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So You Want to Get Your Master's, Ph.D., and Other Fun Paperwork
This is a general explanation page for paperwork that you will/may have to do at some point during your time at Steward that is not really concisely explained in one place.
(Michelle really appreciates it if you approach her with questions having read the Graduate Manual/what you can find on the department/University website. This is intended to at least partially mitigate excessive digging around, but still.)
Prepping for your oral prelim is stressful enough without having to worry excessively about all the paperwork involved. There are several forms you will need to fill out, each of which cannot be completed until the ones before it have been. They are available through Gradpath (click the UAccess Student link in the first paragraph)
This is ideally something you fill out early on with your adviser, but as long as you're making sure you're getting the correct number of credits for core courses, electives, and research, it's not a big deal if you don't actually make one until you're getting ready for your exam. Once you fill in your expected graduation term and adviser, there are two major sections: Coursework for Major and Coursework for Minor. We'll start with the minor because it complicates things a little.
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Coursework for Minor: We are required to have a minor. This is usually just astronomy/astrophysics too, and what you can do is just select 9 credits (the minimum) of classes/research to put under the minor instead of the major. Note that you can not put required/core courses or dissertation credits under the coursework for the minor. (e.g, from Erin: I threw 5 credits of ASTR 900, an outreach elective I took (1 credit) and Radio Astronomy (3 credits) into it.)
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Coursework for Major: The rest of your coursework and research you can just add under Coursework for Major. There is a button to retrieve your current and past enrollments so you don't have to go searching for everything one by one. You will then have to add some future credits, most notably 18 credits of ASTR 920, Dissertation, and if you haven't met the minimum credit distribution as described in the Graduate Manual, possibly a few more credits of ASTR 900, Research, and/or electives.
"By the end of the sixth semester, students typically will have taken 18 units of graded core courses, 8-9 units of graded elective/seminars, and 19-20 units of Independent Research (Astronomy 900) and/or other elective/seminars for a total of 45 units. Electives may also be taken in later semesters, if relevant courses are offered later in a student’s career. By the end of their graduate career, students should have taken an additional 18 units of dissertation credits (Astronomy 920) for a total of 63 units. Students on fellowships who have completed their coursework may be eligible to enroll for fewer credits and maintain fulltime student status. They should consult with the business office and Director of Graduate Studies."
Some notes from Lily:
- I split the 18 credits of ASTR 920, Dissertation, into three sets of six units each, which was accepted by the Graduate College. But don't stress too much if you enter them wrong, Michelle will likely let you know to correct it.
- With the redesigned, 2020-and-beyond curriculum, it is possible that you will not finish the required 8-9 credits of electives before taking the oral prelim (I did not, so I included one future elective in my Plan of Study that I was planning to take to finish up my required elective credits). However, if your electives change between when you fill out the Plan of Study and when you actually take the class(es), you will need to revise the Plan of Study and it will need to be re-approved. To minimize extra paperwork, I recommend waiting to revise the Plan of Study until you're actually signed up for the relevant class and absolutely sure you'll take it. Send Michelle an email letting her know you're revising the Plan of Study in this case.
The following two paragraphs retained for records from the pre-2020 curriculum, see the 2019-2020 Graduate Manual:
"By the end of the fifth semester, students should have taken 16 units of graded core courses, 8-9 units of graded elective/seminars, and 20-21 units of Independent Research (Astronomy 900) and/or other elective/seminars for a total of 45 units. By the end of their graduate career, students should have taken an additional 18 units of dissertation credits (Astronomy 920) for a total of 63 units."
(e.g., from Erin: I only had 19 credits of 900 by the end of Spring 2nd year, so I signed up for another 6 in Fall 3rd year and then will start dissertation credits in the Spring. It's also an option apparently to split this up - I could have done 2 credits 900 and then 4 credits 920.)
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Do not add other courses you may want to take in the future. They won't let you formally advance to candidacy unless all actual COURSEWORK listed on your plan is complete. This isn't to say you can't take more classes in the future for fun or for a certificate or something, but don't list them here.
