Graduate School | Weecology Wiki

Committee Meetings

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Scheduling a time to meet

Committee meetings usually only need to be an hour long.

It can be very tricky to find a time when all committee members are free (especially if there are 5 of them because of WEC). The process below is one way this can happen:

Email all members to ask which days within a 1-2 month range they’re completely busy/traveling/unavailable.
Create a schedule form to figure out the specific times each member is available, restricting this to the days in which everyone is not completely unavailable. We recommend [When Is Good] (http://whenisgood.net/). On the website, you create a calendar of possible days and times.
- Use 30 minute blocks of time so that you have the best chance of finding time that fits everyone’s schedules (given UF’s class schedule available often doesn’t line up with the hours of the day evenly).
- Check Morgan and Ethan’s weecology calendars to block out times with any meetings and classes already scheduled.
- The site creates a link to the calendar of available times.
- Email this to all committee members, and ask them to fill it out by clicking on their available times (which will turn green).
- After everyone has filled it out, you access the calendar with a unique code that shows how many and which members are available for each time period. If you’re lucky, there will be at least one time period during which everyone is free.
Email all the members back letting them know what time the meeting is and where it will be held.
Send a reminder email 24-48 hours in advance that includes an agenda.

Rooms that can be reserved for meetings

In Newins-Ziegler, rooms 135 or 376. Person to contact to reserve the room is Elaine Culpepper (birdrule@ufl.edu).
Rooms can also be reserved in McCarty D. Person to contact to reserve is Virginia Mauldin in McCarty D 1008.

Defending

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Order of operations once the defense date has been set:

You send out your dissertation to the committee no later than 2 weeks before the defense date.
1 week before the defense I will send an email to the committee letting them know how we’ll manage the defense (see below).
1 day before your defense, you send out a reminder to the committee.
Day of: every defense has a life of its own. Because the exit seminar is so disjunct from the defense, we like to have the students prepare a short presentation (aim for ~ a 20-30 minute overview split evenly among the chapters). This helps make sure everyone’s pointed the right direction. We’ve done this with going around the room one by one asking questions but I like to have questioning open during the talk. It makes it more conversational and reduces pressure on committee members to “perform” for the other committee members when it’s “their turn”. At the end of your talk, we’ll open it up for any last questions. Like with the quals/proposal defense, we’ll have you step out of the room (virtually) so that the committee can make sure we’re on the same page. If this takes a while it’s because it’s been a long couple of years and we haven’t seen each other in a while and probably has nothing to do with you :simple_smile:. Then you’ll come in, give your talk, answer questions,. We’ll have you step out when we’re done with questions. The committee will share thoughts. Then we’ll bring you in and let you know what the consensus was and what you need to do to the dissertation (if anything) for a) submitting to the grad school and b) submitting to a journal. If this was in person, you’d want to make sure you have all your paperwork present and we’d sign at the end and that would be it. Karen will either send a form via DocuSign or it will be passed around via email.

On the process for incorporating committee edits:

I have never heard of needing to re-defend a dissertation - not saying that it never happens, just that I’ve never been at an institution where that occurs. Typically if the committee decides edits/reanalysis is necessary what happens is the committee will decide at the meeting if the committee members want to see a revised version or if they are minor/straightforward enough that the advisor can sign off on the revisions. If they are minor then you’ll make the changes, I’ll look them over and I will sign off for the committee. If they are major, then you will work with the committee member with the concerns to fix them - following their suggestions and making sure they are happy with things before the committee signs off. After the defense, all the discussion typically occurs ad hoc and does not require the entire committee to meet again.

Obtaining Florida Residency

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

When you start at UF you won’t be a Florida resident for tuition purposed (unless you already lived in Florida), and that is fine . Various graduate handbooks and forms say you must apply for Florida residency for tuition once you qualify, which is possible after living here for 1 year. This is important because “Out-of-state graduate students should add $17,394 to projected tuition/fees.”

