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Department of English
University of Mississippi

Timeline and Narrative Guide to Forms for Current Students

Timeline and Narrative Guide to Forms for Current Students

The forms described below are not an exhaustive list but rather represent the forms most commonly required by graduate students while completing their graduate study. For links to additional forms for more specialized situations, see the Graduate School forms and manuals library here: https://gradschool.olemiss.edu/current-students/forms-and-manuals-library/

Forms for Optional Requests:

  • Directed Reading Application:

If you wish to apply to do a directed reading course in lieu of a seminar during your coursework years, you will need to submit the following Directed Reading Application form to the Graduate Studies Committee. The first step in the application process is to approach the faculty member with whom you would like to work and to develop a sample syllabus for the course. Submit the sample syllabus along with this form (signed by the mentoring faculty member) to the Graduate Studies Committee for review by Nov. 1. If approval is granted, the form must be signed by the Graduate Program Coordinator or Department Chair, and a copy of this now completed form should be submitted to the English Department Office where it will be kept on file.

Bear in mind that our guiding assumption is that seminars are the most effective and productive learning environments for students in coursework. Therefore, approval of Directed Readings will in general be reserved for exceptional cases in which a student is otherwise unable to gain exposure to a major literature (historical or methodological) that is central to their research interests, and in which there are compelling reasons to believe that the student cannot or should not wait until they are in the comps or thesis/dissertation stage to independently familiarize themselves with this literature via thesis hours.

  • Application for Graduate School Travel Funding:

Graduate students may apply for travel funding from either or both the English Department and the Graduate School. To apply for funds from the department, email the English Department Chair for awards of up to $500. To apply for funds from the Graduate School, complete the following form. If you have already secured at least $300 from the English Department, you will qualify or request $300 in matching funds from the Graduate School. If you are not applying to the Graduate School with other funding from the English Department, you are eligible to request $200. The Graduate School funding request form must be emailed to the Secretary of the Graduate School at least ten days prior to the date of your travel. (Graduate Student Travel Request form).

If you are awarded travel funding, remember that you must also submit documentation about your trip both before and after your trip. Please contact April in the department for guidance through this process.

Committee Related Forms

  •  Formation of Committee:

All students should aim to have their advisor and departmental committee members lined up by the end of their fourth semester (see the Graduate Student Handbook for details on how thesis/committee composition varies by degree path). However, not all students will necessarily submit the official Graduate School form identifying their committee at this time. This form can be submitted at any time between the point at which you have identified your complete committee (which means, for PhD students, that you have also identified your “outside” reader as well as your chair and two departmental readers) to the point at which you schedule the defense of your prospectus (PhD students) or the defense of your thesis (MA or MFA students). To submit a Graduate Advisory Committee Request form to the Graduate School, navigate to my.olemiss.edu and follow the steps outlined here: https://gradschool.olemiss.edu/appointing-student-advisory-committees-student-version/. This form will ask you to indicate the title of your thesis/dissertation. What you write on this form is entirely provisional and non-binding, so just make up a working title.

Typically, MA and MFA students will submit this form at some point in their fourth or fifth semesters, when they have identified their complete departmental thesis committee. By contrast, PhDs will typically wait to submit this form until they enter the prospectus phase (stage 3) of the comps process, which is the point at which most PhD students first identify their “outside” reader for the dissertation and thus complete their committee. Bear in mind that “outside” readers must be members of the UM faculty who are not affiliated with the UM English Department (in other words, a faculty member with a joint appointment in English and another department cannot serve as an “outside” reader).

Qualifying Procedure Related Forms

  •  Qualifying Procedure Stage 1: Publishable Article

There are no departmental or Graduate School forms associated with submitting or approving the publishable article phase of comps.

  • Qualifying Procedure Stage 2: Oral Exam

Once you have scheduled a date for your oral exam you should fill out Graduate School form 5 (GS5: Authorization to Sit for Exam), have it signed by the Department Chair or Graduate Program Coordinator, and submit it via email to the Graduate School (gschoolforms@olemiss.edu).

Students (or their advisors) should bring to the oral exam a copy of Graduate School form 5.1 (GS5.1: Report of the Comprehensive Examination Committee/Admission to Candidacy of the Doctoral Program) to be completed by the committee chair upon completion of the exam and submitted via email to the Graduate School (gschoolforms@olemiss.edu).

  • Qualifying Procedure Stage 3: Prospectus Defense

There are no official Graduate School forms associated with submitting or defending the dissertation prospectus. However, once the prospectus defense is complete, the chair of a student’s committee should email the graduate school (gschool@olemiss.edu) letting them know the prospectus has been approved and submitting a copy of the prospectus in PDF form. Also, as noted above (“Formation of Committee”), it is at this stage that most PhD students will identify their “outside” reader and thus become ready to submit their Graduate Advisory Committee Request form online via my.olemiss.

Thesis/Dissertation Related Forms

  •  Scheduling the thesis/dissertation defense:

Once you have scheduled a date for your thesis or dissertation defense you should fill out Graduate School form 7 (GS7: Authorization for Final Oral/Written Exam), have it signed by the Chair or Graduate Program Coordinator, and submit it via email to the Graduate School (gschoolforms@olemiss.edu). This form must be submitted at least two weeks prior to the scheduled defense date. Defenses may not be scheduled during an exam week.

  •  Forms to bring to the thesis/dissertation defense

Before the thesis/dissertation defense, the graduate student’s advisor should have received the “Report of Final Oral/Written Examination” form from the Graduate School, and should bring a hard copy to be signed by the committee members after successful completion of the defense. This form can be scanned and submitted via email to the Graduate School (gschoolforms@olemiss.edu); electronic signatures are also acceptable. Students (and their advisors) are also required to complete Thesis or Dissertation Assessment Form, an online form for which links are sent out every fall and spring. Contact the department office or Graduate Program Coordinator for links to to these Assessment forms if needed outside the usual spring/fall defense season.

Forms for Graduation

  •  Application to Graduate

When you have passed your thesis/dissertation defense you should fill out Graduate School form 8 (GS8: Application to Graduate). This form must be submitted along with an unofficial transcript to the Department Chair or Graduate Program Coordinator for their review and signature, after which you should submit it via email to the Graduate School (gschoolforms@olemiss.edu).

  • Guides to Preparing Your Thesis/Dissertation Manuscript for Submission

After completing your defense, you must also prepare your thesis/dissertation for submission to the database. You should consult the Graduate School’s Thesis and Dissertation manual and the UMI Copyright guide, and use the template appropriate for your word-processing software (all of the above are available here: https://gradschool.olemiss.edu/current-students/forms-and-manuals-library/ ).