(note from Lily: This applies to classes that are not required by the minimum credit requirements. If you have unfulfilled, required elective credits, add them -- see above.)
Once you hit submit, the plan will have to be approved by, in order, Michelle, your adviser, the current Astronomy Graduate Director, and the Graduate College itself. Keep an eye on your emails during this time.
Now it's time to formally declare your committee members. This form is fairly straightforward. Find the members of your committee using the search button. Your committee members will most likely fall under 1 of 3 categories: Chair, Member, or Special Member.
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For the purposes of this form, you should declare your adviser as the Chair. The department, however, requires that someone else on your committee chair the actual exam, and you will need to tell Michelle who this is for the record and so she can give them instructions.
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Members are any member of your committee who are Faculty at Steward - i.e., people who have Professor in their title on the Faculty page.
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Anyone else (for example, people listed as Astronomers) will most likely have to be declared as a Special Member. You can have a maximum of 2 Special Members. The person may or may not be available to be selected through the Search button depending on whether or not they have (recently-ish? it may expire) served as a committee member. If they have not, you will have to tell Michelle that you want to add them to your committee so that she can ask them for a CV and file the appropriate paperwork with the Graduate College to have them approved to serve on committees.
(e.g., from Erin: Don McCarthy and Katie Morzinski were Special Members of my committee. Don was in the system; we had to file paperwork for Katie.)
N.B. There are most likely further subtleties as to who qualifies as a Member vs. Special member, but the University is apparently redoing the whole system currently so. Take this with a grain of salt, check this space for updates, and when in doubt ask admin folks regarding your own circumstances.
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Don't worry about the Representative for Minor checkbox unless your minor is something other than Astronomy which requires a specific committee member (e.g., the Optics minor).
(note from Lily: it would not let me submit the form unless I checked the Representative for Minor box next to someone's name, but I just chose my adviser and it was accepted.)
And then you will send this off for the same chain of approvals.
Now you have to tell the Graduate College when and where your exam is going to be. Start trying to nail down a date and time pretty much as soon as you are sure who your committee will be - finding a time to get 4+ faculty in the same room at the same time for several hours is, I swear, half the battle of the exam. Don't forget to book a conference room well in advance either. The form itself fairly straightforward - fill in the date, time, and place, and send it off for approval. Be sure to email Michelle this information also.
Congratulations, you're ready to take your Oral Prelim. Paperwork-wise, at least. You're not quite entirely done with the paperwork though...
Sometime during (or after?) this whole process you'll need to submit a Prospectus, i.e., Dissertation Proposal, to Michelle. There aren't really a lot of instructions for what this is supposed to look like, but Michelle insists it isn't something to be super stressed over: you just need to have some kind of plan for your dissertation on file with the College. It should be approximately 1 page. Samantha Scibelli and I (Erin, following Samantha's example) both wrote a summary of what we did our first two years and the results/outputs, what we were now working on, and what we planned to work on for our dissertation, including a rough outline of dissertation chapters. Michelle accepted this perfectly fine and so did the College.
This details the process for formally receiving your Master's degree post-oral prelim, which we are allowed to do on the way to the Ph.D. The initial process is very similar to the Oral Prelim process, with some subtleties. This section is nominally complete but if anyone who has experienced this process reads this and notices missing information please get in touch.
UP FRONT: This process will cost you $70.00, in two $35.00 "Graduate Candidacy Fees" payments split into "Graduate Candidacy Fees 1" ($10.00) and "Graduate Candidacy Fees 2" ($25.00).
First, you need to have the Astronomy M.S. added to your active programs of study. To do this you need to fill out the Request for Change of Program Form. The applicable box to check on this form after filling out your general information is "Adding Second Program." The effective date cannot be retroactive, as per Kristi Davenport from the Graduate College in Spring 2023 (e.g., from Lily: I filled it out in January 2023 and had to put Spring 2023 as the effective date).
Give this form to Michelle to process and within a few days you should receive an email from the Graduate College telling you they have processed the request and added you to the Astronomy and Astrophysics MS effective [whatever semester you specified].
You will now have access to a new section of forms on Gradpath specifically for the MS!
