Doctoral Closure Guidelines

Closure Exercise: Dissertation Guidelines

A doctoral degree will be awarded to students who have satisfactorily completed all dissertation closure requirements, as prescribed by the student’s academic program.

Entry into closure will occur after the student has passed qualifying exams, completed all course work, and complied with any other programmatic requirements, thereby permitting the student to enter the proposal and dissertation phases of study. Students must be continuously enrolled from this point forward. Generally, this is accomplished by enrolling in dissertation hours. If a student is unable to maintain continuous enrollment, he or she may apply for a leave of absence. If a leave of absence is granted for a particular semester, the student will be exempt from this requirement for that semester. Failure to obtain a leave of absence will, in most cases, require retroactive registration in at least one dissertation credit hour for each semester in which the student was out of compliance.

The dissertation closure exercise shall carry a minimum of 12 credit hours. If the student does not finish the dissertation closure exercise during the 12 credit hours, the student will be required to enroll in the program’s continuous enrollment course in all subsequent semesters (excluding summer) until the exercise is complete.

Formatting and Style

Approval by the dissertation closure committee shall indicate the passing of the dissertation closure exercise. The committee determination on substantive quality and acceptability of the dissertation is final. The student may appeal a negative committee decision based only on procedural issues. The appeal is made to the Dean of the College in which the student’s program is housed.

The dissertation closure exercise must include a written component prepared in accordance with the effective formatting and style guidelines of the Office of Graduate Education. Formatting and style guidelines are developed by the Associate Vice Chancellor for Graduate Education in consultation with the UIS Graduate Council and the Dean of the Library, or their designees. Upon final approval, a hard copy of the dissertation shall be housed in University Archives. An electronic copy may be submitted and made available through an approved online repository in accordance with UIS procedures and exceptions for restricting availability to external parties.