Office of Graduate Study: 
http://www.udel.edu/gradoffice/

Application Procedures:
http://www.udel.edu/gradoffice/applicants/

Thesis manual:
http://www.udel.edu/gradoffice/current/thesismanual.html
UDThesis macros:
http://www.udel.edu/topics/udthesis

Introduction

Degree Programs Graduate studies in Geography at Delaware lead to Master of Arts (M.A.) or Master of Science (M.S.) degrees in Geography or to the Ph.D. in Climatology. Our masters (M.A. and M.S.) programs in Geography reflect a tradition of broad curricular flexibility, with the advice of and close supervision by a primary adviser and a thesis committee. A required, original research thesis is the capstone achievement of every master’s student, and, of course, an original dissertation is required of every Ph.D. student in Climatology. The goal of our masters program has been to prepare our graduate students for admittance to Ph.D. programs here and elsewhere, or for meaningful employment in the private or public sector and in K–12 education.   The goal of our Ph.D. program has been primarily to prepare students for academic careers in higher education and research, but this has not been the only career track chosen by our graduates.

          Typically, our M.A. students study one of several aspects of human, cultural, or environmental geography, while our M.S. students pursue climate or other topics in physical geography. Our students have always learned analysis techniques in addition to geographic content, so courses (inside and outside the department) in remote sensing, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), cartography, statistical and numerical methods, and computer programming are a significant part of the training received by our students, particularly on the M.S. side. In recent years, some students have come to the program with a primary interest in a technical area, such as GIS, and a secondary interest in climate, physical geography, or other systematic field within geography. We have been able to accommodate such interests within the M.S. program, but we primarily regard this as a program in climatology and land-surface processes, and a topical thesis is still required.

          Our Ph.D. degree is in Climatology. We interpret that broadly, with dissertation topics ranging from nearly meteorological analysis of weather patterns to land-surface processes that are most strongly influenced by climate, often playing to our strengths in cryospheric processes.

History Geography at Delaware has a long history dating back to 1925, initially as service courses for education majors. (The early history can be read in Mather, 2004: History of Geography, University of Delaware.) Geography has been an independent department since 1966 beginning with the leadership of Prof. John R. Mather.   Russ Mather had been teaching part-time at Delaware for several years, having already had a distinguished research career as a protégé of C. Warren Thornthwaite at the C. W. Thornthwaite & Associates Laboratory in New Jersey. Prof. Mather served as Chair of the Geography Department for 24 years, and his international reputation within climatology served as a catalyst for building the department’s strength around that specialty. This department thus traces its foundation in climatology to Thornthwaite, whose vision for a scientifically rigorous postgraduate education in geographical climatology was espoused in his 1960 presidential address before the Association of American Geographers.

In the early 1970s, a master’s degree program was initiated, from which the first degree was granted in 1977. In the late 1970s, the department became more focused on climatology, eventually leading to the creation of a Ph.D. program in Climatology as a major within an interdisciplinary Applied Science program. The first Climatology Ph.D. was granted in 1986. Shortly thereafter the Applied Science program was dissolved so that the Climatology Ph.D. was housed within the Geography Department. Since then, we have graduated nearly 30 Ph.D.s. Over two-thirds of them have found permanent jobs in academia (over half in graduate-degree-granting institutions), with the others primarily working in research/consulting firms.

Through the 1990s, our faculty and graduate programs grew slowly but steadily to their current levels: 12 full-time faculty and roughly 30 graduate students. Our undergraduate programs showed remarkable growth during the 1990s, especially with the creation of the interdisciplinary B.S. program in Environmental Science. Our undergraduate programs currently serve approximately 80 Environmental Science majors and another 60 or so in Geography or Geography Education

After graduation A goal for many M.S. students is to continue into our Ph.D. program in Climatology—a route taken by roughly one-third of our M.S. graduates. Accounting for M.S. and M.A. graduates who enter other Ph.D. programs, nearly half of our master’s graduates enter a Ph.D. program, usually with an academic career in mind. Our Ph.D. graduates have been particularly successful in the academic sector, many becoming professors in Ph.D.-granting departments at major universities. The list is ever changing, but our Ph.D.s currently hold tenured or tenure-track faculty positions at Arizona State University, Indiana University (Bloomington), Kent State (Ohio), Ball State (Indiana), and the Universities of Delaware, Georgia (Athens), Kansas (Lawrence), Minnesota (Minneapolis), Montana (Missoula), Nebraska (Lincoln), Oklahoma (Norman), South Carolina (Columbia), and Virginia (Charlottesville). Others are professors in regional universities, such as Northern Illinois University (DeKalb), the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, and Millersville University (Pennsylvania). A number of Ph.D. graduates have found employment in private industry, including environmental services contracting companies and information technology fields.

