A Ph.D. degree in the Lyle School of Engineering may be pursued in areas that do not belong strictly to any one department but nevertheless are of interest to some faculty members of the school. In such cases, the composition of the supervisory committee will be made flexible in order to allow for the interdisciplinary nature of the program, with the single restriction that at least three of the five members of the supervisory committee are tenured or tenure-track faculty members in the Lyle School of Engineering. The major area of this degree will be designated as applied science. Admission to and oversight of program is at the discretion of a designated academic officer in the Lyle School of Engineering Dean’s Office, who also serves as department chair.
Applicants to the program must meet all requirements for admission stated in the general admission requirements section for Doctor of Philosophy Degrees. Additionally, all applicants must secure the approval of a tenured or tenure-track member of the Lyle Engineering faculty to serve as dissertation adviser and dissertation committee chair, submit a tentative supervisory committee form with five members at least four of which must be tenured track Lyle faculty including the dissertation adviser, and submit a research proposal.
General requirements for a Ph.D. degree include the following components: 1) total academic credit, 2) residence requirements, 3) course requirements, 4) preliminary counseling examination, 5) qualifying examination, 6) admission to candidacy, 7) dissertation, 8) final examination and 9) supervisory committee.
Total Academic Credit
The Lyle School of Engineering requires for a Ph.D. degree a minimum academic credit of 54 credit hours earned in coursework beyond the baccalaureate degree or 24 credit hours earned in coursework beyond a master’s degree, in addition to 24 credit hours earned in dissertation work. There must be a minimum of 24 credit hours of graduate coursework and a minimum of 24 credit hours of dissertation work, none of which have been nor can be applied to any other degree. The student’s supervisory committee determines the precise amount of course credit to be required, subject to the approval of the department chair and the associate dean. A student who is actively working on his or her dissertation must be enrolled in dissertation study each term until completion of all requirements for a Ph.D. degree.