Dissertation
DISSERTATION ADVISOR
After completing rotations, students will choose dissertation advisors that have funding, space, and appropriate training experience and expertise for supervising a Ph.D. in Molecular Medicine. Division faculty who are not currently members of the training program must apply to the Executive Committee for appointment to the training faculty.
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
GPMM students should assemble a Dissertation Advisory Committee shortly after completion of the qualifying exam procedure. This should be done in consultation with their Dissertation and Program advisors. The Dissertation Committee should be chaired by a member of the GPMM and should include the Dissertation Advisor and three other faculty members, at least one of whom should be from outside the DOM. Committee members should be qualified to assist the student with his/her Dissertation and examine him/her at its completion. Faculty from other institutions who are particularly qualified to review the Dissertation research can serve on a Dissertation Committee, but must apply to the Division of Graduate Medical Studies for a special service faculty appointment. The Committee roster should be submitted to the GPMM office for approval.
The student should convene a Dissertation Committee meeting no more than 6 months after beginning research in the Dissertation laboratory. It is the student’s responsibility to schedule his/her committee meetings. No less than one week prior to the first meeting, the student is expected to provide the Committee with a research plan that should follow the standard grant format with an abstract, specific aims, background and rationale for the plan, and proposed experiments and methods to be used in the Dissertation research. For the first meeting, this document may be incomplete and subject to change, but should be a WELL-WRITTEN OUTLINE of the proposed research. For subsequent meetings, the student should provide a written update no less than one week prior to the meeting that highlights any modifications in the specific aims or research plan and summarizes with figures and/or text important data and results obtained since the previous meeting.
Committee meetings may be planned to follow Sectional or Departmental research presentations by the student. If this cannot be carried out, the student will present to the Committee (about 30 min) and this will be followed by discussion (30-60 minutes). At the conclusion of each meeting, the Committee will meet in the students’ absence for a discussion of progress and concerns. After each committee meeting, it will be the responsibility of the committee chair to prepare a short written report summarizing the committee’s evaluation of the student’s research direction and progress, and stating the timeframe for the next committee meeting. This summary is to be sent to the GPMM office which will forward it to the other Committee members and to the student.
DISSERTATION REQUIREMENTS
As the Dissertation project progresses, the student, with the assistance of the Dissertation Advisor, will form an outline of what constitutes an adequate body of original research that is suitable for a written Dissertation. When this is approved by the Dissertation Committee, the student will notify the GPMM office and may begin to prepare the written Dissertation. Once the dissertation has been written, the student is required to present a formal departmental seminar followed by an oral defense of the thesis. The written thesis should be delivered to the committee members at least two weeks before the scheduled date of the oral defense. Each student is required to provide the Department with a final copy of his/her thesis before the Department will sign off on the necessary paperwork in order for the student to complete his/her degree requirements. The Department will have the thesis reproduced and bound and provide copies for the student, the advisor, and the Departmental library.
