PhD Qualifying Exam QE
Workflow for the registration, implementation and evaluation of Qualifying Exams
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Description:
The Qualifying Exam is an important milestone for all PhD students. Usually the doctoral qualifying exam takes place by the end of the first year of a doctoral program. The extensive exam seeks to test the student's skills to apply and merge knowledge required in graduate training. Their research project proposals will be examined closely and they have to be answerable to several internal and external committee members as well as an ethics committee. This feature facilitates a fully digital registration, implementation and evaluation of Qualifying Exams.
Details:
First of all, the student has to fill a QE form along with several required documents. The form creation is triggered when the students clicks on „register for QE“. In the QE form, the students itself chooses a date, room and respected committee members for the qualifying exam. After entering a date, through an interface available rooms can be shown automatically and the booking will be synchronized with facility planning. Documents such as research proposal, reading and publication lists as well as a completely filled out ethics self-assessment form will be uploaded as PDF. Once the student has collected all required data, the QE form along with all the attachments can be digitally submitted.
The submission triggers a status change and all respective persons will receive an automated E-Mail about the QE exam. This will include the basic information of time and room as well as a link to download and review the given documents.
The ethics self-assessment form will be automatically submitted to the ethics committee. They have to fill out an ethics approval form, in which they can not approve, conditionally approve or fully approve the ethics. If the form gets denied, students can fill out a new form with according changes. In case of conditional approval, the committee will give reasons or request specification of the student. The same ethics form can be re-edited and send again. Once the ethics get approved, the status will change accordingly and the QE exam can take place.
After the Qualifying Exam, the Committee will fill out a standardized digital QE protocol. The access to edit the protocol can be given to all respected members. The form can be sub-divided according to different sections of the exam. Committee members can also upload their notes as PDF. At the end of the protocol, a decision has to be given if the students passes, fails with the option to retry, or fails without the option to retry. The protocol will close for changes one week after the exam.
Once the protocol gets submitted, the student as well as supervisor will receive an automated notification along with the protocol. If applicable in case of failure a revised or commented version of reading list and research proposal can be send along. If the option to retry is given, the process will start again by resubmitting the QE form. The students who passes will automatically get a status change to phase two of his PhD process. Required data is exported to HR and Finance. Depending on the contract, the status change may leed to a salary increase.