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PH.D. PROGRAM AND DEGREE REQUIREMENTS
Admission to the Doctoral Program
Direct Admission to the Doctoral Program
Conditional Admission for Coursework Deficiencies
Additional Criteria for International Applicants
Reguired Hours and Courses
Transfer Credits
S/U and Pass/No Pass Graded Courses
D Grades and Penalty for Poor Grades
Grade Point Average
Evaluation of Ph.D. Students
Residency Rtguirement
Selection of the Advisor and Advisory Conference/Doctoral Committee
Departmental Approval of Committee
Advisory Conference
Cognate Field
Changes in Committee Membership
Permission to take General Examination
General Examination Scheduling
Written Component of General Exam
Oral Component of General Exam
Results of General Exam
Presentation of the Dissertation Proposal
Committee Approval of Reading Copy of Dissertation
Procedures Regarding Dissertation Defense and Filing
Attendance and Participation at Dissertation Defense
Time Limits
Withdrawal and Readmission
See also: Graduate Assistantships, Dissertation Defense Instructions, and Graduate College Forms
- Admission to the Doctoral Program. Admission requires submission of application forms to the University Admissions Office as well to the Department.
A departmental admission form is available online. Requirements normally include:
- an M.A. or its equivalent from an accredited college or university;
- a graduate grade-point average of at least 3.0 on a four-point scale, or its equivalent, as documented by university transcripts;
- at least three letters of recommendation, preferably from former instructors; and
- a statement of goals and professional interests that can serve as the basis for a determination that the Department has faculty available and qualified to supervise a dissertation in the student's field of interest.
The Department encourages the submission of results from the Graduate Record Examination as additional evidence of promise, but they are not required for admission and no minimum score is required.
- Direct Admission to the Doctoral Program. Students without previous post-graduate work may not enroll directly in the doctoral program, but students who have exceptionally strong undergraduate credentials and who evince exceptional ability in their first year of residence as M.A. students may petition the Department for permission to proceed directly to the doctoral degree without completing an M.A. The petition must identify the faculty member who will serve as the student's dissertation director, and it must include a statement of approximately 2,500 words in which the student discusses his or her dissertation plans. If the Department grants the petition, the student in lieu of an M.A. thesis must during the first two years of residence prepare two papers judged by the Graduate Committee to be of publishable quality and must present both of them at a single Department colloquium. It should be noted that students who are allowed to proceed in this way directly from the baccalaureate to the doctoral degree will be required, like all other students in the doctoral program, to accumulate at least 90 hours of credit. Moreover, the Department does not offer a non-thesis M.A. degree, so students proceeding in this way directly to the doctorate will not automatically receive an M.A. degree; should they fail to complete the doctoral program, therefore, they risk leaving the Department with no graduate degree.
- Conditional Admission for Coursework Deficiencies. At the discretion of the Graduate Liaison, students with an M.A. in another field may be admitted to the doctoral program conditionally, on the basis of coursework deficiencies. If the student has no background in Geography, these coursework deficiencies shall total, in addition to the 90 hours required for the Ph.D. degree, five additional letter-graded courses in geography, of which at least one course must be in human geography, one course must be in physical geography, and not more than two courses shall be in geotechniques. Deficiency courses may not be used to satisfy degree requirements. They must also be completed with a GPA of 3.5 or higher, and they must be completed before the student has completed more than 18 credit hours of graduate coursework. Students should consult with the Graduate Liaison to select the most appropriate courses. The liaison is responsible for final selection of deficiency courses for each student admitted conditionally and for putting a list of deficiency courses approved for each such student in the student's file.
- Additional Criteria for International Applicants. In addition to the admissions criteria listed above, international applicants for whom English is a second language must demonstrate proficiency in English by achieving a TOEFL score of 575 or better.
- Required Hours and Courses. The Ph. D. degree requires a total of ninety semester hours of graduate credit beyond the bachelor's degree, of which no more than sixteen can come from 3000 and/or 4000 graduate-level courses; 3000-level courses in Geography cannot be applied to the degree. Required courses include Contemporary Geographic Thought (Geography 6973), three three-hour Geography seminars or courses not offered for undergraduate credit, and a field course (either Geography 5610 or 5650). Students who in the judgment of the Graduate Liaison have already completed three appropriate seminars or graduate courses as part of their Master's coursework will be required to take only two research seminars or graduate courses as part of their doctoral program.
- Transfer Credits. All of an M.A. degree, up to 44 semester hours or the equivalent, can be applied, regardless of age, to a doctoral degree, with the exception that no more than four hours of thesis research credit (six for M.A. degrees from O.U.) can generally be applied toward the doctoral degree. In cases where an M.A. of less than 44 semester hours has been completed, a student may transfer up to an additional 14 hours of post-master's work toward the doctoral degree.
