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Possibility for Substituting One Seminar
(as passed by the Graduate Steering Committee, 4/19/02)

The following pages provide details about the various aspects of the Ph.D. in English. Graduate home Steps to the Ph.D. Policies & Procedures Commencing Study Distribution Requirement Seminar Reqirement Foreign Language Requirement Other Requirements Qualifications Application for Candidacy form (PDF) Comprehensive Exam Dissertation After the PhD Admissions Funding Courses  Current Grad Students Graduate Placement PhD Student Publications See Also: The Graduate College Graduate Assistanship Bulletin Board Graduate College Sources of Financial Support

Department regulations include a requirement for all English Ph.D. students to take three seminars in the English Department. The advanced-level work represented by seminars is viewed by the department as crucial for developing the expertise to write a dissertation, while taking a number of seminars within the department provides the opportunity to become acquainted with a range of faculty necessary for exam committees along with a range of approaches. However, in view of the department’s somewhat streamlined graduate course offerings, some students are finding that it is hard to take three seminars useful to their field within the time that they are taking courses. Such students can approach the Director of Graduate Studies requesting that they be allowed to take a 200-level or 300-level course for seminar credit (i.e. as a 400-level course). The point of the present clarification is to standardize a policy for dealing with such requests.

The Graduate Steering Committee proposes that such substitutions, which need to be approved by the Director of Graduate Studies, should be granted only in the following circumstances:

• the instructor of the course agrees to the request;
• the topic is peculiarly appropriate to a student’s planned studies and no seminar in or close to that field is currently on offer;
• the student writes a seminar paper for the course, along with any other special arrangement agreed with the instructor.

  Only one such substitution may be counted towards the English Department’s requirement for three seminars.

To make such a substitution, the student should discuss the case with the course instructor and the DGS. The student should write a very brief statement about the arrangement, outlining how he or she will undertake seminar-equivalent work in the course, and the statement should be signed by the instructor and by the DGS and lodged in the student’s file during the semester in which the course is taken. Such a statement will then be treated as evidence of the seminar-status of that course by the Graduate Finances committee in assessing the student’s progress through the program, by the Qualifications Committee in considering a student for candidacy, and by the DGS in assessing a student’s readiness for the comprehensive exam.

 

 

 

 

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