UNC School of Nursing Student Handbook

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
Dissertation Format
Final Oral Examination (Oral Defense)
Dissertation Submission
Typical Benchmarks For A Full-Time Program
Annual Review

Role Of The Dissertation Chair

When students initially enroll, they are assigned an Academic Advisor by the Director of the Doctoral Program. During the first year of course work, the student selects two other faculty to serve as an advisory committee along with the Academic Advisor. Once the chair of the dissertation committee is selected and approved, the student's dissertation chair serves as the academic advisor. The Advisory Committee is then replaced with the Examining Committee.

Forming an Examining Committee

Preferably in the first or second year of coursework but prior to taking the written comprehensive examination, the student must choose an examining committee. Usually the examining committee will become the dissertation committee, 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. Since the committee usually becomes the dissertation committee, the examining committee members must meet the same requirements as the dissertation committee members. Once a committee is formed, it is the student's responsibility to submit the names of the committee members and chair to the Doctoral Program Director for approval, using the Report of Doctoral Committee Composition form (first part of linked document). Each doctoral student is expected to consult with members of the dissertation committee at frequent intervals throughout the progress of his or her research.

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. Each faculty member teaching in the Graduate Program is approved to teach graduate courses. 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.

All tenured and tenure-track faculty at the ranks of Assistant, Associate and Full Professor are automatically members of the Graduate Faculty. 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 Doctoral Program Director at the time the Report of Doctoral Committee Composition is submitted. The Doctoral Program Director 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 Doctoral Program Director 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.

Program Approval

Preferably in the first or second year of coursework but prior to taking the written comprehensive examination, the students must meet one or more times with their 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 Doctoral 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 doctoral examinations will be give in the following sequence:

Written Comprehensive Examination
First Oral Examination (may or may not include Proposal Defense)
Proposal Defense (if not included in the First Oral Examination)
Final Oral Examination (oral defense of dissertation)

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

Comprehensive Examinations

Purpose: The doctoral written and the first doctoral oral examination together shall accomplish the following purposes, among others:

Assess the extent and currency of the candidate’s knowledge in as comprehensive and searching an examination as the best practice of that field requires.
Test the candidate’s knowledge of all courses offered for transfer credit.
Discover any weaknesses in the candidate’s knowledge that needs to be remedied by additional course work or other instruction.
Determine the candidate’s fitness to continue work toward the doctorate.

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

Placement of the Comprehensive Exams

Hierarchy. Each doctoral student must pass one written and two oral exams. The written exam and the first oral exam together constitute a comprehensive examination of the student’s command of his or her field. The doctoral comprehensive examinations should cover all work in major and minor subjects In addition, the student must pass a defense of the dissertation proposal. (See Graduate School Handbook, Comprehensive Examinations).

Translation. The second oral exam is always the dissertation defense. Of the other two exams, one is always written, one oral. The Graduate School Handbook says schools/departments determine the order of the first two. In the School of Nursing, the written exam comes first and is called the written comprehensive exam. In the School of Nursing, the second exam, which is the first oral exam, usually is combined with the defense of the dissertation proposal. Some students take separate a oral comprehensive exam and proposal defense, but the prevalent pattern is to combine them.

Before the second exam, or oral comprehensive exam, is submitted, the student must have fulfilled, or will have fulfilled by the end of the semester in which the examination is to be taken, all require 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.

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

Written Comprehensive Examination

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.

In the School of Nursing, the Comprehensive Examination is to include:

Substantive and theoretical knowledge relevant to Nursing
The minor or secondary area
Research methods (including data analysis strategies).

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

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 Doctoral Programs. 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

Grading:

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 Doctoral 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 Program Director 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 Program Director 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 doctoral written exam.