Once you have been a resident of Florida for a year, you can petition to be reclassified as a Florida resident for tuition purposes. This happens through the registrar’s office, and involves a lot of paper. Basically, you gather all the documents you can find that have your name, a Florida address, and a date at least one year ago, and hand in a packet to the Registrar. I think the site says you need at least two documents, but it’s much better to be over-prepared (if they deny your petition you may appeal, but this takes a long time and it’s best to avoid it).

Here is UF’s official website about this: https://admissions.ufl.edu/cost-and-aid/residency

The documents that worked for Erica were: (everything should be a copy, they won’t return these things to you)

Florida drivers license
Voter registration card
Apartment lease (the whole thing, not just the cover page)
Utility bills for past 12 months
Renters insurance policy

This document is from an IFAS Dean and outlines some of the official guidelines with links to the relevant Florida laws. Note that it states you cannot apply for residency if you only came to Florida for school. Yet this is the case for everybody in the Weecology lab, and everyone who has applied for residency has gotten it.

The people checking this read the law to the letter, which is something like “Legal documents showing residency of 12 months prior to the start of the semester”. After talking with a few people it seems the easiest way to do this is, as soon as you move to Gainesville and before your 1st semester starts go get your Florida drivers license, car registration, and register to vote. At the start of your 2nd year here these will then be legal docs that are dated 12 months from the present. If you really want to drive it home you can also do the Declaration of Domicile along with your license, voter registration, etc.

Shawn first submitted the following and got denied:

Florida DL (not 12 months old, I got it in October my 1st semester).
Most recent UFL paystub.
Graduate assistantship letter from Ethan (showing the beginning date of 1 year prior).
1st page of my lease (dated more than 12 months prior).

He went thru the appeal process and got approved submitting the following:

My full 12 page lease (My thinking was the 1st page was not a “legal document”).
12 months of rent check copes that my bank saves online.

Here is the form for residency reclassification: https://registrar.ufl.edu/pdf/residencyreclass.pdf

Renata submitted these and got denied twice:

Full lease starting July before my first semester
Florida DL
Vehicle registration
Letters of offer & appointment The second time also
Copies of my rent checks starting in July before my first semester

I then called the Registrar and found out I also needed to provide my tax return (proving I filed as an independent and paid my own living expenses). They waived it for me and approved my reclassification, because as a grad student they knew I must be filing as an independent(?), but for anyone new it is good to know. The language in the form confused me - it doesn’t matter if you’re older or younger than 24, you need to submit a copy of your most recent tax return.

Graduate Funding Opportunities

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

You will typically enter the lab with guaranteed funding from a combination of Research Assistantships (RAs; to work on grant funded research), Teaching Assistantships (TAs; helping to teach college courses), and University Fellowships (conceptually support to work on your own research, but at UF these typically also include a TA requirement). If students are interested there are additional opportunities to apply for fellowships that can allow you to focus more directly your research projects.

PhD Students prior to starting the program

Simons Graduate Fellowships in Ecology and Evolution

Students who are US citizens, US nationals, or permanent residents

National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program

International students

Current and Aspiring University Faculty Fellowship: This initiative supports current and aspiring university faculty that are affiliated with or currently employed at African, Asian, Latin American, or Caribbean universities to pursue their PhD in social science or other conservation-related fields anywhere in the world.
Fonseca Leadership Program: Open to nationals of eligible countries (Belize, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and Suriname) who are already enrolled/are interested in enrolling in a master’s or PhD program to tackle conservation challenges through advanced education and research.

Students working on Everglades projects

ForEverglades Fellows

If you’re interested in applying for a fellowship talk to Morgan or Ethan.