- S/U and Pass/No Pass Graded Courses. Excluding dissertation research (Geography 6980), not more than one-half of the course work for a Ph.D. may be S/U graded; no credit from Pass/No Pass courses may be applied to the degree.
- D Grades and Penalty for Poor Grades. No credit from any course in which a student has earned a "D" can be applied to a graduate degree. When a doctoral student earns nine credit hours of grades C, D, or F in any combination, the student will be disenrolled from the doctoral program.
- Grade Point Average. Students must achieve a minimum overall grade point average of 3.0, and must additionally achieve that same GPA in all graduate courses and in all Geography courses applied to the doctoral degree.
- Evaluation of Ph.D. Students. Student progress is evaluated annually by the faculty, and a letter summarizing that evaluation will be sent to the student shortly thereafter. Regardless of his or her GPA, a students who receives a less than satisfactory evaluation shall be considered on probation and will be evaluated again in the following semester. If the student is judged unsatisfactory on this second evaluation, the Graduate College in consultation with the Department will either deny the student further enrollment or continue the student on probation for an additional semester. A student who receives a third unsatisfactory evaluation will be denied further enrollment by the Graduate College. Letters of evaluation that report unsatisfactory progress shall in all cases specify the nature of the deficiency, which often has to do with progress on the dissertation; in all cases the letter shall also specify what must be done to avert further unsatisfactory reports.
- Residency Requirement. Students entering the doctoral program must be in residence as a full-time student at OU for at least two consecutive 16-week semesters and must be engaged in course work or research activities acceptable to the Graduate Liaison. This requirement cannot be fulfilled during the completion of an M.A. degree.
- Selection of the Advisor and Advisory Conference/Doctoral Committee. Selection of the Advisor and Advisory Conference/Doctoral Committee. During the first year of residency, the student should select a faculty advisor, who indicates willingness to serve as chair of the student's Advisory Conference/Doctoral Committee by signing a Departmental Advisory Memorandum, which is available within the Department. The Memorandum requires that the student stipulate, in addition to the name of an advisor, the student's intended primary and secondary specializations. These specializations are broad subfields of the discipline, like climatology, cultural geography, or a region like sub-Saharan Africa or the United States, and they are the fields that the student plans to identify, upon completion of the degree, as the areas of the student's greatest professional expertise. Not more than one of the two specializations shall be geotechniques, such as GIS, remote sensing, or quantitative methods; not more than one shall be a regional specialty. The student in consultation with the advisor should then nominate an advisory conference/doctoral committee, the specializations of whose members should match the specializations of the student as closely as possible. The advisor and a majority of the committee members shall be full-time or jointly appointed tenured or tenure-track faculty in the Department. Temporary faculty, adjunct faculty, and special members of the Graduate Faculty can only serve as chairs or constitute a majority of the committee upon approval by a majority of the full-time or jointly appointed tenured or tenure-track faculty of the Department. Co-chairs are strongly discouraged as a matter of Department and Graduate College policy. At least one committee member must hold a regular faculty appointment in a Norman campus academic unit different from the student's as well as the advisor's academic unit.
- Departmental Approval of Committee. The Departmental Advisory Memorandum must be approved and signed by the Graduate Liaison, but the Graduate Liaison does not act unilaterally. Rather, the Liaison distributes all Memoranda to all faculty in the Department. Faculty members have 10 working days in which to report to the Liaison if they believe that the specializations of one or more of the nominated members of an Advisory Conference/Doctoral Committee are poorly matched to a student's specializations. If any such reports are submitted, the Liaison shall bring the Memorandum to a regular faculty meeting for discussion. It may happen that at the end of that discussion a majority of faculty members agree that certain nominated committee members are unqualified to supervise work in the student's primary and secondary specializations. If so, the student and the advisor must reconstitute the committee and file a new Departmental Advisory Memorandum with the Liaison for circulation and approval.
- Advisory Conference. Once the Departmental Advisory Memorandum has been signed and filed, the student should hold a meeting with his or her Advisory Conference/Doctoral Committee. This should preferably occur before the end of the student's third semester of residence, and the meeting should result in a signed Report of Advisory Conference, which lists all courses already taken and applicable to the degree and all courses which the student and committee agree are to be taken as part of the degree. The student must bring the Report to the Graduate Liaison for approval and signature and should then file it at the Graduate College.
- Cognate Field. Each student shall identify a Cognate Field, an informal minor in which the student, with the approval of the advisory committee, takes nine units of coursework outside the Geography Department. The courses comprising the Cognate Field shall be specified on the Report of Advisory Conference.