         Masters students who seek employment directly after graduation instead of further education have found employment with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Scripps Institute of Oceanography, Princeton’s Geophysical Fluids Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL), W. L. Gore and Associates Inc., Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI), Lockheed-Martin, and the Southeast Regional Climate Center in South Carolina, among many other employers. With growing demand for climatological and computer skills (including GIS), we anticipate that the number and quality of employment opportunities for our graduates will continue to increase.

Requirements for the master’s degrees

Course requirements Students in either the Master of Arts or Master of Science program complete at least 24 course credits. Graduate courses at the University of Delaware include any courses numbered 600 or above in any discipline. In addition, students may take 500-level courses from other departments for graduate credit. (The special thesis research courses, 868 and 869, are not counted in these 24 credits.)   All of these courses must be taken for a letter grade unless the course is only offered on a pass/fail basis. Courses applied to a graduate program must be completed with a Grade Point Average of 3.00 (B average) or better, and only courses in which a grade of C– or better is received will count towards a degree. A maximum of nine credits may be transferred into the program, with the permission of the department. These transferred courses may include courses taken at another university, Continuing Education courses taken at the University of Delaware before admission to the graduate program, or courses that qualified for graduate credit but taken while still an undergraduate, so long as those courses exceeded the requirements of the undergraduate degree.

Students regularly take undergraduate courses while enrolled in a graduate program, particularly to improve their skills in mathematics and computer programming. These courses do not count in the student’s graduate GPA, nor do they count toward the minimum full-time requirements that are attached to various funding sources. Any such courses taken as a master’s student in order to fulfill the requirements for later admission to our Ph.D. program in Climatology should be taken for letter-grade credit.

Some undergraduate courses at the 400-level may be taken for graduate credit under Geog 666 Special Problems, so long as arrangements have been made with the instructor for additional work appropriate for receiving graduate credit.

          Thesis Credits Each student must enroll in at least six credits of Geog 869 Master’s Thesis. These credits are over and above the 24 credits of regular courses required. All six credits may be taken at once or, more commonly, they may be taken a few credits at a time during more than one semester. During the thesis research, the student’s adviser will assign a grade of S or U at the end of each semester, and then will change these to a letter grade at the completion of the thesis. (Before registering for these, or for Geog 868 or Geog 666, see the department office staff or your adviser about special section numbers that assign responsibility for these courses to a particular faculty member.)

Once a student has completed all course credits and Master’s Thesis credits required for the degree, the student will typically change to sustaining status. If a student is still taking some classes and needs additional credits to maintain full-time status, Geog 868 Research may be taken for up to nine credits per semester. Geog 868 is graded pass/fail only.

Required Courses Graduate students entering the master’s degree programs are expected to take a two-semester course sequence worth four credits, Geog 600 and Geog 601, which introduce the history of the discipline and some of the research techniques needed for developing a master’s thesis topic. These courses are designed to assist students in keeping with the timetable needed for a timely degree program. No other specific courses are required of all students in any of our graduate degree programs. The advisory committee determines whether a given suite of courses sufficiently prepares a student for the master’s thesis.  The mere completion of 24 graduate credits is not necessarily sufficient.  Particularly in those cases where a thesis topic or adviser changes during the program, additional coursework beyond the 24 credits may be required if the advisory committee deems it necessary. Early and regular consultation with an adviser is necessary for planning each student’s curriculum. 

The Master’s Thesis The master’s thesis must show ability to conduct scholarly research and to report the results in a publishable manner. A well-crafted master’s thesis can be a source for publications that will help obtain Ph.D. admissions and funding, a source of ideas for Ph.D. dissertation topics, an ongoing source of personal pride, and a springboard for a future career. However, none of the characteristics that describe a good master’s thesis can be put down in words that apply to all thesis research topics. There is no minimum page limit, no minimum number of references, no standard order of chapters and chapter titles, or any other such specific, quantifiable limitation. Rather, the definition, guidance, and eventual acceptance of a master’s thesis rely almost entirely on the judgment of the advisory committee.

