Qualifying Exam

The Qualifying Exam Process

Within a year of completing your coursework, you must take the doctoral qualifying exams and prepare for the dissertation research. Students must demonstrate knowledge of the issues that interest the fields of rhetoric, composition, and technical communication, including achievements and gaps in knowledge. Your qualifying exam responses help to establish and confirm your qualifications to proceed to dissertation research. Your qualifying exam responses also offer you an opportunity to indicate your intended research trajectory, your dissertation project's intended research questions, and your ability to use research methods approporiate to the field and your project. Indeed, preparation for the exams is to launch you into your dissertation research.

Your qualifying exam is linked to your pre-proposal and reading list (refer below). 

Thus, you will be examined, in part, over materials related to your dissertation project as described in your pre-proposal and as approved by your dissertation committee, as well as the materials on your reading list, also approved by your committee.

The typical process follows this timeline:

• Confirm dissertation committee chair and members
• Draft Pre-proposal and Reading List (under committee's guidance)
• Commitee confirms Pre-proposal and Reading List (at least 4 months before exam)
• Take Qualifying exam
• Meet with your committee regarding exam results (≈2 weeks after exam)
• Final dissertation proposal (≈6 weeks after exam)

Dissertation Pre-Proposal & Reading List

Pre-Proposal

Although you will refine your dissertation topic as you read for your exams, you should have an idea of the topic and methods when you prepare your reading lists. Consult with your dissertation committee members to define your areas of interest. Based on these discussions with your committee, write a dissertation pre-proposal of approximately 2500 words.

This pre-proposal will identify the problem or challenge requiring research, include drafts of your proposed research questions, include a review some of the basic literature regarding the problem, outline goals and methods of research for adding to the knowledge regarding the problem, and include a tentative outline of chapters. The pre-proposal will also explain how the materials on your reading lists relate to your dissertation research and serve as a rationale for the definition of examination fields.

Your preliminary proposal needs to be approved by your dissertation committee at least four months before your exam. You may use this planning worksheet.

Students should develop the pre-proposal and reading list together to provide the student and their committee with a more synergistic understanding of the student's dissertation and exams preparation.

Reading List

Students must also develop and submit to the committee a reading list of 100 books or the equivalent in articles (four articles equal one book)*, materials that address issues in TCR broadly defined and materials significant for your area of interest within the field and intended dissertation project.

You may group the items by themes or issues, such as "composition pedagogy," "history of rhetoric," "user experience methods," or "visual rhetorics." Some of these books and articles you will have read already in your classes. Others—especially those relating to your dissertation—will likely be new to you. The topics of these books and articles should engage issues in technical communication and rhetorical studies broadly but also any topic related to your intended dissertation research and research methods.

To make studying for the exams more efficient, begin compiling your reading list during your coursework. Furthermore, you may want to write a summary of each book or article as you read it for class to review when studying for your qualifying exam. Throughout the process, consult your chair and committee members for recommendations/suggestions regarding what to include or remove from your reading list.

Your reading list needs to be approved by your dissertation committee at least four months before the scheduled exam.

When your pre-proposal and reading list are finalized, your committee chair will supervise scheduling your exam and they (or, you, the student) should report those dates to the DGS-TCR.

*This range is intended as a heuristic/guideline. In reality, students may develop a list of 25 books and 300 articles, or 17 books and 332 articles, or 47 books and 212 articles, etc... Far more important, however, is that your list enables you to engage as comprehensively as possible with the most significant research done in our field that is relevant to your proposed project.

Examination Policy

You must complete all coursework before attempting exams.

Scheduling your Exam

The dates of the qualifying exam are flexible, based on agreement by student and committee. Once your reading list and pre-proposal are approved, schedule a date no earlierthan four months away for your exam. During these four months students should read or review items on the reading list and otherwise prepare for the exam while the student's committee prepares the exam questions.

Remember: You need to inform the DGS-TCR of your exam dates in advance. The DGS-TCR will file the Qualifying Exam Report with the graduate school once your committee has administered your exam and completed their assessment.

Examination Procedures

Examinations will consist of three or four take-home questions to be answered over a four-day period.

For example, if you receive your list of take-home exam questions on Thursday at noon, you will be expected to turn in your answers the following Monday at noon.

You are encouraged to spend approximately 8-12 hours writing the entire exam, which should have a word count of at least 6000 words for the entire exam. Your answer to each question should include a works-cited list. Formal citation style applies. Of the questions, two will typically relate specifically to your proposed dissertation topic and might eventually serve as dissertation content: one of these might ask you to theorize your methodology plans, and the other might ask you to elaborate on some theoretical issue that would relate to the literature you hope to utilize in your project.

Other questions may ask you to demonstrate a broad understanding of the field of technical communication and rhetoric and one that will address an area of the field unrelated to your dissertation topic. (For instance, if your dissertation is in rhetoric of science, you might be asked a question about computers and writing.)

Your advisor will solicit possible exam questions from all committee members and will base the exam questions on this list of suggestions. You may be given a choice of questions in one or more of the areas. You should consult with your dissertation chair about sample exams. NOTE: Chairs/Committee members may not provide copies of previous exam questions or answers.

In keeping with the standards of the TCR program and the university's policies regarding academic honesty, you are expected to maintain the highest standard of integrity. Any attempt to present as your own any work you have honestly and personally performed will be regarded by the faculty and administration as a most serious offense. You may not have your exam copy edited or proofread by a third party. We expect this exam to be composed of original responses to questions written during your exam time.

Post-Exam Meeting

Approximately two weeks after the date of the qualifying exams, a meeting between you and your dissertation committee will be scheduled by the dissertation chair. At that meeting, you and your committee will discuss the outcome of your exams and any necessary topics that need to be addressed before moving forward with the dissertation, including the problem statement, methods of research, and scope. If the committees agrees you have passed your exams, the chair will communicate that to the DGS-TCR, who will report this to the graduate school. In the case of exam failure, the post-exam meeting will be used to discuss what's expected when you retake the exams.

Satisfactory Performance
When you have passed the qualifying exams and have completed the post-exam meeting with your dissertation committee, the DGS-TCR will recommend to the Graduate Dean that you be admitted to candidacy for the doctorate. You must be admitted to candidacy for the doctorate at least four months prior to the proposed graduation date. Your final dissertation proposal will be due four weeks after this meeting.

Unsatisfactory Performance
If the qualifying exam is not satisfactory, the DGS-TCR will relay this information in writing to the Graduate Dean. Two weeks after the exams, you will meet with your dissertation committee to discuss your performance and to establish a plan for re-taking the exam. You may be permitted to repeat the exam once after a time lapse of at least four months and not more than 12 months from the date of the unsatisfactory examination. Failure to pass the qualifying exam within the specified time will result in dismissal from the program irrespective of performance in other aspects of doctoral study.

Final Dissertation Proposal

Approximately six weeks after your post-exam meeting, your final dissertation proposal will be due to your dissertation chair, who will either ask for revisions or will share it with committee members. This proposal, 10,000 words or more, should

• articulate the exigency for your research project or provide a problem statement,
• include your proposed research questions,
• provide an overview of research methods,
• include a literature review,
• include a draft outline of proposed dissertation chapters, as well as
• provide a timeline for project completion (through graduation).

Ideally, your proposal can serve as a substantial draft for parts of one or more chapters of your dissertation write-up. The proposal also serves as a roadmap that you and your committee should use to track the direction and progress of your developing dissertation through to completion.