Ph.D.
The Graduate Catolog and the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department website list Civil Engineering Field of Study graduate degree requirements in detail. Following is an amplification specifically for the Transportation and Urban Engineering area of concentration.
For the Ph.D., the CEE Department requires 45 credits beyond the B.S. (15 beyond the M.S.) degree. These credits must include the following:
- MSCE Core and background preparation (if not satisfied by previous degrees)
- 6 credits in a Related or Supporting area of study, which may include courses listed below as "electives from other departments."
- 15 credits of GRAD 495 (Dissertation Research)
The Plan of Study
Each graduate student must submit a Plan of Study to the Graduate School listing the courses he or she will use to complete the requirements for their degree. For TUE, the course program listed on the plan of study must conform to the requirements listed in this document and be approved by his/her major advisor and two associate advisors (selected jointly by the student and the major advisor). MS Students enrolled in the Civil Engineering field of study must also complete the Civil Engineering addendum to the plan of study, available at the CEE website, and submit it to the CEE graduate coordinator. For the MS degree, the plan of study must be approved by the Graduate School before the student may appear for his/her oral final examination. For the PhD degree, the Plan of Study must be approved by the Graduate School before the student may appear for his/her General Examination.
Ph.D. General Examination
To be admitted to candidacy, each Ph.D. student must pass the General Examination. The purpose of this examination is to confirm that the student is qualified and sufficiently competent to prepare a dissertation. The General Examination for the Transportation and Urban Engineering Program is given in three parts:
1) A closed-book or partially open-book three hour written examination consisting of four questions, one covering the content in each of the three MSCE Core subjects and a fourth covering the Related or Supporting Area chosen by the student. These questions are prepared and graded by the faculty members who taught the respective courses to the student.
2) A research plan (12 page max.) on a topic assigned by the examination committee. This document proposes a topic to be investigated, justifies its relevance, describes a plan for investigating it, and explains how the findings would be used. This research plan is normally the first draft of the student’s dissertation prospectus (discussed below). The student is given at least three days to complete this part immediately following completion of the first written part.
3) A 1 to 2 hour oral examination given after the first two parts have been evaluated by the examination committee. In this part, the student gives an oral presentation of the research plan. Participating faculty ask questions about the plan and the student’s written answers from the first part of the general exam.Ph.D. Dissertation Prospectus
Each Ph.D. candidate must prepare a Dissertation Prospectus according to guidelines prescribed by the Graduate School. The Transportation and Urban Engineering faculty expect each Ph.D. candidate to have his/her prospectus approved within six months of passing the General Examination.
The Thesis and Dissertation
The thesis or dissertation must constitute original work by the student resulting in ground-breaking, seminal findings in the field of study. Once completed, the student presents the major findings in an oral final examination according to Graduate School regulations.
The scope of research to be undertaken will be more extensive for a PhD dissertation than for a MS thesis. In either case, but especially for the PhD dissertation, the literature review must be exhaustive and clearly demonstrate the contribution of research conducted by the student relative to work previously conducted by others. In other words, enough information about previous research should be provided to show that the thesis or dissertation is one of the next steps required in the area. For either a dissertation or thesis, simply itemizing the content of each background paper is not adequate; all papers discussed in a literature review must be tied together and explicitly related to the research topic. In many cases, the results of previous work will be compared to the results of the analysis undertaken by the student. The research analysis consists of some combination of data collection, data analysis, and model development and usually takes about two to three terms to complete for a MS thesis, and five to eight terms for a PhD dissertation. The Civil Engineering field of study offers the option of preparing the dissertation as a series of several peer-reviewed journal papers.
A student should expect revisions to an individual thesis or dissertation chapter will take at least 6 weeks from the first time a complete draft is provided to his/her major advisor. Students are encouraged to provide drafts one section or chapter at a time when possible. Once the major advisor is satisfied the thesis or dissertation is ready, a copy is provided to each member of the final exam committee, which consists of the major advisor and two associate advisors for a thesis or a dissertation, and two additional faculty (5 total) for a PhD dissertation. A final examination date and time is set at least two weeks from the time the copies are provided to the examination committee.
For more general information refer to:
New website launched!