Doctoral Degree
A detailed time line towards completing a PhD in EEB is available at http://www.eeb.ucla.edu/grad_timeline.php
The EEB Graduate Handbook is available here
Course Requirements
Students must enroll for a minimum of 12 units each quarter. Doctoral students must complete a minimum of 20 units of graduate-level courses (200-series).
Teaching Experience
Each student is required to serve a minimum of three terms as a teaching assistant.
Written and Oral Qualifying Examinations
Students are required to take the Departmental Written Qualifying Examination during their first year in residence. The examination consists of two parts: Part I examines the breadth of understanding (conceptual and synthetic) of the diversity of specialized subjects within integrative biology and consists of an examination based on two of the three following courses (EEB 200A, 200B, 200C). Part II will consist of a literature review and research proposal (approximately 10 pages of single-spaced text; figures and tables are optional). The proposal should be on a topic that the student is considering pursuing in his or her research and the literature review should be directly related to this research. The first draft of the proposal is to be submitted to the student's guidance committee for comment by the end of the Winter Quarter. A final draft of the proposal is to be submitted to the guidance committee in the eighth week of the Spring Quarter. The guidance committee will evaluate and grade the proposal as "not pass", "MA pass" or "PhD pass" and forward these results to the Graduate Advisor. The University Oral Qualifying Examination is conducted by the doctoral committee and should be completed by the end of the 2nd year of graduate study, and must be completed by the winter quarter of the third year of graduate study or the student becomes ineligible for on-going Departmental or University support. Students prepare, present and defend an original written research proposal. The examination is graded pass, fail, or repeat. A failure results in a recommendation for termination of graduate study to the Graduate Division. A repeated examination is graded pass/fail only. Students are advanced to candidacy and awarded the Candidate in Philosophy (C.Phil.) degree upon completion of the written and oral qualifying examinations. The normative time for the Ph.D. degree is 18 quarters.
Dissertation
A doctoral committee consists of a minimum of four faculty members from UCLA; three of whom must be EEB faculty, and one who must be from another department. EEB dissertations are typically written as a series of scientific papers along with a general introduction and a comprehensive bibliography. The official dissertation preparation guide is available from the UCLA Graduate Division web site at http://www.gdnet.ucla.edu./gasaa/library/thesisintro.htm