Students interested in experience in government science roles

Gulf Research Program’s Science Policy Fellowship

Graduating

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Congratulations! You’re beginning to think about defending and graduating! You maybe asking yourself: What should I do? You’re in the right place. Start with:

Planning your Defense Date

Think about what semester you are aiming at and why.
- The why is important. Do you have a job to leave for? That is a slightly different conversation/set of constraints than hitting the end of your funding or just being ready to leave.
- *Remember: Morgan and Ethan will not do defenses between May 15th and August 15th, so take this into consideration. There are some work arounds if you need to finish in the summer but they will require the Clear Prior route (see FAQs below).
- Do you want to finish mid-semester to take a job elsewhere? If you are not on an RA for a full semester, it can cause major issues with tuition waivers (the university will rescind your tuition waiver and ask you to pay out of state tuition). If this is part of your plan, it can be dealt with but when you talk to your advisor about your plan (step 3 below) make sure to bring this up!
Make a draft timeline
- This is important because it will help you understand where you are in the process and what issues there may be with your preferred timeline.
- To make a draft timeline go to the grad school editorial deadlines website.
- Find the semester you want to graduate (i.e. receive your diploma). Find the entry that says “Final Submission”. If your preferred semester is in the summer, you should pick the ‘Clear Prior’ date for the semester before your preferred semester. In either case, this is the date by which everything needs to be submitted - all paperwork, including the final format dissertation and defense paperwork.
- Construct your ‘drop dead timeline’. This timeline is the latest you can do everything and still have a chance to submit by the Final Submission date. This gives you the maximum amount of time to finish everything, but also gives the minimum amount of time for committee review and for you to do edits after your defense. This is not the timeline to aspire to, but it is the timeline that will get it done.
  - defense deadline: what is the date 2 weeks before ‘final submission’? This is the late day your defense can be scheduled and still have time to do edits for final submission.
  - full dissertation draft to committee deadline: what is the date two weeks before your defense deadline? This is the last date to have your full dissertation (an introduction chapter, 3 scholarly chapters, and a conclusion/tying it all together chapter to your committee in near final formating. Remember, this deadline is asking your committee to probably read 100+ pages in less than 2 weeks when they are already super busy. Your committee wants you to succeed and they will do this for you if this is what you need, but it will not fill them with joy and happiness.
- Assess your completion state relative to the timeline
  - Do you feel good? Hyperventiliatory? Pessimistic? Whatever you feel, please proceed to step 3, even if you think it’s impossible. Your advisor is experienced and creative. They may think of things that you haven’t realized yet that will make this more possible.
Talk to your advisor
- At least 2 semesters before you want to graduate, talk to you advisor. Hopefully the two of you have had a few conversations about this starting in your 4th year, so this shouldn’t be a big deal. Tell them what you’re thinking, walk them through your timeline, and tell them how you feel about your timeline given the state of each of your chapters. The two of you will work through options that make sense, brainstorm possible solutions to any issues, and come to consensus on the best timeline for you.
Talk to your graduate program coordinator
- Now that you and your advisor agree on a semester for graduation, contact Karen Bray (SNRE) or Ivette Hernandez (WEC) depending on your graduate program. They will make sure your grad school requirements are complete and that you aren’t missing anything vital. Do this as soon as the semester you wish to graduate is clear to you in case you are missing credits.
Check with your committee
- Let your committee know that you are starting to plan your defense. Give them a brief update on the status of your chapters (attach any chapters that have been published or submitted). Let them know what your tentative timeline is (i.e. a defense no later than your drop dead date) and ask about any known conflicts during a 1 month window up to your drop-dead defense date.
Set your defense date
- chat with your advisor about dates your committee is available for a defense. Committee availability may require some rethinking about your schedule, especially if the drop-dead deadline was already going to be difficult. Notify your committee as soon as your advisor and you agree on the date so that they can put it on their calendars.
Schedule your exit seminar
- Both WEC and SNRE require an exit seminar. It does not have to be the same semester that you defend, but it must occur before you can graduate.

Congrats! You are now officially in the endgame of your dissertation! The next phase involves finishing up your dissertation, formatting it for UF, and presenting it to you peers and committee.

Navigating the Bureaucracy

There’s a lot of bureaucracy at UF related to graduating. This list provides tips for navigating the various forms, deadlines, and formatting rules related to getting to this end part of your process.