The Committee .  An advisory committee consisting of three members will evaluate the program of courses and the thesis. Normally, the most important member of the committee is the adviser, who is a member of the faculty of the department. Usually, the adviser is chosen before a thesis topic is worked out, and the adviser will help refine the topic and choose other members of the committee. The professor in charge of the thesis should have established a record of scholarship in the field of the thesis. The definition of faculty includes professional staff that hold secondary faculty appointments within the department. Faculty who have retired or resigned from the university may continue to chair committees of students whose work began under their direction before their retirement or departure from the university.

One of the other members of the committee will be another member of the faculty of the department. The third member will be external to the department—most often a faculty member from another department, but occasionally a faculty member of another university or a qualified professional who is not on the faculty. The department must approve the committee, and this approval will include judging whether members who are not on the faculty of the University of Delaware are appropriate for this role.

All three members of the committee should be able to serve both as advisers during thesis research and evaluators of the quality of the final product. The extent to which committee members other than the primary adviser guide the research varies greatly from project to project, but it is in the student’s interest to bring the other committee members into the research as early and as fully as practical.

The committee determines whether and when the thesis has achieved the level of scope, originality, and quality necessary for a master’s degree. Acceptance of the thesis requires the signatures of all members of the committee. Additionally, the signature of the Chair of the Geography Department indicates acceptance, on behalf the entire department, of the membership and activities of the advisory committee. The thesis must also be signed by the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and by the Vice Provost for Academic Programs and Planning.  See the department’s secretary for assistance regarding the department’s signature memo, correct names and titles needed on the signature pages for higher-level administrators, and other forms that may be required to complete the degree.

The Presentation .  After the adviser and committee members agree that a draft is sufficiently complete, the student will present the results of the thesis to the department. This presentation is in the style of the department’s Friday afternoon seminar series (some may be included in the seminar series), in which a presentation of 30–50 minutes is followed by questions from the audience. (This is in contrast to the style of a Ph.D. dissertation defense, in which a presentation is followed by formal questioning led by the advisory committee.)

In some cases, the presentation will be of a thesis that is essentially in its final form and already approved by the committee. In other cases, the committee may use the presentation and the questions that arise during the presentation to guide their advice on completion of the thesis. Whether the thesis presentation should be viewed as a final presentation of a complete work or as a tool for guiding the final work on a nearly complete thesis is up to the adviser and committee.

Timetable for the Master’s degree.  It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to find a past master’s student whose program tracked the following timetable precisely. Individual variation is expected. A goal of most of our students and faculty is that a full-time graduate student should be able to complete the master’s degree in two years. This schedule provides a reasonable way to adhere to that two-year goal, in which all in-house activities are completed by the end of the fourth semester. Students who take full-time course loads during their first year and who identify an adviser and topic early in that year may find that their second year can be devoted entirely to thesis work, allowing faster completion than this schedule indicates. Students with teaching or research assistantships who take the minimum six credits per semester, or those writing a thesis based on fieldwork during a limited season, will find it difficult to adhere to this schedule.

· First two months:  Meet all faculty members; reduce potential advisers to a short list.

·         By first winter session:  Choose adviser, spend winter session exploring thesis ideas.

·         Second semester:  prepare preliminary proposal for thesis, choose remaining committee members.

·         Summer after first year:  Begin thesis research; finish library research.

·         Third semester:  Complete regular courses; continue with thesis research.

·         Check current regulations and deadlines for submitting an Application for Advanced Degree, which will generally be required a full semester in advance of the intended graduation date.

·         Fourth semester: Complete research; complete draft of thesis; prepare presentation of thesis after committee approval of draft.

·         Second summer:  Complete final editing and changes in response to committee and public suggestions. Prepare clean copies for graduate office according to current University of Delaware specifications. Submit thesis copies to the Office of Graduate Study.

The university stipulates a time limit of five years from entry into the master’s program until completion.

Requirements for the Ph.D.

Entry requirements. Students entering the Ph.D. program in Climatology are expected to have completed a master’s degree. This program does not allow for a direct track to the Ph.D. following the bachelor’s degree. Most Ph.D. students enter from master’s programs in geography or atmospheric science, but students from other sciences and engineering have been admitted. In evaluating applications, besides evidence of overall intellectual capability and topical compatibility of the applicant’s research interest with the department, the faculty will be looking for specific mathematical background (calculus through ordinary differential equations) and for evidence of computer skills, particularly with a general-purpose programming language. 

Students completing a M.S. degree in this department who wish to continue towards the Ph.D. in Climatology must submit a Change of Classification Form to the department. The climatology faculty will evaluate these as they are received, without particular deadlines. Students completing a master’s degree in this department who wish to enter a different PhD program at UD, or students completing other masters degrees from UD who wish to enter the Climatology Ph.D. program, must complete a regular admission application as if entering the program from outside UD.

