Graduate Students: Expectations, Policies, and Procedures

This page is intended to help current graduate students better understand the expectations of the faculty, and to locate the policies and procedures they need to get through the M.S. and/or Ph.D programs here in Computer Science at Dartmouth College. It is organized as follows:

Expectations of the faculty
Resources that list policies and procedures
Policies clarified: our clarification of those policies
Procedures clarified: our clarification of those procedures

Expectations

M.S. graduate students are expected to

adhere to the Honor Principle as described in the Dartmouth Graduate Student Handbook.
adhere to the Student Code of Conduct as described in the Dartmouth Graduate Student Handbook.
follow the policies and procedures below.
make good progress toward completion of the degree requirements.
... (to be completed later)

Ph.D graduate students are expected to

adhere to the Honor Principle as described in the Dartmouth Graduate Student Handbook.
adhere to the Student Code of Conduct as described in the Dartmouth Graduate Student Handbook.
follow the policies and procedures below.
make good progress toward completion of the degree requirements. Full-time Ph.D students are required to complete their RPE by the end of Spring of their second year, and are expected to complete their thesis proposal by the end of Spring of their third year. The typical full-time Ph.D student completes their degree in 5 (+/- 1) years.
present their work in the graduate-student seminar series, approximately once per year. Thesis proposals and defenses count.
attend a large proportion of the graduate-student seminars and departmental colloquia.
perform any T.A. duties thoroughly and responsibly, in consultation with the course professor. A T.A. is expected to put in approximately 20 hours per week on those duties.
contribute positively to the department, e.g., serve on committees, organize student seminars, install and maintain 'contrib' software, and so forth.

The department reviews the progress of all students every spring, based on a report provided by them and augmented by their advisor. The department provides feedback to every student. Students not making good progress are warned by the department and will be re-evaluated six months later. Students continuing to make little progress will be dismissed from the program.

Key resources

Dartmouth's policies are listed in the ORC (Organizations, Regulations and Courses) and in the Graduate Student Handbook. Rather than reproducing that material here, we refer students directly to the most recent edition of the ORC. In particular, please see the sections on

general Dartmouth rules about graduate study,
additional rules for Computer Science,
academic matters

Below we add to and clarify the policies and procedures. Wherever those, or other, college publications are in conflict with any of the items below, the official publication should be considered correct.

Questions, comments, and suggestions are welcome! Please send them either to the current advisor to Ph.D students or the current advisor to M.S. students.

Policies

Requirements for the Ph.D degree

The requirements are listed in the ORC, as mentioned above, in a section entitled "Requirements for the Doctor's Degree (Ph.D.)" of the "Computer Science" chapter. The following list elaborates on the points listed there.

Yes, you have to be admitted first. (M.S. students should not assume that they will be admitted into the Ph.D program after completing their M.S., but are encouraged to apply.)
Here it states that you have to take 6 out of 7 core courses. [Note: not all graduate courses will be offered every year. In particular, 106 (Numerical Analysis) is not taught very often.] Plus four topics courses (181-188). On rare occasions we will allow a student to substitute a topics course for one of the core courses, when they can demonstrate that they have already taken equivalent courses. Undergraduate courses do not count for graduate credit.
We commonly use "quals" or "qualifying exams" to mean "written certification examinations".
The faculty voted to add a sentence "That is, the student must pass CS 257."
We propose to rewrite this requirement as follows:
Each student must display readiness for research in one area by giving a written and oral presentation of their research plan. This thesis proposal will be judged by a faculty committee; the committee will be chosen by the student and approved by the advisor to Ph.D students, following the same rules used for composition of a Ph.D defense committee. The presentation will be followed by a question period in which the student demonstrates mastery of the relevant area, and defends their proposed thesis plan.
See ORC for definition of residence.
See below about the thesis committee and defense.