Initiate the graduation process
- Contact Ivette Hernandez (WEC) or Karen Bray (SNRE) as soon as you have a date for your dissertation defense that your committee has agreed to, contact your deparment/school’s academic advisor, and they will prepare the packet of forms you will need to have your committee sign.
Stay on top of deadlines!
- There are a bunch of deadlines for the grad school and you do not want to miss them! Check on the grad school editorial deadlines website and emblazon them somewhere.
- If you are going to Clear Prior, make sure you are following the deadlines for the semester before you intend to graduate.
Download the checklist.
- There are a ton of forms and things you need to do in your last semester.Most of these forms will be given to you by the graduate coordinator, ( who you will also turn them back to once they are signed). The ProQuest publishing agreement (different from the UF publishing agreement) is a little puzzling, and needs to be handed to the Editorial office directly by you (either in person or email– instructions are on the checklist). Even though there is an “optional” section of this form about having ProQuest handle copyright registration of your dissertation for you, I [Ellen] was told UF can’t be involved in this and you would have to contact ProQuest directly. Despite all this publishing stuff you’ve just signed, you will not be automatically given a bound copy of your dissertation. You may be able to order one from ProQuest here.
Formatting your dissertation
- There are a variety of sections that you don’t normally have in a paper that you need for a dissertation (Acknolwegdments, Introductory and Concluding chapter, etc). Seeing examples can be helpful. You can search for and download recent dissertations from your department here: http://cms.uflib.ufl.edu/etd/searchuf
- Formatting will be annoying. There’s an office to help you/tell you you’re doing it wrong. They recommend downloading the dissertation template here and just pasting your own text into the appropriate sections. They seem to be moving pages around on their help website and breaking links all the time, but at this moment there are some examples of things like table of contents here.
First Submission
- UF requires a draft of your dissertation be turned in very early during the semester you intend to graduate (or defend for Clear Prior). Despite what they say, your dissertation doesn’t need to be “done” by first submission. You just need to have some words in all the parts for them to check the formatting. Mine was missing an acknowledgements section: that was one of the things they told me I needed to change. However the more complete your dissertation is at this point, the easier final submission will be.

) Final Submission

Your dissertation really does have to be done for final submission. Make sure you corrected all the things they flagged on your first submission, and your committee has all signed off on this version.

Clear Prior

Clearing prior basically means that you have completed all of the requirements to graduate after the final submission deadline has passed and you will graduate the next semester (i.e., finishing by the clear prior deadline in summer 2020 will let you graduate in fall 2020). If you meet the clear prior deadline, you are exempt from the standard rule that you need to be registered for at least 3 credits in the semester in which you graduate. You are, however, still allowed to be registered for credits and be paid as an RA; you are simply exempted from the normal rule if you choose.

The way this works behind the scenes is that the editorial office with confirm that you’ve met all the requirements for clear prior (first submission [regular deadline], final submission and final acceptance/clearance by the clear prior deadline). Notice that you’ve met the clear prior requirements will then be sent to the graduate school offices. If you are not registered for any credits, you will be verified as clear prior. If you are registered for credits, they will reach out to confirm whether you want to remain registered for credits or be verified as clear prior. For example, if you want to continue being paid as an RA and, therefore, need to be registered for credits, then you will not be verified as clear prior and have basically just met all of the next semester’s (your graduating semester) deadlines very early.

Exit seminar

You will be giving an exit seminar to the department during WEC’s usual seminar time. I recommend making this as close as possible to your actual defense date with your committee – theoretically your committee will go to your talk and then be prepared for your defense. As of Fall 2018 they are using a zoom room to record all the talks, which means you can invite people to join remotely with the link. It will also hopefully be recorded – you can email Tom Barnash and he will give you a link to the recording (I have been unsuccessful at getting a downloadable file).

