Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering
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Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, & Nuclear Engineering

Graduate: Doctoral Program Requirements

To earn the Ph.D. degree, the Institute and the Department have requirements that must be met. Listed below are the minimum requirements and associated deadlines. Both full-time and part-time students must adhere to these requirements.

In addition to these requirements, you should be familiar with the information in the Rensselaer Catalog and the Institute Graduate Tuition Policy in order to plan out their Ph.D. study appropriately.

Institute Requirements | Department Requirements | Transfer Students | Waivers | Enforcement | Practical Time Line | Graduate Seminar

The Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree is awarded from the department and represents the culmination of much work, imagination, and perseverance by you. The degree is earned once your thesis advisor and doctoral committee agree that you have demonstrated independent thought and research, made original contributions to the fundamental knowledge in a given field, and has produced a substantial body of information in the form of a dissertation publishable in a refereed journal. The dissertation documents your research and is expected to be a scholarly work.


I. Institute Requirements

  1. You must complete ninety (90) credit hours past the B.S. degree or complete sixty (60) credit hours past the M.S. degree, if M.S. degree has already been earned.
  2. You must complete forty-five (45) credit hours of thesis and/or course work at Rensselaer. This is a residency requirement.
  3. You must present an independent thesis that demonstrates creativity, originality, and scholarly thought.
  4. You must acquire a thesis advisor, form a Doctoral Committee, submit a Graduate Plan of Study, pass a Candidacy Exam, and defend the thesis.
  5. If you are a full-time student, you must complete all the above requirements within three (3) calendar years after admission to the candidacy exam and within seven (7) years of beginning Ph.D studies. If you are entering with a M.S. degree in your field of study you must finish all degree requirements for the Ph.D. within five (5) years. Degree candidates must have either: maintained full-time registration; maintained continuous full-time registration following a change of status from part-time to full-time or been, at all times, a part-time student. Under no circumstances will a full-time student be allowed to transfer to part-time status and maintain eligibility for graduation.
  6. Satisfy the binding fee requirement.
  7. File a degree application with the Registrar's Office by the date specified in the academic calendar for the semester in which you plan to graduate. If a degree application was filed the previous semester, but the requirements were not fulfilled, a new degree application must be filed for the semester in which you actually graduated.

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II. Department Requirements

1. Declare and Be Admitted for Ph.D. Study

When admitted with a B.S. degree, you must declare intention to study for the Ph.D. degree by the time the M.S. degree is awarded, but no later than four semesters after being admitted to the graduate school.

When admitted with a M.S. degree, your admission is into the Ph.D. program and no further action is needed.

2. Choose a Dissertation Advisor

Your thesis advisor will guide you in all aspects of your academic and research programs. Your thesis advisor usually is from the MANE department but can be from a different department. If you choose to do a dissertation with an advisor from another department, then a doctoral committee co-chair from within the MANE department is required.

This must be done within fifteen (15) credit hours completed in the Ph.D. program, but not later than the end of the second semester after being admitted for Ph.D. study.

3. File a Graduate Plan of Study

A Graduate Plan of Study, lists all the courses and thesis credits you'll take for your Ph.D. degree, and must be prepared and submitted to the Associate Chair for Graduate Studies for their review and signature. Courses are determined by the needs of the research with the guidance of the thesis advisor. Of the sixty (60) credit hours past the M.S. degree, a minimum of twelve (12) credits must be course work. No more than three (3) of these credits may be Independent Study (MANE 6940). At least one-half of the credits from courses must have the MANE prefix. (A revised Plan of Study may be needed if courses listed on the original are not offered or more appropriate courses need to be taken.)

This must be done within twenty-one (21) credit hours completed in the Ph.D. program, but no later than the end of the third semester after being admitted for Ph.D. study.

4. Take the Oral Department Qualifying Exam (DQE)

After you're admitted to the doctoral program, you must pass an oral Department Qualifying Exam (DQE) to be advanced to doctoral student status. The purpose of the oral DQE is to evaluate the intangible factors essential for a successful Ph.D. program that coursework does not show. You will be questioned to determine if you have the capability to think, to synthesize information, to speculate based on background knowledge, to demonstrate more than textbook problem-solving skills, and can convey your thoughts and ideas clearly to others.

You must take the DQE after one semester after earning your Master's degree or after thirty (30) credit hours of graduate work if no Master's degree is sought. Specifically, if you finish your Master's degree in the Spring or Summer (or 30 credit hours) you will take the exam at the beginning of the following Spring semester, and if you finish your Master's degree (or 30 credits) in the Fall, you will take the exam the following Fall term. If your entering with a Master's degree, you will take the exam at the beginning of their second semester at Rensselaer. This applies to both full-time and part-time students. If the DQE is not taken within the time limit, then you'll be given a failing grade. By the time you take the DQE, you must have identified an advisor who will provide a written reference for you. To be allowed to take the exam, you must have earned a minimum grade point average of 3.33 based on the courses taken in a Master's degree program or from an equivalent number of courses if a Master's degree was not earned.

