There seems to be some lore about being stuck with committees. At any stage, you have the agency to change your committee. You are NEVER obligated to have a particular faculty member as your supervisor or as a committee member. There might be some administrative legwork to change up your committee, particularly when you are in the midst of the thesis-writing stage, but it’s never not an option.
Consider this post a public service announcement.
You must have knowledge of a language other than English. There are lots of ways to satisfy this:
Don’t let this requirement slip your mind! The language requirement must be met by the time of the submission of the thesis (MA or PhD) prospectus.
Whether you are submitting an extension (in which case this is a requirement) or just being a diligent planner, you’ll want to be thinking about a timeline to your defense date. Grad Studies has a bunch of information, but I’m going to condense a bit of it for you here.
If you are working against a ticking clock, you want to work backwards from when you want to defend.
If you are making a timeline for an extension, give specific month/year designations for these landmarks.
* I say “you” here, but a lot of these “yous” mean your supervisor or your committee. You (as in you-you) often need to be assertive and initiate movement on these items.
** When creating a timeline for grad studies, this is a good estimate, but be aware that the amount of revisions and the timeline associated with them are determined by your examination committee.
The Ph.D. (and M.A.) requirements are being modified to reflect a better balance of depth and breadth in your graduate-level training. Here is the new plan, which we will be implementing as we can this year (2016W) and will be fully implementing next year (2017W).
(Remember those new courses that are on the horizon? Be thinking about those, as you process this information.)
Breadth requirement. Complete at least 3 courses from the following list for a total of 9 credits:
Depth requirement. Complete at least 5 courses from the following list, including at least 1 section of LING 530 for a total of 15 credits.
Methods requirement. You’ll need a total of 9 credits of methods courses to complete this requirement. You must complete LING 531 (Field Methods) and at least 3 credits of Linguistics methods courses*. For the remaining credits you could take an additional field methods course (LING 532) or an appropriate course in a different department (statistics, logic, etc.).
Important note! We used to require that a Ph.D. student had to be registered in a LING 530 seminar until they were ABD. Now they just must be registered in any course other than a thesis credit course. Easy peasy.
*These new methods courses do not exist at all yet! For the time being students will have to take Ling 518 to complete this methods bit.
The M.A. (and Ph.D.) requirements are being modified to reflect a better balance of depth and breadth in your graduate-level training. Here is the new plan, which we will be implementing as we can this year (2016W) and will be fully implementing next year (2017W).
(Remember those new courses that are on the horizon? Be thinking about those, as you process this information.)
Breadth requirement. Complete at least 3 courses from the following list for a total of 9 credits:
Methods requirement. Complete LING 531 (Field Methods) and at least 3 credits of Linguistics methods courses* for a total of 6 credits.
Thesis. This is 6 credits.
Choose your own adventure! An additional 9 credits are to be chosen with approval from the supervisory committee; courses may be from Linguistics or another appropriate department. This is where these new courses will be key.
*These new methods courses do not exist at all yet! For the time being students will have to take Ling 518 to complete this methods bit.
Lots of changes are afoot!
In 2017W we are adding upper level undergraduate courses to be co-taught with graduate level courses, renumbering some of the graduate courses, and adding some new ones altogether. Starting in 2017W (we hope) there will be:
Undergrad/Grad Courses
New Grad Courses
LING530s will no longer be 1 year, but just single term seminars. There will be at least 3 of them offered every academic year. We are also getting rid of Ling 518.
This is all pretty exciting!
QPs used to have to be in different areas. The problem was we all had different definitions of different areas! So, the new requirement is now:
Each Ph.D. student is required to submit two Qualifying Papers in areas to be established in consultation with and subject to approval by the supervisory committee. Balancing a student’s research interests with attention to research breadth should be a major goal in choosing topics.
Let’s also have a major goal being everyone finishing their QPs in a timely fashion. #gradstudentgoals #isyoloappropriatehere
Thursday, Sept 8th, 2016 | 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM
Thea Koerner House, 6371 Crescent Road, Point Grey Campus
This presentation provides a detailed overview of upcoming scholarships, awards and fellowships competitions for graduate students, and provides advice on writing a successful application. Eligibility criteria for major funding agencies will be reviewed, as well as application procedures and tips for putting together a strong application. A faculty member will provide an adjudicator’s perspective on the review process.
See this document for more details: 2016-09-08-graduate_pathways_success_scholarships%2cawards