Important Forms for Graduates:
Application for Degree
Graduates submit this at the beginning of the semester in which they will graduate; this form must be submitted each semester in which graduation is attempted. If you apply and then defer to a later semester, you must fill it out--and pay the fee--again.
Candidacy or Plan of Study Form
The CWL director will submit this document for you prior to the semester of graduation; this form need only be submitted once, even if it is submitted several semesters prior to graduation. You will be notified by email and asked to sign it. You should then check it off your list of things to worry about.
Departmental Graduation Form
Students submit this form as soon as they know the semester in which they will graduate. This form is for the department's information only and does not go to the graduate school. It is located at the bottom of this page.
Note: If a link on this page doesn't work, go to grad.uno.edu and click on "Forms." All the necessary forms are there.
This
page is intended as a guide to final
semester procedures for students graduating with the Master of Fine
Arts in Creative Writing, Low Residency option. These guidelines
have been developed with the remote student in mind and differ substantially
from on-campus procedures. They are intended to facilitate the Thesis
review and defense, final submission and comprehensive examination,
assuming that all three committee members and the student are in
different locations and in communication only via email and/or telephone.
Note
that the terms "Major Professor," "committee chair,"
and "thesis director" are synonymous.
Note
that the deadlines and dates in the descriptions below are given in
relative terms. Precise dates for the current semester may be seen
by viewing the Graduate School calendar.
The
Thesis Committee
The
graduating student is required to form a committee of three members
of the graduate faculty, one of whom will be the Chair or Major Professor
and who will direct the thesis. The director and one other committee member must have publications in the student's genre. The Major Professor
(director) must be a member of the permanent faculty at University
of New Orleans; the other two members may be permanent faculty, adjuncts
or other faculty admitted to the graduate faculty by administrative
appointment and approved by the Graduate Coordinator, the Department
Chair and the dean of the College of Liberal Arts.
The
student should form the committee by first requesting a faculty member
to be the director. The other committee members should then be chosen
in consultation with the director.
The
committee is responsible for reviewing, suggesting revisions for, and
evaluating the Thesis, as well as administering and evaluating the Thesis
Defense. It is the student's responsibility to form the committee
by requesting of faculty members that they serve. When the student
has formed a committee, she should notify the Graduate Coordinator,
who will confirm the appointments with the department and the dean
of the college.
All graduating students shoud monitor their University email accounts. There are a number of important deadlines and forms to fill out, and notifications from the University will only be sent to University email accounts.
1.
The Comprehensive Examination:
The
Comprehensive Examination normally consists of two parts, a "take-home" section and a timed section. The first part usually asks the student to create a syllabus for a sophomore level class in the literature of the student's genre. Note that this is a literature class, not a writing class. At the time that the take-home test is distributed, a packet of reading material upon which the student will later be tested is also distributed. Some genres may simply include a reading list. You will have 2 weeks to read and annotate this material, and you will be allowed to use your annotated material during the timed group exam.
The second part, or "group" exam, is a two-hour timed exam that everyone takes on Moodle at the same time. This part of the exam is made up of essay
questions about the readings given to the student with the take-home exam. The group exam will
be scheduled by the department near the middle of the semester. The completed exams will be distributed to the members of the student's thesis committee. After consulting with the committee, the student's thesis director will announce the results of the take-home exam (pass/fail) at the thesis defense. The results of the exam will posted on a form signed by the committee and sent to the program coordinator, who will then file the results with the college.
2.
The Thesis:
The
final Thesis should be a full length work (book of poems, novel,
short stories, memoir, screenplay, play, etc.). The Committee
may, at its discretion, have the student include a critical introduction
to the Thesis or make other requirements regarding length and/or arrangement.
The
student's thesis director will provide a deadline for submitting the first draft of the thesis. The draft should be ready for the initial submission by the first day of class of the semester, or even earlier if the committee so desires. The draft should be complete down to the last detail and fully formatted. Theses that are incomplete, unformatted, piecemeal, or that have large numbers of mechanical errors will not be reviewed. (See the note below about formatting requirements.) Next the director will determine a schedule for
the Thesis to be reviewed by the Committee members and, if necessary,
revised by the student. After the Thesis has been revised to the
Director's satisfaction, the Thesis Defense should be scheduled
by the Director in consultation with the student and Committee
members. It should be scheduled no later than three weeks prior
to the last day of class, or as per the Graduate calendar for
that particular semester.
About the formatting requirements:
Generally,
the Committee should review the Thesis for content only. Therefore the student should turn in only a clean, formatted, mechanically and grammatically sound thesis to the committee. It is the student's responsibility to obtain and adhere to
the formatting requirements of the Graduate
School. Note, also, that the Committee may refuse to review the Thesis if it is not properly formatted and copy-edited. It is not the committee's responsibility to correct or discuss issues such as typographical mistakes and mechanical or formatting errors.
The Graduate School's formatting requirements address both creative and scholarly thesis formatting, so many of the requirements do not apply. The creative thesis should adhere to the order, spacing, and page-numbering requirements, and it should contain at least the following parts, in this order: Title Page - Contents - Body of Thesis - Vita. Other parts may be required by individual genres. Check with your thesis director.
3.
The Thesis Defense
No
later than two weeks prior to the date set for the Thesis Defense,
the student should distribute to all Committee members a final
draft of the Thesis. All thesis defenses are conducted via Adobe Connect, which allows for both audio and video access. Both students and committees will be given information on the use of Adobe Connect well in advance of the actual defense.
Once the committee meets with the student for the defense, they will review the student's responses and recommend a
pass or fail of the Thesis. All parties must then sign the Thesis Approval Form and return it to the Coordinator for submission to the Graduate School. The Coordinator will send out this form just prior to the defense.
Submission
to the Graduate School:
After
passing the Comprehensive Examination and the Thesis Defense, the
student is responsible for submitting the final copy of the Thesis
to the Graduate School, according to its calendar and guidelines.
Students are reminded to be in contact with the college throughout
the semester, as format checks and document reviews must be done prior
to submission of final copy.
Final theses are no longer accepted on paper. They must be submitted electronically,
in .pdf format. The contact for logistical information, format checks,
etc., for electronic thesis submission is Amanda Athey, <aathey@uno.edu>. Theses must be submitted for format check one week prior to the deadline for final submission. Submit for format check by going to http://scholarworks.uno.edu (click on "My Account" to create an account.)
Please
see grad.uno.edu, for more information
about formats and deadlines.
About Enrollment:
Students must be enrolled to graduate. Thesis Only (ENGL or FTCA 7040) may be taken if the student already has all 45 credits and only needs to submit the thesis and/or take the Comprehensive Exam to graduate. Thesis Only carries only nominal fees, much lower than regular tuition, but Thesis Only may only be taken once. Students who enroll in Thesis Only and fail to graduate must enroll in Thesis Research (ENGL or FTCA 7000), which carries full fees.