Thesis committee

First, let's define two types of people:

Insider: any professor who is formally connected with our department as a regular professor, visiting professor, adjunct professor, or who is a post-doctoral researcher in the department. Check the ORC for the latest official list of faculty, although whenever there is a question please ask the Chair (sometimes adjunct appointments have been made since the ORC was published). We attempt to keep the list of faculty and post-docs up-to-date on the web.
Outsider: any Ph.D that is not an insider, and appropriately relevant to the student's research topic. They might be a Dartmouth professor, a professor at another institution, or someone in industry. Certain people with Ph.D equivalents, or other degrees (such as M.D.) can also count.

The determination is made at the time of the event (proposal or defense).

So, here are the clarifications for the composition of the M.S. and Ph.D thesis committee:

Advisor: the advisor must be an insider, and normally regular professor in the department. The choice of advisor must be approved by the advisor to Ph.D students.
As mentioned in the Handbook, the Ph.D thesis committee should have at least three people from the department, and at least one from outside the department. That is, at least four people, with >=3 insiders and >=1 outsider.
The M.S. committee is at least three people, at most one of which may be an outsider.
The student's dissertation advisor should approve the committee composition. Well before a Ph.D defense, the dean of graduate studies must also approve the committee (this is a College requirement).
The committee for the defense is often, though not necessarily, the same as the committee used for the proposal. Because of the amount of time elapsing from proposal to defense it's not unusual for the committee to need changing. The proposal committee should follow the same rules of composition, but need not be approved by the dean.

Thesis proposal

See procedure for announcing your public defense.

Thesis defense

Each February the Graduate Studies office sends a memo defining the deadline for the final date for submitting theses; typically the date is the Friday that is nine days prior to Commencement. You must have completed all requirements, and a lot of paperwork, by that date (check with them).
Work backward from the dissertation deadline to choose a date for your defense, in consultation with your advisor and your committee. A good rule of thumb is to provide the complete dissertation to your committee 2-4 weeks prior to the defense, and allow yourself at least 2 weeks after the defense to handle any necessary revisions.
See procedure for announcing your public defense.

Grades

We grade all courses, including research (CS297-299) and teaching assistance (CS257) on the HP/P/LP/NC scale mentioned in the ORC and the Handbook. Note in particular that the Handbook lists some serious consequences of getting a single NC or two LPs.

Vacations

During any year in which they receive compensation from Dartmouth, regardless of the source of those funds, graduate students are committed to be in residence for a period of twelve months commencing one week before fall-term registration. Vacation time, including official holidays, should not exceed a total of one month per year and the time(s) should be mutually agreeable to the student and the research advisor. During the summer(s) students are expected to perform their thesis research, unless they are off Dartmouth funding (e.g., for internship in industry). Students should obtain written permission from their advisor, in advance, for any expected absences of greater than one month per year.

Procedures

Courses

Full-time students should register for three credits each term. If you plan to register for fewer than three actual courses, fill out the three credits with the appropriate choice of CS 257, 297, 298, or 299, with the consent of your research advisor.

Thesis proposal and defense

The oral proposal and defense are public events and should be announced to the public, using our normal colloquium-announcement procedures, at least one week prior to the event. It is the responsibility of the student, in consultation with the student's committee, to arrange the date, time, and place, and to inform the department staff so that an announcement can be made.

Summer funding

Ph.D students on Dartmouth Fellowship (DF) for a given year are normally on the fellowship for Fall, Winter, and Spring terms. We strongly encourage students to work with a professor on research during the summer term, and are happy to provide DF students with funding for that purpose, assuming sufficient funding is available.
Summer DF funding is usually available to those who want it. In any case, if you would like summer funding, please contact the advisor to Ph.D students. The advisor will send out a reminder to all Ph.D students in early spring term, asking students who want summer funding to explicitly request it, to identify the professor with whom they plan to work, and to briefly describe their project (a paragraph will do). We ask for explicit requests so that we can budget appropriately for the summer, and identify early whether all students wanting funding, can receive funding.
Note that you may be asked to T.A. a course in the summer, as with any other DF term.
Often students find research internships in industry to be a valuable experience, whether in summer or in any other term. We encourage you to talk with your advisor, or the advisor to Ph.D students, about this possibility.

Dartmouth Computer Science