Commencement

You have to order regalia from the bookstore pretty early in the semester (i.e., deadline is in October for Dec. graduation)
Your diploma will be mailed to the address indicated in your ONE.uf account – make sure it’s correct

Odds and ends

Inform Donna that you will be ending your position well in advance. This will help make sure that everything that needs to happen for you to end your UF position happens smoothly.
If you had a pcard, close it out by emailing the pcard team (pcard@ufl.edu) a few days before your last day. They will cancel it and you are supposed to shred it yourself.
Don’t forget to leave your lab key, and any computer equipment you’ve been using

Dissertation & Thesis Proposals

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We believe that we should not require students to do things that do not have direct training benefits and that any training benefits inherently trade-off against the time, effort, and stress associated with an activity. Therefore, we use a proposal approach with direct training for real-life activities/interactions that is intended to minimize stress and wasted effort.

The standard dissertation proposal in the lab is to write a 5 page grant proposal in the style of an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship. Good examples of this type of proposal can be found on https://ogrants.org. The goal of this short format proposal is to give you the opportunity to gain experience with grant writing skills, which typically involve clearly communicating nascent research ideas and feasibility in a clearly proscribed professional format that you may see in the future.

We also recognize that given the diverse career interests of folks in the labs that in some cases there may be different approaches to the proposal aspect of the PhD that are optimal given your interests. If you would like to discuss an alternative approach please let your advisor know.

Timing

Some time during years 2-4 of the PhD program, typically during year 3. This is far enough into your program for you to have thought thoroughly about your research and make a plan to base the proposal on.

Steps for the Proposal

At least 2 months before your qualifying exam discuss your plan for your proposal with your advisory.
Draft your proposal.
At least 1 month before your qualifying exam given your draft proposal to your advisor for feedback.
At least 2 weeks before your qualifying exam send your proposal to your entire committee.

Proposals written by weecology students

Qualifying Exams

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

We believe that we should not require students to do things that do not have direct training benefits and that any training benefits inherently trade-off against the time, effort, and stress associated with an activity. Therefore, we use a qualifying exam approach with direct training for real-life activities/interactions that is intended to minimize stress and wasted effort.

We believe that a good assessment of having the breadth and depth of understanding necessary to be a professional scientist is the ability to hold a scientific conversation about your research with other researchers and stakeholders. Can you talk about how your research fits into the current state of the field? Can you explain the choices you’ve made with respect to data and analyses? Can highlight how your research differs from the current state of the field, conceptually and in its strengths and weaknesses? This mirrors real world interactions like questions during presentations, chalk talks on job interviews, and interacting with others online about your scientific products.

Therefore our qualifying exams focus on a discussion of your research centered on your proposal. They are typically scheduled for 1.5 hours and will be conversational in nature. You should prepare a short presentation to remind your committee members of that material in your proposal and provide a starting point for the conversation. Beyond writing your proposal and preparing the presentation no additional studying specific to the exam is necessary.

SNRE Students

SNRE has a very flexible policy related to qualifying exams, which allows us to design our own approach. Based on principles outlined above we use a qualifying exam that is a single 2 hour oral discussion (no written component) where the committee engages in a discussion with the student about the student’s research. You provide your proposal to the full committee at least two weeks before the qualifying exam to help committee members focus their questions. We don’t restrict how the questions relate to the proposal, for example, questions can be conceptually or methodologically focused, involve justifying your approach/hypothesis, or asking you to provide more background on a concept or theory you are using for your research. The goal is for the exam to closely reflect something that we all regularly have to do with reviewers, colleagues, and collaborators: explain and justify our research ideas.

Timing of Qualifying “Exams”

Some time during years 2-4 of the PhD program, typically during year 3. This is far enough into your program for you to have thought thoroughly about your research and allow to you write a proposal.

Steps and for Qualifying “Exams”

At least 1 month (and ideally 2-3) before you want to do the “exam” poll your committee for available dates and times.
At the time you poll your committee remind your advisor to send an email explaining the exam format to the committee.
Once you have a two hour block that works for everyone schedule a room. This can be the unconference room if it’s available (home territory, lots of white boards, good remote access; what’s not to love).
Notify your committee about the scheduled time and remind them of the structure of the “exam”.
At least 1 month before the “exam” send your proposal to your advisor for feedback.
At least 2 weeks before the “exam” send your revised proposal to the entire committee.
When you send your proposal to the committee remind your advisor to email them to remind them about the exam format.
The day before the “exam” send a reminder to your committee of the time and location.
The morning of the “exam” send a reminder to your committee of the time and location (yes, this seems excessive, but you’d be surprised how many times we’ve had issues with committee members not showing up.