Our old friend the Plan of Study! Yes, you need to fill one out for the Master's also. The subtlety here is that you can't just select all of your coursework and research credits so far - you can only share 30 credits with your Ph.D. program. The generic UA requirements for an MS are 30 credits of which at least 24 must be non-thesis. I (Erin) selected all the core courses, 8 credits of electives, and 5 of my ASTR 900 credits and sent it in. (...re-sent it in because my initial one got rejected by the College when I put in All The Credits. Thus. Don't do that!)
Pretty much exactly the same as your Oral Prelim Committee Appointment Form. Fill in your desired graduation term for the Master's, add your committee members with the same designations (Chair, Member, Special Member), and send it off for approval.
Congratulations, your part in this process is pretty much over with. The Master's/Specialist Exam Result form is the responsibility of the Departmental Grad Coordinator. Once that is submitted, you should soon get a "Congratulations: Degree Has Been Awarded" email or similar from the College, informing you of the formal date of conferral of your degree, when and where to get transcripts, and that your diploma will be mailed in ~1 month (longer for international addresses: check your desired mailing address is correct in UAccess.)
And then wait patiently for your diploma to be mailed. You'll get an email when it has been, which will also invite you to purchase a certified digital copy for $20.00 and various fancy picture frames for the physical copy. Purchasing those are your prerogative. In any case, congratulations! You survived your prelims, paperwork included, and got a shiny Master's degree out of it. :)
Congratulations for making it to the dissertation defense stage! It's time to start writing your dissertation, which will generally be a series of chapters that are taken from your first-author papers (either published or in prep), with an introduction that gives the broad context to your work (generally aimed at a non-technical audience) and a conclusion that describes the future of your field. Past graduate students have adapted the University's dissertation formatting requirements into a nice LaTeX template, so ask around. You should also make sure to read the University guidelines:
- Dissertation formatting guides - links to a file in Box with all of the rules
- Sample pages
- Checklist for dissertations
- You can also look up past students' dissertations through the Campus Repository
Putting together the dissertation will probably take around a month, perhaps a bit more. The guidelines I (Christine O'Donnell) got was that the introduction should be around 12-20 pages in the dissertation format (which does have generous margins) and the conclusion should be 6-10 pages, but those numbers are only guidelines. For what it's worth, I think my introductions ran a bit short, but my committee approved it and thought it did a good job covering the necessary background concepts.
Around this time, you'll need to create your defense committee. This may be the same group of people as are in the committee that you'll have to make after passing the oral prelim, but it can be different (e.g., if one of your committee members is traveling and unavailable for when you'd like to defend, or if you'd like to include a collaborator from another institution as a Special Member). You'll need to submit a form on Grad Path for "Doctoral Dissertation Committee Appointment", which lets the Grad College know who will be on your committee.
Some miscellaneous notes:
- The Graduate College requires the committee to have a minimum of 4 members, but Steward rules (per the Grad Student Manual) require us to have at least 5 members just in case something goes wrong.
- Special Members will need to be approved by the Grad College. You'll need to send Michelle their CV for her to process that paperwork, and then you can select them for your committee.
- In Grad Path, your advisor will serve as the Chair of your committee, although per Steward guidelines, you'll need another member to administer the defense (this particular role is not specified in the Grad Path form).
At least 10 business days prior to your defense, you'll need to submit the form on Grad Path for "Announcement of Final Oral Defense", which will ask for your defense date, location, dissertation title, and committee members (I can't recall if the committee members are automatically added in from the previous Grad Path form, or if I had to do it again). Typically, most grad students will email an invite to the public portion of the defense about a week beforehand to the all-steward listserv. The University's degree deadlines page has suggested dates for when to complete a defense by in order to graduate within a given semester.
While the defense is going to be stressful, the general advice I and my fellow grad students got is that you shouldn't actually be worried about passing your defense - if your committee is worried about you, they will kindly suggest you push back your defense date. You may want to ask around about the types of questions your members may ask - for example, my advisor (Peter Behroozi) framed the questions during the defense as being meant to help guide me in my research, rather than being meant to stump me, but note that not every faculty member shares that attitude.