Course requirements At least three academic years of graduate academic work are normally required for the Ph.D. degree. Students are expected to be in residence (enrolled full-time) at least two continuous years beyond the master’s degree. The University requires at least one continuous academic year of full-time study (nine credit hours per semester) in residence at the University of Delaware (see the graduate Catalog for specific requirements). This residency requirement is sometimes interpreted as requiring a minimum of 18 graduate credits towards the Ph.D., but all individual Ph.D. programs have needed more credits to provide adequate preparation. Course credit earned in our M.S. degree may be applied toward the Ph.D. in Climatology. The definitions of graduate courses and limits on transfers discussed at the beginning of the master’s degree section also apply to the Ph.D.

Students are expected to acquire general knowledge of the entire field of climatology, along with specialized knowledge in two areas, one of which is a subfield of climatology and the other being in technical methods. Typical technical methods include graduate course work in statistics, mathematics, computer science, or related sciences that are relevant to the area of research of the dissertation. Roughly half of the courses applied to the Ph.D. program should be in topical areas related to climatology, and the other half should be in technical, mathematical, and methodological areas needed for climatological research.  Determination that a suite of courses adequately fulfils these requirements is one of the roles of the advisory committee.  The committee will determine if the student has adequately understood these areas, over and above the evidence of the transcript, during the comprehensive examination.

          Dissertation Credits Each student must enroll in at least nine credits of Geog 969 Doctoral Dissertation.  Enrollment for these credits is allowed only after achieving candidacy status (see below). Geog 969 will be given a temporary grade (usually S for satisfactory progress) at the end of each semester, and a final grade will be submitted for the dissertation after completion of the defense. Precandidacy students needing credits to maintain full-time status for funding purposes may take Geog 964 Pre-Candidacy Study for a variable number of credits, pass/fail. Following completion of all requirements except the final dissertation, including the comprehensive examination and the dissertation credits, a student may move to sustaining status.

The Dissertation As with the master’s thesis, the requirements for a doctoral dissertation are intangible—not based on any quantifiable limits. The most important role of any advisory committee is judging when a body of work has become a sufficient doctoral dissertation. The dissertation must be original research, largely carried out by the candidate. Close collaboration with an adviser is normal, but leadership in research and clear contributions to scientific interpretations by the candidate should be visible. The dissertation must be a contribution to knowledge following the traditions of the scientific method—it will not be based solely on literature review but will include new data collection, data analyses, experimentation, or modeling. A typical understanding of “contribution to knowledge” is that the dissertation reports on work suitable for publication in high-quality, refereed scientific journals.

Because academic positions are a common goal of Ph.D. students, the dissertation forms an important foundation for the entire career. The Ph.D. dissertation usually provides the core of the first few papers by an assistant professor, the basis for early funding proposals, and the initial research direction that will be taken during the early part of the academic career. A well-chosen dissertation topic that leads to useful, positive, publishable results and to topics for further research is essential to building a successful career. Dissertation research is usually presented as part of interviews for entry-level faculty positions, and the potential for a successful assistant professorship working from the foundation provided by the dissertation research will usually be an important factor in faculty hiring decisions. A poorly chosen topic or minimal effort towards finding real results may have life-long career consequences.

The Dissertation Committee .  An advisory committee consisting of four to six members will evaluate the program of courses, the comprehensive examination, and the doctoral dissertation. The adviser, who is usually chosen before a thesis topic is worked out, chairs the committee.  The adviser will help refine the topic and choose other members of the committee. The adviser should have established a record of scholarship in the field of the thesis and be a member of the faculty of the Geography Department of the University of Delaware. The definition of faculty includes professional staff holding secondary faculty appointments within the department. Faculty who have retired or resigned from the university may continue to chair committees of students whose work began under their direction before their retirement or departure from the university.

The minimum of three additional members of the committee must fill the following categories: one will be another member of the Geography Department from within the climatology program, one will represent the secondary area of study, usually the methods or technical area of study, and one will be an external member. The external member may be from outside the University in order to broaden the perspectives of the committee, or the external member may have a primary appointment in a University of Delaware department other than Geography. The external member is a full, voting member of the committee. External members from outside the University of Delaware should be chosen with an eye to the willingness and practicalities of having such a member either present or electronically connected during the oral comprehensive exam and the defense.