SNRE Rules

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Committee

An SNRE committee needs to have at least 4 people. Three committee members need to be SNRE Affiliate Faculty, which means they must be on their list of faculty that are officially SNRE faculty. The fourth member can (optionally) not be affiliated with SNRE, but must either faculty at UF in a academic department or be a Special Member from outside UF who “brings special expertise related to student’s dissertation research.” To appoint a Special Member to the committee you need to consult with the SNRE Academic Advisor.

If there is more than one UF faculty member who you would like to serve on an SNRE committee, any UF faculty can become SNRE affiliated by sending a letter to the SNRE Academic Advisor. They must be approved, which can take a few months. If you want to pursue this option make sure you start early so that the relevant faculty member becomes an affiliate before you need to take your qualifying exam.

The SNRE forms say that 50% of your committee cannot be from the same department, but historically this has not been enforced.

Exams

Qualifying Exams

Quals can take whatever format you and your committee decides. There is no formal guide on this, but there is some language about them in the SNRE Student Guide

Final Exams (Thesis/Disseration Defense)

Substituting Committee members for Exams

Sometimes it is not possible to find a time that works for all of your committee members for an exam. In this case it is possible to substitue another faculty member for the committee member who cannot make it.

Substituting members at qualifying and final examination: If a supervisory committee member cannot be present at the student’s final defense, a Graduate Faculty member in the same academic area may substitute for the absent committee member. The substitute should sign the Final Examination form on the left side, in the space provided for committee members, noting the name of the absent member.

The chair of the student’s major academic unit also must indicate the reason for the absence and state that the absent member agreed to this substitution at the final examination.

The substitute should not sign the ETD signature page. The original committee member must sign.

From https://gradcatalog.ufl.edu/graduate/degrees/#Doctoral_Requirements

Key documentation

SNRE Graduate Student Guide
SNRE Forms and Planning Page
UF Graduate Policy Manual
UF PhD Requirements - includes supervisory committee details

WEC Rules

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Some of this is a summary of stuff in the WEC Graduate Student Handbook, and some of it is unwritten rules that are not clear at all from reading the Handbook.

Committee

A WEC committee needs to have 5 members total, with 2 members from WEC and 1 member from a non-WEC department. You should have a committee by the end of your second semester.

Qualifying Exams

You have to take quals by the end of your third semester. There’s a written part (from each committee member, you’ll get a set of questions you have to answer in a day) and then an oral part (could be related to written part, happens a couple weeks after written part). As soon as your quals are scheduled (probably a couple of months in advance), you should email each committee member individually to ask what topics they would like you to brush up on. They might give you a list of specific papers to read, or a general topic like “study metacommunities,” or they might not tell you to study anything in particular at all. A week or two before your quals, email each committee member again to remind them of the dates of your quals, remind them what they told you to study, and ask if they have anything to add. Each committee member gives you a written exam with rules set by that member, so it may be open- or closed-book (i.e. are you allowed to look stuff up), and a time limit (i.e. 8 hours). Generally the committee will send their exams to your adviser who will dispense them to you at the beginning of each day (or whenever you choose to have them dispensed). In between the written exams and the oral exam you may or may not get any feedback from your committee on how you did. In the oral exam, your committee may ask you to clarify or expand on your answers from the written exam.