The defense itself is composed of a 30-minute public talk (which will be on the University calendar), followed by a closed session between you and your committee members. Per Grad College rules, the entire defense is a maximum of 3 hours. Afterwards, your advisor will email all-steward to let everyone know the good news, and there'll be some sort of celebration. Your advisor will also be in charge of submitting the form to the Grad College announcing the results of the defense.
Other Grad College guidelines about the defense are available here.
First off, take a break - seriously, you've earned it.
While you're on break, you'll get emails from Michelle and from the Grad College about next steps, but I highly recommend snoozing those emails until after your break.
When you're finally ready to get back to work, you'll have some documents about the checklist for completing degree requirements, and some additional information about archiving your dissertation is available here. If your committee passed you with revisions, you'll have to check back with your committee members to get their requested revisions. They should have also discussed how the revisions will get approved (e.g., do they have to see them, or can your advisor decide it's all good). Your committee will also sign an approval page, which will be inserted into the final dissertation.
Once you've completed your dissertation and any revisions, follow the University guidelines for how to submit the dissertation and related paperwork. When you submit your dissertation, you may get feedback for edits from the Grad College based on dissertation formatting guidelines. For example, at least one version of the dissertation LaTeX template still has a "Statement by Author" as page 3 of the document, but that page is no longer needed. When you submit the dissertation, you'll also have the option to order printed copies of it from ProQuest.
Some additional important notes:
- Your graduation date is based solely on when you submit your dissertation, and not when you submit related paperwork. It's important to note the University's degree deadlines. In most years, the deadline will be within the actual term, but if something like a global pandemic disrupts the University, these deadlines may be extended. For example, the Spring graduation deadline is usually in May, but due to COVID-19, the Spring 2020 graduation deadline was July 15, 2020, meaning that if you submit the dissertation on/before July 15, you're automatically updated to having a Spring graduation date, even if you submit the other paperwork after July 15. Note that this change happens automatically - you cannot choose your graduation term.
- If you submit your dissertation during a term (e.g., you submit in March, and the Spring term ends in May), you will still be a student (and thus employee) through the end of the term, and therefore should still receive pay. If someone (e.g., the Business Office) tries to tell you otherwise, contact Buell and Christina Siqueiros.
- However, once the term in which you graduated ends, you will no longer be considered a student by the Graduate College, and that means you lose employee status at Steward. That is, once the term ends, you will not receive any further pay or benefits from Steward. You'll need to be hired in another position (e.g., as a post-doc) if you want to continue receiving pay/benefits from Steward.
- Also, note that because graduate RAs are not considered typical University employees, you may not be eligible to collect unemployment, etc. if there's a gap between your position here at Steward and your next job. For example, I've been specifically told that I am not eligible for COBRA for health insurance, though the ACA does provide the ability to buy insurance in special circumstances like the loss of a job.
- If your next employer requires a letter certifying that you've completed all degree requirements, technically that letter should come from the Graduate College, but they will not issue it until you've submitted your dissertation. Depending on the employer, you may be able to get a letter from Buell (our Department Head) instead.
- If your next employer needs an official transcript with your degree, the Graduate College does not update transcripts until the degree conferral date. For example, in Summer 2020, the conferral date is 8/22, and that's when I can expect to have my transcript say that the degree was awarded.
- Also, note that you lose employee status when you start a new job. For example, in Summer 2020, summer comp goes until August 15, but if I start my post-doc on August 10, I can't claim any hours on/after August 10 from Steward.
If you'd like continued access to things like the HPC system after you graduate, you'll need to apply for Designated Campus Colleague (DCC) status. As of this writing (July 2020), former grad students will apply for Associate status with your advisor as the sponsor. There's a worksheet (Word doc) linked at the page above, and you'll need to email the filled out form along with a CV to Dennis Tamblyn, though note that the form will not be processed until you're no longer a student/employee at Steward. The process will take roughly 1 week to complete. Note that this will also affect your UA email (catmail) account, and you'll need to use Outlook to directly access it (well, at least to receive new emails) instead of the Gmail interface.