Doctor of Philosophy - Degree Requirements

On enrolment in the PhD program, you and your supervisor will determine an appropriate course of study. If necessary, to prepare for the comprehensive examination, some undergraduate courses may be taken. Graduate courses may be deferred until after the comprehensive examination. Credit may be granted on recommendation of the Graduate Executive Committee for work done towards a PhD degree at another institution, provided that the relevance of the previous work to the student's proposed program is clearly established.

PhD Course of Study

A student must complete four graduate courses:
- At most one course can be a PhD reading course (900-level).
- At most one course can be a cross-listed course (500-level).
- At least one course must be topic course (800-level).
In addition, students must complete:
- Comprehensive examination (693).
- Research proposal (691).
- Yearly seminar (692).
- Thesis (690).

Initial PhD Advisory Committee

For each candidate, upon admission, the Graduate Chair, in consultation with the Graduate Executive Committee shall appoint an Initial Advisory Committee consisting of a Chief Advisor and at least two Assistant Advisors. One of the duties of this Committee is to assist the student in the selection of a course of study to be approved by the Graduate Chair in consultation with the Graduate Executive Committee. Normally, the PhD Comprehensive Examination Committee will act as the Initial Advisory Committee for the student. Neither the Department nor the University can guarantee to provide a particular supervisor for a candidate's research, although every effort will be made to accommodate individual preference.

PhD Research Advisory Committee

After the student has passed the comprehensive examination and has identified a potential research area, a Research Advisory Committee will be appointed by the Graduate Chair. The latter will include the student's supervisor and will comprise between three and five members of the Graduate Faculty. Normally, a majority of the members will be from the Department of Computer Science. It is recommended that one extra-departmental advisor be included.

PhD Comprehensive Examination (693)

The PhD Comprehensive Examination which is diagnostic in nature, examines a PhD student's background knowledge in the core areas of computer science. This examination is offered once a year, normally during December, or at most during the first few days of January, of each year. PhD students are required to take the examination the first time it is offered after they enter the program. The examination is a combination of a written component and an oral component. The written component consists of two three-hour examinations that cover the six areas: theory of computation, data structures and analysis of algorithms, programming languages, computer architecture, operating systems and software engineering (one hour for each topic). A suggested reading list will be available from the graduate office in September. It will normally be updated each year. The examinations will be at a level that is equivalent to third-year undergraduate courses. The oral component will be scheduled for each candidate when the written exams are scheduled. It can be used for clarification of an area after the candidate's written exam has been marked. Where all the results for a candidate are clear, the oral component can be omitted. The result of the examination is one of the following:

A candidate passes all areas: The candidate passes the comprehensive examination with no extra conditions.
A candidate passes at least three areas but fails other areas: For each failed area, the candidate is required to take a course in the area or to take only the final examination of certain courses. For each requirement, the candidate is expected to either attain a grade of at least 70% (for a course or final examination), or pass the area (when retaking part of the Comprehensive Examination). In both cases, a second failure implies that the candidate is required to withdraw from the PhD program.
A candidate fails four, five or six areas: The candidate is required to withdraw from the PhD program.

The PhD Comprehensive Examination Committee:

The PhD Comprehensive Examination Committee consists of five members: four faculty members and a PhD-student member. The PhD-student member, who should have already passed the PhD Comprehensive Examination, is not an examiner, but is involved in judging the fairness of the examination process.

The Research Proposal (691)

The Research Proposal is intended to

evaluate a PhD candidate's preparedness for research in the proposed area,
determine whether the chosen topic is sufficient for PhD research,
determine whether the candidate is able to perform such research, and
provide research guidance to the candidate.

The Thesis Proposal is composed of two components

a written research proposal, developed by the PhD candidate under the guidance of his or her supervisor(s), which should formulate a research plan, and
an in-camera examination.

The PhD research proposal documents should include a brief literature review with an appropriate reference list, enough details about the proposed research, and a detailed schedule with what needs to be done by the candidate to complete his/her thesis. While it is not required, it is clearly helpful for the candidate to have already obtained some preliminary results. As a guideline, the PhD research proposal should be less than 30 double-space pages.

