Staying
In and Completion
Once you are admitted and begin your progam, we
expect you to do well. Most graduate students
receive A's or B's in most of their courses.
EPP graduate students are expected to maintain
a B average and are allowed to count at most two
courses with a grade of C towards graduation.
Students meet with their advisors each semester
to discuss and choose courses consistent with
program requirements and their individual disciplinary
and research objectives. A curriculum progress
sheet is maintained to ensure appropriate coverage,
planning and progress towards meeting course requirements.
Assuming good performance in courses, the major
milestones along the path through the EPP graduate
program include the qualifying exams, the thesis
proposal, and the completion of the thesis and
the thesis defense. These are major and
important hurdles, and our standards are high.
However, we are committed to working hard with
you to give you the skills, encouragement and
support necessary to meet and exceed them.
We
expect our students to be entrepreneurial and
take charge of their own education. While
we pay a lot of attention to our students, we
try very hard not to be paternalistic. Don't
expect to be led thoroughly by the hand.
That's not the way the real world works, and we
wouldn't be preparing you well if that's what
we did. Expect to go out on your own to
explore the various resources available at Carnegie
Mellon and elsewhere, and put them together to
meet your own educational needs. The faculty
are always ready to help if asked (and sometimes,
if they think you need it, without being asked),
but we really want you to take charge of your
own education as quickly as you can.
The
qualifying
exams occur at the end of a student's third
semester. They include a "Part A" research
paper and a "Part B" take home exam. The
Part A paper is developed, written and submitted
by the student, followed by an oral presentation
and subsequent question and answer session with
the faculty. Questions can relate directly
to the analysis presented in the paper or to more
general disciplinary knowledge and skills.
The Part B exam is taken and written over a 5-day
period and involves a problem in which students
must analyze and evaluate a realistic (and generally
current) problem with engineering, science, social
science and policy content. All students
receive the same problem. The written exam
reports are graded blindly by the faculty (this
means that the faculty do not know which student
wrote which report until the grading is completed).
The
following outcomes are possible for the qualifying
exams:
- Both
the Part A and Part B exams are passed at
the Ph.D. level. The student has completed
their qualifying exams and may now move on
to their thesis proposal;
- One
of the exams is passed at the Ph.D. level
and the other is passed at the MS level, or
both the Part A and Part B exams are passed
at the MS level. The student may not
move on to their thesis proposal until both
the Part A and Part B exams have been passed
at the Ph.D. level. Students have the
right (and are usually encouraged) to take
the exams for a second time, usually in the
following year, to meet this requirement.
Students may also elect to leave the program
with an MS degree in Engineering & Public
Policy, so long as the course requirements
for the MS have also been completed.
- One
or both of the exams is failed. Students
have the chance to take the failed exam a
second time, however, the student can neither
move on to the thesis defense nor receive
an MS degree unless the second exam is passed
at the corresponding level. Students
in this situation are at times advised to
leave the program.
The
success rate of our students on qualifying exams
in recent years has been very high. This
has occurred due to good admission's decisions
(we only admit good students who we believe will
succeed), good overall academic and research effort
on the part of students, and specific initiatives
to teach and prepare students for the exams.
For the Part A exams, students are required to
submit an abstract of their planned paper for
full faculty review in the beginning of their
first summer (~six months prior to the submission
date of the Part A paper) and to make a practice
oral presentation to the faculty and other students
early in the fall (~3 months prior to the exam).
Students receive extensive feedback and guidance
following both of these exercises. As a
result, most Part A papers are of very high quality.
A special award is presented to the best Part
A paper each year, and the selection process has
become very difficult. Similarly extensive
preparation for the Part B exam is provided by
a course offered during the fall semester prior
to the exams, "19-705: Case Studies in Policy
Analysis," where students have the opportunity
to study, analyze and take previous Part B exams.
In most cases when our students do not pass both
the Part A and Part B exams at the Ph.D. level,
further course or writing efforts in concert with
ongoing progress in their research allow them
to successfully complete the exams the following
year.
The
thesis proposal
is written and presented to the thesis committee
as soon as reasonable progress is made in defining
the planned scope and contribution of the research.
It is a proposal, and should be completed well
before the student plans their defense,
in order to allow adequate input, guidance and
feedback from the committee. The thesis
committee is chaired by the student's advisor(s),
includes at least two faculty members from EPP,
and at least one faculty member or scholar from
another department or institution. Approval
of the thesis proposal by the thesis committee
constitutes the final formal step in the advancement
of the student to Ph.D. candidacy.
The
thesis represents
the written presentation of the student's Ph.D.
research. It is expected to provide a substantive
new contribution to the knowledge and understanding
of engineering and public policy. The candidate
makes a public, oral presentation and defense
of the thesis. The thesis committee must
approve of the oral and written thesis following
the defense. The thesis is signed and approved
by the student's advisor, the department head,
and the dean of the college of engineering. Examples
of recent thesis titles.
Traditionally
the thesis has been written as a single, well-unified
document, from which subsequent journal articles
or related publications are gleaned or derived.
However, some of our theses consist of a series
of related peer-reviewed journal articles or conference
proceeding papers with appropriate introductory,
linking and concluding text to provide context
and coherency, and technical appendices as appropriate
for more detailed presentation of data, models
or methods. This model, with a thesis consisting
of typically two to four published, accepted or
submitted high-quality journal articles, has the
advantage of providing additional peer review
for the work beyond the student's advisors and
committee, and ensuring wider dissemination of
the research results. It also allows those
students seeking a career in academia, or other
sectors where the publication record is important,
to get off to a fast start in this endeavor.
How
long will it take me to complete my Ph.D.?
The
average time to completion for our 45 students
receiving their Ph.D.'s since 1990 has been 4.5
years. A few of these students have finished
their theses under ABD (All But Dissertation)
status after accepting their first post-graduate
position, so that the actual time to effective
completion of Ph.D. residency here at EPP is somewhat
less. (Note that we strongly prefer students
to complete their thesis prior to leaving for
their post-graduate position, since they otherwise
run the risk of slipping into an unofficial, though
permanent ABD status.)
Students
tend to finish somewhat quicker when:
- They
enter the program having already obtained
their MS degree;
- They
are able to "hit the ground running" soon
after arrival with their Part A qualifier
research, and the qualifier topic area continues
as the main, or closely-related area of focus
for their subsequent thesis research.
Students
tend to take somewhat longer when:
- They
pursue a joint or concurrent degree in other
departments;
- They
leave the program for a while on an extended
internship or fellowship at another academic
or non-academic organization;
- They
must spend significant time or leave for personal
or family matters.
Shorter
is not necessarily better, especially when other
educational, professional, personal or family
priorities are considered. We value these
also and respect these choices.