The recommendation within our program is to have a committee of five:  the adviser, two additional members from within the program, a member from the University of Delaware representing the methods or techniques area, and an external member as defined above.  Within the Climatology Ph.D. program, the entire committee, including the external member, evaluates the comprehensive exams and the suitability of the program leading up to those exams, so the committee has responsibilities greater than those defined in the Catalog. Occasionally, during the lapse of time between the comprehensive exam and the final defense, changes in the job status of committee members (including sabbatical leaves) or metamorphosis of the dissertation topic may require or suggest changes in the committee. This will be acceptable, so long as the committee at each stage satisfies the requirements for a dissertation committee.

The Geography Department (usually acting via the Chair) approves the composition of any committee and the suitability for membership of anyone not on the regular faculty of the University of Delaware. The Chair’s signature on the final dissertation is taken to mean approval of the committee and its procedures by the department, rather than an acceptance of the dissertation itself based on evaluation by the Chair.

Doctoral committees strive to achieve consensus concerning the student’s performance and quality of work.  In the case of dissenting votes, the majority opinion rules and a majority vote in favor is needed for successful comprehensive exams and for a successful defense.

Comprehensive Examinations . Two major examinations are required for the PhD.  The Comprehensive Examination is normally undertaken after course work is substantially complete and a dissertation topic has been chosen and given some preliminary investigation.  The Dissertation Defense includes a public presentation of the final results of the research

The Written Examination The comprehensive examination consists of a written portion and an oral portion.  The written portion is undertaken first.  The adviser will solicit questions from the rest of the committee to be administered by the department. Normally, these questions will cover the topical area of that committee member, such as information from the graduate courses taken by the student from each committee member, or background information needed for the general area of the dissertation research that the committee member feels is most important.  The conditions of the exam (open book/closed book, use of computers, time limits) are set for each question by the member who generated the question. Members of the committee other than the adviser will usually each require no more than three hours of writing during the written exam, but more time may be expected with advance warning.

The Oral Examination . The oral portion of the comprehensive exam will be scheduled within a month of the written portion. The oral comprehensive exam is private—only the committee and the candidate attend. No formal rules govern the format of this exam, but commonly, a short (20–30 minute) presentation of the intended dissertation research by the candidate is followed by questioning. Questions from the committee may be on anything relevant to the student’s past training and future research plans. The oral exam is sometimes used to follow up on questions from the written examination, seeking clarifications or amplifications. Most of the questions in most oral exams will concern the proposed dissertation research. The committee members may use this opportunity to seek clarifications, suggest modifications, or deduce whether the candidate is properly prepared to engage in the proposed research.

Because much of the oral comprehensive exam centers on the proposed dissertation topic, it is normal to have a formally written dissertation proposal, which is circulated to the members of the committee well in advance (a month or more) of the comprehensive examinations. Commonly, this proposal will have a statement of the problem, a literature review that might be taken as an early draft of the dissertation’s literature review, a description of research methods and data sources or experiments that will be undertaken for the dissertation, and some hoped-for or expected results.

The timing of the comprehensive exam is often controlled by the readiness of the dissertation proposal. The exam may not be scheduled before the end of first year in residence (but no student in the history of the program has come close to violating that rule).  The exam should not be scheduled before a topic has been studied sufficiently to make a defensible proposal. The literature review should be sufficiently advanced to show that a topic is both interesting and useful.  The proposal should show that necessary data will be obtainable and that the research methods are practical. However, the committee should not be presented with a proposal that is nearly a first draft of the dissertation, on which suggestions and input seem too late to be relevant. The ideal time for a comprehensive examination, when ideas for the dissertation are well thought out but not yet ossified, will often need to be compromised by the availability of the committee members to meet at one time and location for the oral exam.

Although the written and oral portions of this exam seem separate and may be weeks apart, they are considered two aspects of the same exam. Each committee member will register a “pass” or “fail” for the entire, combined examination. A passing grade by a majority of the committee admits the student to doctoral candidacy, conferring a change of status with the graduate school and eligibility to take dissertation credits.

An important element of a successful comprehensive exam is communication with the committee members. If possible, discuss potential written examination questions or topic areas months in advance. Committee members may suggest readings or subjects to review and outline the general areas that they will cover with their questions. Provide committee members with a proposal far enough in advance that you can discuss it with them after they have had a chance to read it. Ask for feedback on your written examination answers before the oral exam. Discussions with committee members after the written exam may influence their evaluation of the overall performance. Committee members may choose to give no information whatsoever before exams, but most would rather deal with a prepared candidate than a surprised candidate.