First Oral Doctoral Examination and Proposal Defense

When a student is ready to take the first oral (or oral comprehensive) examination, it is his or her responsibility to request the Doctoral Exam Report Form from the Office of Academic Affairs. The student must have passed the written doctoral examination, all required coursework and the minimum residency requirement for the degree and made significant progress on Doctoral Program Research Competencies before the second doctoral examination. When the second oral doctoral examination is passed with or without the dissertation proposal (Part II of the Doctoral Exam Report Form) is completed. When the dissertation proposal is successfully defended, the student's committee completes the Report of Approved Dissertation Project (Part II of the Graduate School form (if not already signed) with Part I: Report of the Doctoral Committee Composition form). The Research Proposal IRB Tracking Form must be submitted to the Office of Academic Affairs at this time as well.

Rules for Grading Doctoral Examinations

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

After completing all required coursework, doctoral students may register for N994 (N394) (dissertation). A total of six credit hours are required for graduation. During each term that a student is working on the dissertation (including comprehensive examinations and writing the dissertation proposal), he or she should register for as many hours of N994 (N334) as are academically appropriate but a minimum of three.

Dissertation Format

Dissertations from School of Nursing students are done in one of two formats: (a) a traditional book format or (b) a collection of manuscripts. These formats differ only in organization; the extent of the dissertation research is the same for both formats. The choice of the format is made by the dissertation committee. In either case, the text must conform to the Guide to Theses and Dissertations from the Graduate School with respect to font size, line spacing, margin sizes, paper type, binding, number of copies, etc.

Dissertations are usually done in APA format (except where this format differs from the Guide to Theses and Dissertations), but occasionally the dissertation committee may approve an alternate format if more appropriate to the student’s area of research. Dissertation proposals are temporary documents and, as such, may be done in any format that the committee approves. However, it is generally to the student’s advantage to write the proposal in a format that can be folded into the final dissertation.

Traditional book dissertations consist of

An abstract
Table of contents, lists of tables and figures
An initial 1-3 chapters presenting the introduction, literature review, purpose statement, and research questions or hypotheses
A methods chapter
One or more results chapters
A discussion and conclusions chapter
Reference list and appendices

Manuscript style dissertation. An alternative to the traditional format, the dissertation can consist of a collection of papers that have a cohesive, unitary character making them a report of a single program of research. In this case, the dissertation will include papers accepted, submitted, or to be submitted for publication. The text of these papers must be retyped to conform to the Guide to Theses and Dissertations with respect to font size, line spacing, and margin sizes. These papers are bound together as an integral part of the dissertation. (Reprints of published papers can be included in the appendices at the end of the dissertation).

The dissertation must be more than a collection of manuscripts. All components must be integrated into a cohesive unit with a logical progression from one chapter to the next. The final chapter for the dissertation should be a discussion of all papers bringing them into a broader focus.

The manuscript style dissertation must include the following:

An abstract
Table of contents, lists of figures and tables
A clear, succinct global introduction and literature review that links all papers and states the overall problem and objectives plus the purpose of each individual paper.
A methods chapter, unless the overall study methods are adequately described in the individual papers
Each paper should include a review of the literature that relates to the focus of the paper and ends in a problem statement, purpose, and research questions or hypotheses for that paper, as well as methods, data analysis, findings, and discussion.
A final chapter for the dissertation should be a synthesis and discussion of all papers bringing them into a broader focus.

As manuscripts for publication are frequently very concise documents, where appropriate, additional material must be provided (e.g., in appendices or in a methods chapter) in sufficient detail to allow a clear and precise judgment to be made of the importance and originality of the research reported in the dissertation.

When co-authored papers are included in a dissertation, the candidate must be the first author of the paper. In addition, the candidate is required to make an explicit statement in the preface of the dissertation about who contributed to the work and to what extent. The dissertation chair must attest to the accuracy of this statement at the doctoral oral defense. The committee and Doctoral Program Director must approve inclusion of co-authored materials prior to the final defense.

When previously published copyrighted material is presented in a dissertation, the candidate must obtain a signed waiver from the copyright owner (usually the publisher) and submit this to the Graduate School with the final dissertation.

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	2-3 years
7. Oral Comprehensive Examination (alone or in combination with proposal defense)	3-3.5 years
8. Proposal Defense	3-3.5 years
9. IRB Approval	After proposal defense
10. Final Defense of Dissertation	4-6 years

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.