All doctoral students are required to pass a qualifying examination (QE) prior to writing and defending their dissertation proposal, and being granted formal admission to candidacy for the Ph.D. degree.
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2. Under advisement of their faculty QE chair, the student decides on one of 3 formats options for their QE:
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3. The student, with approval from the QE chair and the other 2 committee members, decides on the semester to start the exam. The committee and student must agree on the start semester no later than the end of the second week of the semester. (Note: the committee is comprised of a total of 3 STEM Ed GSC members, but at least one STEM Ed program area faculty must be on the committee).
A. During each semester that a student is engaged in their QE, the student will send a draft of work in progress on the exam to their QE chair who advises them halfway through the semester; the QE chair will respond with either oral or written feedback.
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B. To pass the exam, at least 2 members must vote to accept, one of which must be the QE chair.
4. If the committee votes to request a second round of revisions, the deadline for "revision 2/submission 3" is determined by the committee in consultation with the student (noting that the deadline, including the 2-week committee review period) must meet the requirement of occurring before the end of the second semester of the total allowed exam period).
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B. To pass the exam, at least 2 members must vote to accept, one of which must be the QE chair.
C. If the committee votes to reject, the student's program will be terminated from the PhD program, with the possibility of instead applying to earn a master’s degree in STEM Education by petition of the QE chair and the STEM Ed Graduate Advisor to the Graduate School.
Other Process Logistics:
Following the committee review of the draft, and the QE chair’s written report to the student synthesizing/summarizing the committee’s requested revisions, the QE chair can choose to convene an in-person meeting with the student to discuss the requested revisions; committee members are invited, but not required to attend the in-person meeting.
The student may have done preliminary work on their QE prior to the semester they begin their exam as part of prior coursework or work supervised by their QE chair; however, it is understood that the majority of the writing of the paper should occur during the semester(s) of the exam.
Students are expected to disclose if they are taking a paper written for a class and extending it/transforming it as their QE, so that their QE chair and committee are aware and give approval that the proposed extension meets this expectation.
In general, QE exams cannot count later as dissertation chapters; exceptions may be made if it has been greatly transformed such that it bears little resemblance to the QE paper; the QE chair who advises the student must make this determination in agreement with other members of the dissertation committee.
Exceptions to the limit of 2 consecutive semesters to complete the exam may be made in extenuating circumstances; exceptions can be requested by the QE chair who advises the student and must be voted on and approved by the STEM Ed GSC.
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It is recommended that the student identify one or more journals that would be a good ‘fit’ for their study/lit review/conceptual paper and that would provide models of articles in terms of formatting and other conventions of the journals.