office of Academic Affairs to prevent overlapping public dissertation presentations and to enable the Office of Academic Affairs to assist with reservation of rooms, and the design and posting of announcements of presentations. The defense should be registered at least three weeks in advance. If a defense is postponed, the subsequent date also must be approved. Questions that relate the dissertation to the field are appropriate. A student passes the final oral examination only upon approval of at least two thirds of the members of the dissertation committee.

The final oral examination shall be held only after all members of the committee have had adequate opportunity to review a final draft of the doctoral dissertation. The dissertation chair is responsible to the members of the student’s committee for determining that the draft is in an appropriate form for their evaluation. The committee may, at the time of the final oral examination but no later, require alterations and corrections. The dissertation chair is responsible for verifying that the changes required by the committee have been made and may delegate this responsibility to the committee member(s) who imposed the requirements. In addition, students must give the raw data to the dissertation chair for storage [data storage policy]. When these requirements have been met, the Report of the Final Oral Examination (Part III of linked document) is submitted and the dissertation in final typed form, designed to meet the standards defined by the Graduate School, is registered with the Graduate School.

Dissertation Submission

Dissertations must be submitted to the Graduate School according to the schedule listed in the Graduate School Calendar. The Graduate School accepts only dissertations produced according to the standards in Guide to Theses and Dissertations (paper or electronic submissions).

Typical Benchmarks For A Full-Time Program

What	When
1. Coursework Enrollment	2 or 3 years
2. Plan of Study	First semester
3. Select Dissertation Chair & Choose 3 person Advisory Committee	End of first year
4. Dissertation Committee Selected	End of second year
5. First Meeting with Dissertation Committee · Plan of study approval (may be done earlier by Advisory Committee) · Transfer credit approval (may be done earlier by Advisory Committee) · Plan for written comprehensive examination	End of second year
6. Written Comprehensive Examination	Year 2-3
7. Proposal Defense	Year 3-3.5
8. IRB Approval	After proposal defense
9. Final Defense of Dissertation	Year 4-5

Annual Review

The Graduate School requires each program to conduct an annual review of all Ph.D. students. In the School of Nursing, this is accomplished with a form that includes a report of the student’s current status in the program and accomplishments in the past year (e.g., funding, presentations, publications). The Ph.D. Student Annual Report is submitted to the Office of Academic Affairs at the time of spring pre-registration.