PhD Comprehensive Exam

Mechanical Engineering PhD students must follow the department guidelines for the comprehensive exam. This page outlines the process for students in the Solid Mechanics group.

Overview

Treat the comprehensive exam as a dry run for the thesis defense. You should take the exam only when you and Dr. Runnels agree that the bulk of your thesis work is complete.

In general, plan to take the comprehensive exam about one year before your defense. You may take it the semester before your defense if you are prepared to complete up to a year of thesis work before defending.

Timeline

Several Months Before

At least three to four months before the exam, consult with Dr. Runnels to determine whether you are ready and what the timeframe should be. Do not proceed until you and Dr. Runnels are in agreement.

Confirm that:

• Your finalized Program of Study is complete.
• Your committee members are confirmed.

Two Months Before

If any committee members are non-UCCS faculty or UCCS IRC faculty holding the rank of instructor, they may need paperwork for special appointment to the UCCS graduate faculty.

Give committee members plenty of time. Committee members, especially those outside the university, are doing you a favor by serving. Be respectful of their schedules and provide lead time on all requests.

Determine committee availability and reserve a room. For the comprehensive exam, as with the thesis defense, you are responsible for scheduling and managing the event.

Plan for a two-hour reservation block.

If the meeting is hybrid, confirm that the room has appropriate equipment and that remote participants have complete joining information.

If visitors are joining in person from off campus, ask the department administrator to send parking information or a parking code.

One Month Before

You should have a mostly finalized thesis document and a complete draft ready for Dr. Runnels to review.

The thesis should be written in LaTeX on Overleaf using the official template.

Two Weeks Before

Send your thesis to the committee for feedback and remind them of the talk details: time, location, and remote access if applicable.

For in-person committee members, print a hard copy if appropriate.

Make sure Dr. Runnels has the presentation details so the talk can be advertised to the department. The talk is open, and anyone may attend.

One Week Before

Finalize the presentation and share it with Dr. Runnels if you have not already. Incorporate recommended changes before the presentation.

Day of the Exam

The comprehensive exam usually follows this format:

• 10 minutes: arrive and set up
• 1 hour: presentation, including questions from the general audience
• 30 minutes: private session with you and your committee
• 15 minutes: private committee deliberation
• 5 minutes: notification of the committee decision

Two Weeks After

Dr. Runnels will ask committee members to submit written feedback on the presentation and thesis. You are responsible for addressing their comments before the thesis defense, just as you would address reviewer comments for a journal article.