Rules and traditions for the comprehensive exams vary widely among departments and universities. Communication with outside members about roles and expectations of the committee members will normally be taken care of by your adviser, but it is in your interests to make sure that communication happens at that level as well.

The Dissertation Defense  is scheduled after the committee has been presented with a complete draft of the dissertation. The defense includes a public presentation of the dissertation research and an opportunity for public questioning. The committee may also choose to hold some of the questioning in closed session. Students can gain the best perspective on the format and tone by attending some defenses during their time in residence.

The committee must have the dissertation in hand at least two weeks before the defense.  The degree of collaboration with committee members will vary. Some dissertations are done completely independently, with even the adviser only serving as first editor for completed chapters. More commonly, a considerable degree of collaboration exists among the candidate, the adviser, and one or two of the committee members. Some members will wish to see chapters as they come out, and some will prefer to only see the final dissertation just before the defense. As with the comprehensive exam, communication is important. It is to the candidate’s advantage to have more committee members than just the adviser be familiar with the evolution of the project since the comprehensive exams.

The committee will always convey minor editorial suggestions to the candidate at the defense.  Committee members can request substantial changes in a dissertation and make the final passing vote contingent on seeing the revised work.  Even though minor changes following the defense are inevitable, the dissertation should be complete, with all the elements and quality of a final version, at the defense, including all graphics, tables, references, and preliminary parts.

When a majority of the committee agrees to a passing vote for the dissertation defense, the candidate is responsible for making clean, final copies of the dissertation in the required format on the required paper, obtaining signatures from the committee members and the department chair, and getting these to the Graduate Studies office, along with various forms and fees. The Graduate Studies office requires three copies, and it will take care of binding for those copies, two of which go to the university’s library and the Geography Department’s collection. The UD Bookstore offers thesis binding for additional copies, if desired.

Timetable for the Ph.D. Ph.D. programs are necessarily more variable than master’s programs. Students moving into the Ph.D. program from our own M.S. program will often have few additional courses to take, whereas students entering from master’s programs in related fields may need two years or more of full-time coursework to be properly prepared. Ph.D. students may look over the timetable given for the master’s degree, but development of a Ph.D. thesis topic will be a much more substantial effort. The tradition of generating a formal proposal for the comprehensive exams and the overwhelming importance of choosing a dissertation topic well simply require more time. In addition, research on the Ph.D. thesis is at least one year of full-time work.  Very roughly, a Ph.D. student may expect to spend one to two years taking courses and exploring dissertation ideas, half a year refining the proposal and preparing for the comprehensive examination, and one to two years in the research and writing of the dissertation. The Ph.D. degree is also subject to a university-specified time limit of five years.

Format of Master’s Thesis or Doctoral Dissertation

The Office of Graduate Study regulates the physical characteristics of the final copies of theses, including criteria for margins, page layout, typography, paper stock, and the content of the preliminary pages. The thesis must comply with all of these regulations at the time you submit the final copies. The Thesis and Dissertation Manual is available online as a PDF file. The Information Technology User Services group on campus maintains template or macro packages, known as UDThesis, designed to provide thesis-style formatting in a few word-processing or text-formatting packages.

Theses must be in American English, and must be literate and well written. Many readers, including perhaps your committee, will equate the quality of your ideas with the quality of their expression—if your prose is jumbled and disorganized, then your ideas and interpretations are probably also suspect. Scientific units and mathematical text have special typographical rules and conventions. Documents summarizing the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology views on use of units and mathematical typography may be obtained from http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/rules.html

Because of the wide range of topics covered in this department, we do not enforce the citation style and reference style of any particular organization. Commonly, theses will follow the reference style of the Annals of the Association of American Geographers or the journals published by the American Meteorological Society, but other styles can and have been used. The adviser will typically suggest either a particular journal or recent thesis to emulate in reference style. The references must be complete and consistent within the thesis.

Annual Review

Each winter graduate students are asked to provide the department with a summary of their academic activities for the previous year. These reports are reviewed by a small committee of the faculty and, in conjunction with the input of the student’s adviser, a response with consensus advice of the faculty is provided to the student. The review serves as an adjunct to the adviser/student relationship and it provides the department with useful information regarding the progress of our students.

Funding

Funding types The department tries to fund as many as possible of its full-time graduate students at a level that enables reasonable subsistence in the Newark area. Stipends vary slightly with degree level (masters or doctoral student). Stipends do not vary with type (RA, TA, or university-generated fellowship). University-generated fellowships and assistantships are provided with full-time graduate tuition. In addition, the department makes office space available to all funded graduate students.