The timing and the proposal procedure is as follows:

Candidates to write their PhD research proposal within the first 8 terms.
At the beginning of term number 8, a reminder letter will be sent to candidates who have not yet successfully presented their PhD proposal and their supervisors to remind them that the proposal should be submitted during the current term.
If a candidate has not finished his/her proposal by the end of term number 8, a strong warning letter from the graduate chair will be sent to the candidate with a copy to the supervisor at the beginning of term number 9. The candidate will be notified that if he/she will not finish the proposal by the end of term number 9, he/she will no longer be eligible for any departmental funding after the end of the funding period (i.e., after the end of year 4), if any.
If the candidate fails to submit the proposal by the end of term number 9, he/she will not be able to register in term number 10, until he/she meets with the graduate chair and the supervisor. In this meeting, a strict plan should be put in place to have the candidate finish the proposal by the end of term number 10. Also in this meeting, the candidate will be officially informed that he/she will not receive any funds from the department or the FGS after the end of his/her funding period. The only potential funding, if any, is from the supervisor(s).
If the candidate fails to follow the plan and consequently fails to submit the proposal by the end of term number 10, the graduate chair and the supervisor will decide the fate of the candidate, i.e., whether to give him/her one more chance to finish the proposal (no more than one term), or to ask the candidate to withdraw from the program.
For fast-track PhD candidates, 3 more terms will be added to the timing described above.

Once the proposal is submitted, the supervisor will send to the graduate chair the names of two internal examiners for the proposal. These examiners will evaluate the proposal and examine the candidate. They may also suggest possible research directions. In most of the cases, it is expected that these examiners will serve on the PhD Thesis Examination Board as well.

The written proposal should normally be made available to the examiners at least two weeks before the examination.

In the exam, the candidate is expected to know the broader research area and be familiar with the literature that is relevant to the chosen topic.

The examination consists of an approximately 30-minute presentation by the candidate that is then followed by an in-depth in camera oral examination of the candidate's proposal and of the proposed research area, where the examiners:

Appraise the proposal content, including its underlying assumptions, methodology, potential findings, and significance of the potential findings;
Appraise the proposal form, including its organization, presentation of graphs, tables, and illustrative materials, and its use of accepted conventions for addressing the scholarly literature;
Evaluate the candidate's skill and knowledge in responding to questions and defending the proposal; and
Ensure authenticity of authorship.

The exam will be chaired by a FGS member of the Department of Computer Science.

The examination procedure will be similar to that for the final defence, see Thesis Guide Section 4.4.2 "The Thesis Examination" at http://www.uwo.ca/grad/current_students/thesis_regulation_guide.htm.

The candidate will pass the exam, if, and only if, the two internal examiners accept the proposal. If at least one examiner rejects the proposal, a written report will be prepared by both examiners to highlight the concerns and to suggest directions to make this proposal acceptable.

While the candidate will not be informed of which examiner rejected the proposal, he/she will be given a copy of the examiners' report.

After improving the proposal, the candidate will be given another chance to retake the exam. In this second chance, the two examiners must accept the proposal. If not, the case will be forwarded to the GEC, with a recommendation from the supervisor to decide the fate of the candidate.

The time between passing the proposal and the defence should be at least three terms.

These new rules will be applied on all PhD candidates. However, exceptions will be made to those who started their PhD program before September 2004.

Exceptions to these rules must be decided by the Graduate Executive Committee.

Yearly Seminar (692)

Each PhD candidate must present at least TWO publicly announced seminars, at least one in the third year and at least one in the fourth year of their program.
Presenting a paper in a conference can be counted as a seminar.
Presentation in a course, proposal presentation, and PhD defence presentation, will not be counted toward the yearly seminar requirement.

PhD Thesis (690)

Thesis preparation and format, public lecture requirements and the procedure for examining the candidate and the thesis are covered in the School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies Thesis Regulation Guide. ( http://www.uwo.ca/grad/current_students/thesis_regulation_guide.htm)

PhD Residency Requirement

The residency requirement for the PhD program in Computer Science is six terms of full-time registration or equivalent, which is increased to nine terms for a candidate not holding a Master's degree. At least three terms of full-time registration must be consecutive.

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