Academics > Masters & Ph.D. > Qualifying Exam Syllabi
Signal & Image Processing (SIP)
The student does a research project under the guidance of an advisor.The student writes up, entirely on their own without direct text contributions of the advisor, the results of the research project as a paper of between 10-25 pages. The research paper should be given to the faculty evaluation panel at least 2 weeks prior to the actual exam.
The student schedules and presents the results via an oral exam to an evaluation panel consisting of three faculty members approved by the SIP curriculum group, which does not include the student’s advisor. The faculty evaluation panel members can be either EE faculty, EE adjunct, EE affiliate, or non-EE faculty members from the student’s research area and/or the SIP group.
The oral exam should consist of a 45-50 minute presentation, and leave time for questions. It is recommended that the student schedule a total of 1.5 hours for this exam.
The examiners may also invite others to the oral part of the exam and may allow for questions from the non-examiners, but the questions by the examiners should be in private.
The committee will evaluate the student's work, the written report, and the oral presentation. The chair of the faculty evaluation panel shall provide a written report of the depth examination and the evaluation recommendation of the depth requirement to the Graduate Program Coordinator. The report must address:
- A grade of "pass," "pass with contingencies," "not yet qualified," or "fail."
- The student's record of coursework.
- The quality and independence of the research
- The quality of the written report (note that student may be allowed to improve it if that's the only problem)
- The quality of the oral presentation
- Judgment of the student's ability to go on to pursue dissertation research based on this sample and other work so far
- A statement by the advisor on whether or not he/she wants to keep working with the student and the reasons why. If the student is moving to another advisor, this should be noted.