Coursework

See “Summary of PhD Degree Credit Requirements” section in the WEC Graduate Student Handbook [here] (http://www.wec.ufl.edu/grad/October%202014%20WEC%20Grad%20Handbook.pdf)

Clarifications on this section:

None of the upper credit limits are actually limits on the number of credits that count towards the degree except for Supervised Teaching. For example, you can, and should, take more than 15 Doctoral Dissertation Research credits between quals and defense.
For Supervised Teaching (WIS 6940), you can take as many of these credits as you want while TAing/teaching, but only 5 credits will count towards your PhD limit.
You need 90 credits to get a PhD, but it doesn’t actually matter where those credits come from. You don’t need 30 credits from a master’s, for example. The list in this section of the Handbook is just one possible way to divvy up credits.
Many things can be petitioned, just make sure your committee is on board with this. Your advisor creates the petition, with the support of your committee members, and then gives it to the graduate coordinator for approval.
Credits that are transferred to UF initially only count towards total number of credits for PhD, and then your committee decides what the content of those transfer credits count towards, such as if they fulfill areas of emphasis reqs.
You do have to take 12 credits with either a WIS or ALS prefix, though special topics (WIS 6905) can count towards those so it should be easy to fulfill.
Speaking of Special Topics (WIS 6905), the intention of this type of credit is for “independent teaching”. So, if you find that you’re spending substantial time teaching yourself something, you can get that registered as Special Topics. Then your advisor, or whoever is overseeing your Special Topics, just has to give you a grade for your work at the end. You can only take 5 credits of this type per semester, but can take many more than that throughout your PhD (see first point).
Apparently if you take enough credits in a particular area, it is pretty easy to get a non-thesis master’s for that work, and this often happens accidentally.
The other Special Topics are WIS 6934, and these are more formal classes taught by whoever that are oftentimes one-off. You can also count more than 10 of these credits towards your PhD (see first point).

Graduating - SNRE

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This document outlines the official steps required by SNRE and the UF Grad school to graduate.

Notes I’ll be making as I move toward graduation. This will eventually compliment these notes.

SNRE Checklist

Course requirements (See SNRE Plan of Study form for details)

SNRE Seminar. Once while signed up for the 1 course credit, and once not signed up.
A Principles of Ecology course. (note Shawn got this waived by having a BS in ecology).
1 each of a Natural Science, Social Science, and Sustainability course. 3 courses of Research/Methods. For a list of which courses count toward these see here.

Concentration

SNRE also requires a concentration. This encompasses 12 credit hours (at the PhD level, 6 for masters) of coursework. There is essentially a concentration for each department in the university, of which any can be chosen from. You then meet the requirement by taking 12 credits from that department. See the list here under “Standard Concentrations”. Alternatively you can choose a concentration which has a more varied selection of courses, see the above page under “Concentrations that require additional hours”. In either case, the credit hours that count toward a concentration also count for the other SNRE degree requirements.

Other requirements

Presentation at the SNRE Seminar. You must present at the weekly SNRE seminar. There is no requirement on when this happens, but people generally do it in their last semester and present some form of their defense.

Grad School Checklist

The UF Graduate school requires:

90 graduate level credit hours.
At least a 3.0 GPA.
Apply to graduate and be registered in your final semester.
Passing the qualifying exam
Passing the defense
Submit a correctly formatted dissertation.
Submit the Graduate Survey
Submit the Proquest agreement

All these steps are logged in the Graduate Information Management Systems (GIMS). They also have very strict deadlines outlined below. There is also an official checklist.

Other Notes

Start discussing defense/graduation least 2 semesters before you intend to finish with:

Your advisor - tell you advisor what semester you’re hoping to finish. You’ll have a discussion about whether or not this is feasible and what tradeoffs, constraints might need to be dealt with. Once you have settled on a semester, you should form your time line.
Your committee - Once you and your advisor are happy with you timeline. Contact your committee to see if the general timing works for them. Will people be traveling/unavailable during the week you’re hoping to defend?
Karen Bray - Make sure you’re actually good to graduate. Karen will ensure your grad school requirements are complete and that you aren’t missing anything vital. Do this as soon as the semester you wish to graduate is clear to you in case you are missing credits. Also let Karen know your defense date as soon as you know it. They will provide the set of forms which will be signed by your committee.