- Changes in Committee Membership. Normally the advisory conference committee becomes the student's dissertation committee, but committee membership sometimes changes in the course of study. In such cases, the student must notify the Graduate Liaison and the Graduate College of any changes in the composition of the committee by filing a Request for Change in Advisory Conference Report form. This form requires the signatures not only of new members but of all members of the original committee. With the approval of the Graduate Dean, the Department Chair has authority to sign on behalf and preferably with the approval of the request of members not in residence. No change is permitted within 30 days of the general examination or the dissertation defense, unless the committee and Graduate Liaison request a reduction, in which case the limit may be reduced to 14 days.
- Permission to take General Examination. When course work is nearly completed, the prospective candidate should file in the Graduate College a completed Application for General Examination for the Doctor's Degree. All committee members and the Graduate Liaison must sign this form, which must be submitted at least two weeks before any part of the Examination is to be held. General Examinations should be completed within the semester in which the authority is given. General Examinations taken without permission from the Graduate College may be invalid.
- General Examination Scheduling. In consultation with his or her committee, the student should determine a suitable time and place for the Examination. Students will not normally be permitted to take the General Examination during the summer term, during final examination periods, on holidays, or during times when the University is not in session.
- Written Component of General Exam. The General Examination consists of two parts, the first of which is written. Each committee member who wishes to do so submits to the advisor a list of questions addressed especially to the primary and secondary specialties listed on the Report of Advisory Conference. Additional questions will usually extend beyond these specializations only to questions about the history and nature of geography and to general questions about the student's proposed dissertation and to the research methods the student plans to use during its preparation.
- Oral Component of General Exam. All committee members must be present for the oral part of the General Examination. The subject matter will normally pursue matters raised in the written exam.
- Results of General Exam. The Report of General Examination, signed by all members of the committee, shall be submitted to the Graduate Dean within one month after the oral part of the Examination. If the student fails either part of the exam, he or she at the discretion of the committee may petition the Graduate College for permission to retake that part of the Examination. Failure on the second attempt will terminate the student's continuation in the program.
- Presentation of the Dissertation Proposal. Following successful completion of the General Examination, a formal dissertation proposal must be prepared and presented in a Department colloquium. No later than two days prior to presentation, the student must distribute written copies of his or her proposal to all faculty members and graduate students in residence. If the presentation is judged to be unacceptable by the student's Ph.D. committee, a second presentation may be required. It is the responsibility of the advisor to determine the consensus of the advisory committee regarding the quality of the proposal and its presentation and to authorize the student to proceed with dissertation research.
- Committee Approval of Reading Copy of Dissertation. When a reasonably complete draft of the dissertation is complete, the student shall distribute copies of it to all his or her committee members. At least five members of the committee must agree that the dissertation demonstrates the student's ability to conduct original research. If they do not so agree, the student will be given another opportunity to submit an acceptable dissertation. If they do so agree, the student should apply to the Graduate College for a Request for Degree Check, which must be done before scheduling the dissertation defense.
- Procedures Regarding Dissertation Defense and Filing. Students at this stage should obtain from the Graduate College a copy of the dissertation packet, which includes forms and detailed instructions. In general, however, when the reading copy of the dissertation has received preliminary approval of the advisory committee, it should be submitted to the Graduate College along with a double-spaced abstract of not more than 350 words and a memorandum approving the dissertation and signed by the student's advisor. The Graduate Liaison must also sign this memorandum to certify that all Department requirements have been satisfied. The Graduate College will then issue an Authority for the Final Oral Examination/Dissertation Defense. The defense must be held no later than the last day of classes of the semester it is authorized. At least four members of the committee, including the advisor and the outside member, must be present. The results of the defense should be submitted to the Graduate College within 72 hours of the defense. If two members dissent, the Graduate Dean will investigate and make the final decision. If more than two members decline to approve the dissertation, the defense is judged a failure. Only one attempt may be made to defend the dissertation.
- Attendance and Participation at Dissertation Defense. The dissertation defense is open to the public, and at least five days prior to the defense the student must therefore deliver an additional copy of the dissertation to the Graduate Liaison, who will make it publicly available within the Department. With the approval of a majority of committee members, persons in the audience may be allowed to ask questions.
- Time Limits. Students entering the program are expected to pass the general examination within four years of first registration at OU and are expected to complete all degree requirements within five years after passing the general examination. In addition, there are restrictions against applying to the doctoral degree courses that are more than six years old before admission to the program and which did not constitute part of an M.A. degree program.
- Withdrawal and Readmission. Students who withdraw from the program and reapply at a later date must, after their readmission, satisfy the degree requirements in force at the time of readmission. Exceptions to this rule may be granted under the Graduate College's "stopout" policy, which students contemplating withdrawal should investigate carefully.
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