Fellowships  carry no departmental work obligation. A few fellowships are controlled by the department to assign as it sees fit. These are most often granted to first-year students. A second source of fellowships is the university’s Competitive Fellowship program, for which the department nominates a maximum of two students each year. Only a few dozen Competitive Fellowships are awarded university-wide, so the department’s Awards Committee selects nominees carefully, based on perceived chances of success when compared to students from other disciplines. A third source of fellowships is Presidential Fellowships, for which the department may nominate highly qualified members of underrepresented minority groups or students overcoming special circumstances.

          Holders of these university-based fellowships must maintain full-time graduate student status by taking at least nine graduate credits. Although no departmental work obligation is required, holders of fellowships should engage in the usual level of departmental service.

          Teaching Assistants  provide 20 hours per week of work (on average) in the department’s educational mission. Assignments each semester are based on departmental needs, student experience, and student schedules. Under the supervision of a faculty member, TAs may teach labs, prepare exercises, assist in gathering instructional materials, grade assignments and tests, proctor exams, run tutorial and review sessions, and hold office hours. Flexibility on the part of both TA and faculty supervisor is expected, in that assignments may vary greatly from week to week depending on the work being done in a course; TAs also have varying obligations to the courses they are taking for credit. Full-time status for a TA requires taking at least six graduate credits per semester.

          Research Assistants  provide 20 hours per week of work on a funded research project under the supervision of the principal investigator (the faculty member who obtained the grant under which the project is funded). As with TAs, RAs are expected to be flexible about workloads, which may vary greatly from week to week. Under ideal circumstances, the funded research project contains within it the student’s thesis research topic, in which case the actual time spent on the project may be much higher than 20 hours per week. Full-time status for an RA requires taking at least six graduate credits per semester.

          Tuition Scholarships  are occasionally available. As the name implies, these scholarships contain sufficient funding to pay full-time tuition, but they contain no subsistence funding. The department is allowed to request 10 hours per week of work in return for a tuition scholarship.

          External fellowships  are in a different category, since they do not come to the student through the University of Delaware. Students have obtained funding from such sources as NASA’s Global Change Fellowship program, NASA’s Space Grant program, the American Meteorological Society’s Fellowship program, the American Association of University Women, and others. Stipends and conditions on these fellowships vary. Obtaining such fellowships is important to the department, so we assist any student applying for them in every way possible. We try to provide tuition scholarships for externally funded students whose fellowships do not include tuition, and we provide office space for externally funded students.

Other Funding issues

Time limits Internal funding awards are made at most one academic year at a time, without exception. The department almost universally provides a second year of funding to students admitted with funding, so long as adequate progress has been made during the first year. A third year of funding for a masters degree may be applied for, and will be looked on favorably by the department if progress during the first two years is good, a thesis is nearing completion, and funding is available. For students entering the Ph.D. program, three years of funding is the norm, with additional funding highly dependent on progress and availability of resources. 

          Funding period The university considers students who receive internal fellowships or assistantships fully funded for the nine-month academic year. As a condition of receiving these fellowships and assistantships, they agree not to work more than 20 hours per week total without permission, which effectively eliminates additional outside employment. This restriction exists because the primary goal of these fellowships and assistantships is to help a student obtain a graduate degree. Hence, we wish to maintain a sufficient amount of time for personal coursework and research. The department does not assign TA obligations during winter session. RAs vary with the project, but often expectations continue through winter session.

          Summer funding is not included in any of the standard funding packages. Many RA packages and some external fellowships provide additional funding to cover some or all of the summer months. In addition, graduate students who have TA experience in our introductory courses, and who have approval of the course’s primary instructor, handle much of the department’s winter and summer teaching.

          Sustaining status . Students who have completed every requirement for a degree except presenting or defending and submitting the thesis may consider registering as sustaining, rather than as full-time students. Students who leave full-time student status while still working on a thesis are required to register as sustaining in every regular semester until they graduate (and in their last summer or winter session, if they are going to graduate at the end of that session). However, students are not allowed to register as sustaining, even if they leave the university and full-time student status, unless all course credits, thesis or dissertation credits, and any other requirements for the degree are fulfilled.

Graduate Student Service and Activities

Graduate students engage in variety of activities generally in the category of professional service. None of these activities is required in any formal sense—it is always possible to complete a degree without doing any of these things. However, just as the faculty serve on committees, review papers and grant proposals, and undertake responsibilities within national organizations and within the wider public community, so also service is part of the professional development of graduate students.

