Visiting faculty, visiting scholars, research fellows, and advanced graduate students may attend this part as observers, if they receive prior approval from the examinee and the Principal Advisor. Please submit an Approval form to the PhD Office. However, attendance during the final portion of the questioning period, the deliberations, and the vote itself is limited to the members of the examining committee.
Voting is by secret ballot.
Only members of the official exam committee are eligible to vote. Five members of the committee constitute a quorum. To be eligible to vote, an examiner must have been present throughout a substantial part of the exam and during the final discussion. At the conclusion of the exam, the chair tallies the votes of the members and records the results of the exam on the University Oral Exam Form. Within five days of the examination, this form needs to be sent to the Program Administrator who records the results in NSI student.