Final Semester Milestones

Event	Deadline	Notes
Degree Application	Early in semester	Submitted on ONE.UF
Submit Transmittal letter	Before 1st dissertation submission	this is a form signed only by your committee chair and submitted to Karen. It gives you access to make the 1st dissertation submission.
Dissertation 1st Submission	Mid semester	The dissertation does not have to be complete, or approved by all committee members at this point. This is mostly for a formatting check.
Oral Defense	Before Final dissertation submission	Various forms need to be signed by the committee after a successful defense.
Dissertation Final Submission	Late in semester	The dissertation must be done at this point and approved by all committee members.
Dissertation Final Approval (aka Final clearance)	End of semester	The dissertation must be accepted by the editorial office by this deadline.

Deadlines change by a few days every semester but are generally around the same time. Official deadlines are available at the Editorial Office and the Graduate School Academic Calendar.

Dissertation Submission

You’ll go thru several rounds of submission. The first must be by the 1st submission deadline. In this case the dissertation does not have to be done, a single chapter will do. It’s mostly a formatting check. You’ll get feedback on this version which you’ll need to implement in your final version.

After your defense and the appropriate forms are submitted by Karen you can submit the full, 100% approved by your committee, version of your dissertation. This first “full” submission must be done by the “Final Submission Deadline”.
Once your final dissertation is submitted, the editorial office will likely return it with formatting comments. You may go thru several rounds of this. You must address all their comments and have the dissertation accepted by their office by the Final Approval/Clearance deadline. Once it has this final approval the dissertation aspect is finished.

Clear Prior

See the “Clear Prior” section in the general “Graduation” page in the lab wiki.

Dissertation Formatting

Getting your dissertation formatting correct is several full days worth of work at least. There are a slew of specific guidelines (worth noting is all the rules seem to make sure dissertations look the same as when typewriters were still used).

Main considerations

Your chapters must form one cohesive work. As this is rarely the case with dissertation chapters, you’ll need to make some writing adjustments to at least make them seem this way. Nobody in the editorial office will actually read yours in depth, so it’s not something you should invest a lot of time in.

You must have an Introduction chapter and a Conclusion chapter. These do not need to be full length chapters, just a quick introduction and outlining the contents for the intro, and a wrap up for the conclusion. Shawn’s dissertation was composed of 3 already published manuscripts. The Introduction was the first 1-2 paragraphs from each paper’s Intro, while the conclusion was the last paragraph from each conclusion. They were modified slightly to make them read as one, and each was only 2 pages double spaced.

You should utilize one of formatting templates here https://it.ufl.edu/helpdesk/graduate-resources/ms-word–latex-templates/.
If you’re comfortable in Latex, absolutely use that. There is a template on Overleaf.com titled “University of Florida Thesis Template”. You can see how it was used for a dissertation here. Also, Kristen Sauby has an Rmarkdown template using thesisdown.

Other Resources

Editorial Office Dissertation Format Overview
Official Dissertation Guidelines
Other peoples dissertations

Other Graduation Requirements

Proquest Agreement

Along with the other paperwork you’ll fill out after defending, you’ll get a UF Publishing Agreement form. This specifies when you’d like UF to publish your dissertation and also which parts (either the full dissertation or just the abstract) UF will release to ProQuest, an online repository. Note that when you specify terms with Proquest you give them a non-exclusive licence to sell it, of which you’re granted a 10% royalty (but only if the total royalty payment is > $25). If you'd like Proquest to publish it "open-access" there is a $95 fee.

It’s unclear exactly what Proquest provides as the UF Library will host a copy of your dissertation. If you want a bound copy of your dissertation Proquest does provide that (though several websites online do as well). Regardless you must fill in your details (contact info, dissertation title/abstract) on the Proquest site and submit it for the UF dissertation office to process it, even if in the UF Publishing Agreement your marked “dissertation only”. This must be done by the Final Clearance deadline.

Graduate Survey

The graduate office requires you to fill out a graduate survey administered by NSF. It’s < 10 minutes and is mostly about prior schooling and future plans. All responses in this are optional. Link to survey as of 2019: https://sed-ncses.org/. This must be done by the Final Clearance deadline.

PhD Milestones

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Under development

http://graduateschool.ufl.edu/media/graduate-school/pdf-files/phd-roadmap.pdf