          Student Governance Within the department, graduate students meet regularly to discuss issues of their concern, including issues that may arise by questions to them from the faculty. These meetings are called and led by an elected graduate student representative. The graduate student representative also attends faculty meetings (except when personnel issues are being discussed) and serves as a communication conduit between faculty and students. Another representative is elected by the students to represent our department at the university’s Graduate Student Association.

          Department Life Graduate student volunteers maintain a coffee room, handle departmental recycling efforts, help plan and take care of logistics for our seminar series (snacks, audiovisual setups, cleanup, etc.), and help plan and execute the department’s annual social events, among other things. While seemingly mundane, these activities have a profound effect on the quality of life within the department. Graduate students also provide an important educational service to the department by proctoring exams.

          Professional contacts Some activities within the department are undertaken primarily to provide a wider education, as well as contacts with people from other departments and other campuses. The departmental Friday afternoon seminar series provides a regular series of these contacts—attendance at seminars is expected. Many of our outside guests for seminars also spend some time in the department on the day of their presentation, and meeting times are usually set aside for graduate students to get a more informal chance to learn from our visitors. Related seminars from other departments are regularly scheduled, and notices of these are posted in the department.

          The department encourages and subsidizes travel of students to professional conferences to give papers or presentations. (Attending the national meetings of the Association of American Geographers at least once before one is ready to present a paper may also be subsidized—check with the department office for current rules and amounts.)  Women students may obtain a small additional travel subsidy from the university’s Office of Women’s Affairs. These conferences are an excellent opportunity for students to meet the people whose papers they read. Visibility at the national AAG meetings is important for Ph.D. students who will be seeking an academic career in American geography.

Resources

Institutional Resources Climatological research is supported by a University Center for Climatic Research and the Office of the State Climatologist, both located within the department. Research facilities include extensive computer resources (discussed below), a collection of microclimatic instrumentation to support field research, and the Thornthwaite Library of historical climate publications. A climatic monograph series, Publications in Climatology, is published jointly by the Center for Climatic Research and the Thornthwaite Laboratory for Climatology.

Studies in geographic education are enhanced by the Delaware Geographic Alliance, a coordinated effort by the Department, teachers, school administrators, and the Delaware Department of Public Instruction. Funded by the National Geographic Society and the State of Delaware, its mission is to help bring Geography back into the K-12 curriculum via four goals: to strengthen the ability of teachers to teach geography throughout the curriculum; to establish links with policy makers; to develop curriculum and teaching materials; and to strengthen public awareness of the value of geographic learning.

Computational Resources The department strives to provide graduate students with sufficient computing resources for all their course work, thesis research, information gathering, writing, and preparation of graphics, presentations, and thesis drafts. All students entering the University of Delaware immediately receive access to the central “composer” cluster for email and web-browsing activities. The department sponsors additional resources to allow graduate students to do research and maintain course files on these central servers.  High-end numerical computing, such as running large atmospheric models, can be done on these central Unix servers.

The more data-intensive aspects of GIS have motivated the department to maintain several smaller Unix-based application and file servers on which much larger amounts of data-storage space are available than on the central systems. All of the PCs in the department are configured to use the departmental file servers, allowing protected storage of personal files for use from any of the departmental PCs.

All students have access to the X terminals, PCs, printers, scanners, and digitizers in Room 218. In addition, PCs or X terminals are installed in many of the individual and group offices. A few workstations in graduate student offices and labs were purchased on research grants by individual faculty for the primary use of their students, and some stations outside room 218 are given priority (not exclusive) access for TAs in particular courses to use while meeting with undergraduate students.

The department controls a GIS teaching lab in Penny Hall.  This facility has many high-end PC workstations and a massive file-storage system, and it is available for graduate-student use when not in use by classes.

The department strives to provide computer hardware and access that will take care of all of your scholarship and research needs. Limitations on our budget and common courtesy require that you be reasonably conservative in your use of the more expensive resources, such as color printing, and that you defer to students with pressing research and coursework problems at times when most of the seats in 218 are full. Some hardware devices and software are only attached to particular PCs, so you may at times be asked to move your work to another machine if one of these specialized resources is needed.

The department’s Geographic Systems Analyst, Kenji Matsuura, administers computers owned by the department. Requests for resources on the department’s servers, reports of problems with machines in Room 218, and inquiries about what resources we have and where they are located should be directed to him. Requests for resources and questions about access on the central systems should be directed to Brian Hanson, who serves as the liaison to the university’s Information Technology division for these requests. Jim Black of the Geology Department maintains the GIS lab in Penny Hall.

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