The exam will be given at the beginning of the Fall and Spring semesters in the first week of classes over one to two days. Three faculty members (thesis advisor is excluded) will question you for approximately one (1) hour in two areas of your choice from a list of areas. Relevant applied mathematics questions will be included. The areas to choose from are:

Controls

Heat Transfer & Thermodynamics

Design

Dynamics

Manufacturing

Solid Mechanics

Fluid Mechanics

Flight Mechanics & Aerodynamics

Engineering Computation

Nuclear Radiation

Reactor Engineering & Physics

 

 

Sample questions and information about potential topics are available in JEC 2049. You will be notified of the examination time and date 1 week before the exam. Prior to the exam, you're encouraged to meet with examining committee members to discuss appropriate subjects on which you may be quizzed. Questions will be at the first-year graduate-student level.

After all the DQEs have been given for a semester, examiners will meet to discuss the results and determine the outcome. You will be notified shortly thereafter. Note that inability to answer a question due to language difficulties could be treated as an inability to answer due to technical deficiencies. The possible outcomes are:

(a) you receive an unconditional pass,

(b) you receive a conditional pass and upon completion of the condition, you will be advanced to doctoral student status,

(c) you fail one or both areas, but you're allowed to retake the exam one time (no more than one re-take will be allowed), and

(d) you fail and must leave the PhD program (in this case, you may choose to obtain a Master's degree instead, if you do not already have a Master's degree from RPI, and provided your performance is at a satisfactory level for a Master's degree).

5.  Form a Doctoral Committee

The committee composition is determined through consultations between you and your thesis advisor. The committee is composed of a minimum of four full-time tenure-track faculty (thesis advisor is the committee chair plus three other members) and at least two Department faculty members must be on the committee; one member must be from outside the Department. Members from outside the Institute are acceptable if approved by the Department Chair; these members would be in addition to the four full-time tenure-track faculty.

This must be done within twenty-seven (27) credit hours completed in the Ph.D. program but no later than the end of the third semester after being admitted for Ph.D. study.

6. Take the Candidacy Exam

    The oral Candidacy Exam is focused on your doctoral dissertation research proposal. You will present your proposal in sufficient detail (in writing before the exam so the committee can study it and orally during the exam) so that the doctoral committee can assess your progress, goals, future research plans, and investigation rigor. The committee can recommend alternative approaches, suggest modifications to goals and tasks, require you to take additional courses, or provide other guidance to you. Note that you must be able to respond well in English against potentially aggressive questioning.

    This must be done within twenty-seven (27) credit hours completed in the Ph.D. program but no later than the end of the fourth semester after being admitted for Ph.D. study.

7.  Defend the Dissertation

    You must present a public seminar on your thesis. After the public session is over, the Doctoral Committee will examine and discuss your thesis with you in private. The committee can accept, reject, or ask for changes in your thesis. Note that a you must be able to defend well in English against potentially aggressive questioning.

    This is done when you and your thesis advisor agree it is time, but must be done within ten years of being admitted for Ph.D. study.

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III. Transfer Students

If you're a transfer student, you must adhere to the above requirements. However, transfer students often have taken courses at another university. According to the Institute residency requirements, up to forty-five (45) credit hours can be transferred and be applied to the ninety (90) credit hours required for the Ph.D. degree. Often these forty-five (45) credit hours include thirty (30) credit hours for earning a M.S. degree at a different school.

Transfer students must take a minimum of fifteen (15) credit hours of courses at Rensselaer at the appropriate level.

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IV. Waivers

The Associate Chair for Graduate Studies, in consultation with the Department Chair and the thesis advisor, may grant you a waiver to these requirements in very unusual and limited circumstances. The waiver request must be in writing and signed by you and your thesis advisor. The waiver must be submitted prior to contravention of these regulations.

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V. Enforcement

    If you're not in compliance with these requirements you'll be subject to receiving a warning from the Associate Chair for Graduate Studies. You will have one semester to make satisfactory arrangements (in consultation with the Associate Chair for Graduate Studies) to come back into compliance. If you do not make these arrangements, then you will be prevented from registering the following semester and subject to losing your Ph.D. status.

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VI. Practical Time Line

Doctorate Timeline

You'll need to:

When:

Declare and be admitted for Ph.D. study 

 Start

Choose a thesis advisor

By end of 1st semester or start of 2nd semester

Take the Oral Department Qualifying Exam

1st attempt start of 2nd semester, pass by start of 3rd semester

File a Graduate Plan of Study

By end of 3rd semester or start of 4th semester

Form a Doctoral Committee

By end of 3rd semester or start of 4th semester

Take the Doctoral Candidacy Exam

By end of 4th semester or start of 5th semester

Defend your Dissertation

When advisor, committee, and you agree

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VII. Graduate Seminar:

    Each full-time student must register each semester for Graduate Seminar MANE-6900 and attend the required number of seminars.

This degree is awarded under the auspices of the Office of Graduate Education when the thesis is directed toward making an original contribution to fundamental knowledge in a particular field or in an interdisciplinary field. A dissertation that is scholarly, creative, original, and publishable may deal also with the relation of a discipline to educational problems and objectives within the field.