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Guidelines for Chairs of Comprehensive
Examinations
The chair
represents the Graduate Program of Neuroscience on
the examining committee, and serves the functions
of monitoring and reporting.
At the
preliminary meeting: The chair's primary
responsibility is to insure that the Examining
Committee and the student mutually agree upon the
guidelines, scope and level of understanding
required to complete the written and oral
components of the examination satisfactorily. Among
the issues which should be clarified at this point
is whether or not the examination will begin with a
brief oral presentation by the student; although
this may increase the duration of the examination,
many students find that it provides an excellent
mechanism for easing their considerable performance
anxiety. The due date for the research proposal
will be set at this meeting and will be no later
than three months following the preliminary
examination meeting. The student should be reminded
that as with MRC grants, if they fail to meet the
deadline for submission of the research proposal,
the comprehensive examination will be automatically
postponed for six months. The date of the oral
component of the comprehensive examination will
also be determined at the preliminary meeting, and
in all cases will be within 14 days of the student
submitting a copy of the completed grant
application to each member of the Examining
Committee
At the
comprehensive exam: The chair has the prerogative
of asking questions, but is primarily responsible
for ensuring that the examination is fair. The
chair calls the meeting to order, assures that each
member of the committee has had sufficient
opportunity to read the proposal (normally two
weeks), and reminds all members of the committee of
the scope and purpose of the examination:
"In the oral
examination the student may be questioned on any
aspect of the grant application and will be asked
to elaborate upon or defend issues arising from the
literature review and the research plan contained
in the application. The range of questioning may
include topics that are not discussed directly in
the application but that are deemed relevant by
individual members of the Examining Committee. The
purpose of the comprehensive examination is to have
the student demonstrate to the Examining Committee
that he/she has a solid understanding of those
areas of neuroscience relevant to the research
proposal, can expand upon and defend those ideas
verbally, and has attained sufficient intellectual
understanding of the subject matter to proceed with
primary research likely to lead to submission of a
competent Ph.D. thesis.
The chair then
assigns an order to the questioning, allowing each
member of the examining committee ~20 minutes to
question the student. After this initial round of
questioning, the chair may ask questions
[optional], and then each member of the
committee is asked whether they have any further
questions for the student. Such questioning
continues until all members of the committee have
satisfactorily arrived at a conclusion regarding
the suitability of the candidate for progressing to
candidacy for the Ph.D. Throughout, the chair
should insure that questioning is fair and
relevant, and that the student has adequate
opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge of the
field. At the conclusion of the exam, the student
(and supervisor, if present) is then excused from
the room, and the committee discusses the
performance of the candidate. The examination is
pass/fail: each examiner (including the chair) is
asked to rate the student's performance, and the
grade is based upon a majority vote."
If all members of
the committee rate the student's performance as
passing, the student is called back to the room and
informed of the committee's decision. At this time,
the student should also be given constructive
feedback on specific areas of strength and
weaknesses. If a minority of members of the
examining committee rate the student's performance
as failing, the student should be informed that
they have attained a conditional pass, and that
further examination on a subset of the topics
covered is required - since these situations are
rare, the committee is given considerable latitude
in designing such remedial work as it sees fit. If
the student has failed the first sitting of the
comprehensive examination, they must be re-examined
within six months time. If the student fails the
second sitting of the comprehensive examination,
they must withdraw from the program
immediately.
Although the
thesis proposal is used as a vehicle for the
comprehensive examination, passing the exam does
not necessarily indicate acceptance of the theis
proposal. The key criterion to be applied is
whether the student has a viable and
well-considered research program, likely to lead to
generation of high quality Ph.D. thesis [the
committee should not necessarily expect that the
research proposal as is would be funded by
MRC]. If the research program is sufficiently
well designed, the research proposal is accepted
and the chair should so indicate in their letter to
the GPN office. If it is not sufficient, then the
examining committee may suggest re-evaluation of
the thesis proposal by the supervisory committee.
The student is admitted to candidacy following
obtaining a passing grade in the comprehensive
examination and acceptance of the thesis proposal
by either the examining or supervisory
committees.
The chair should
send a brief memo to the Graduate Program in
Neuroscience indicating the outcome of the
comprehensive examination.
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