In addition, all students are required to take an additional four (4) breadth requirement electives, developing background knowledge in an area of particular interest. These courses are organized into the following seven areas.

Students must take courses from at least two different areas:

Depth Requirement Courses
Doctoral Students are required to complete at least three (3) CS courses beyond the breadth requirement. These courses should be advanced courses listed in the areas under the breadth requirement, appropriate special topics courses, or advanced topics courses covering current research in selected areas. All course selection must be made with the student’s advisor.

Independent Study
Students are required to take 9.0 additional credits of independent study work. Selection of independent studies should be made in consultation with the student's advisor. This work is intended to prepare the student for later research.

Plan of Study
Upon entering the PhD program, each student will be assigned an academic advisor, and with the help of the advisor will develop and file a plan of study (which can be brought up to date when necessary). There is considerable flexibility in the choice of study plan; however, all PhD students are required to satisfy a breadth requirement of 10 courses (30.0 credits) and a depth requirement of 3 advanced courses (9.0 credits) and 9.0 credits of Independent Study. The plan of study should be filed with the Graduate Coordinator no later than the end of the first term.

Qualifying Exam
The goal of this examination is to review and appraise a student’s standing in the program, to test how well (s)he is prepared for research, and to discover whether or not the student understands the subject matter sufficiently well to carry out good research. The Qualifying Exam is a written exam and is based on material covered in the six core courses from the breadth requirement. Students beginning their graduate education in the program must take the Qualifying Exam by the end of their second year. Students beginning the CS Ph.D. program post-master’s must take the Qualifying Exam by the end of their first year.

Candidacy Exam
The Computer Science candidacy examination serves to define the student’s research domain and to evaluate the student’s knowledge and understanding of various fundamental and seminal results in that domain. At this point the student is expected to be able to read, understand, analyze, and explain advanced technical results in a specialized area of computer science at an adequate level of detail. The candidacy examination will evaluate those abilities using a defined set of published manuscripts. The student will prepare a written summary of the contents of the material, present the summary orally, and answer questions about the material. The examination committee will evaluate the written summary, the oral presentation, and the student’s answers. They must advance to candidacy by taking both Written and Oral Examinations no later than one year after passing the Qualifying Exam and passing it no later than one and a half years after passing the Qualifying Exam.

Thesis Proposal  
After completing the candidacy examination successfully, the PhD candidate must prepare a thesis proposal that outlines, in detail, the specific problems that will be solved in the PhD dissertation. The quality of the research proposal should be at the level of, for example, a peer-reviewed proposal to a federal funding agency, or a publishable scientific paper. The candidate is responsible for sending the research proposal to the PhD committee two weeks before the oral presentation. The PhD committee need not be the same as the candidacy exam committee, but it follows the same requirements and must be approved by the Office of Graduate Studies. The oral presentation involves a 30-minute presentation by the candidate followed by an unspecified period during which the committee will ask questions.

After the question and answer period, the candidate will be asked to leave the room and the committee will determine if the research proposal has been accepted. The research proposal can be repeated at most once. A thesis proposal must be approved within two years of becoming a PhD candidate.

Thesis Defense
After completing the research proposal successfully, the PhD candidate must conduct the necessary research and publish the results in a PhD dissertation. The dissertation must be submitted to the PhD committee two weeks prior to the oral defense. The oral presentation involves a 45-minute presentation by the candidate, open to the public, followed by an unspecified period during which the committee will ask questions. The question-and-answer period is not open to the public. After the question and answer period, the candidate will be asked to leave the room and the committee will determine if the candidate has passed or failed the examination. The candidate will be granted one more chance to pass the final defense if (s)he fails it the first time. Paperwork selecting the thesis committee and indicating the results of the thesis defense must be filed with the Department of Computer Science and the Office of Graduate Studies.