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Dissertation Regulations

Approved by PhD Implementation Committee August 17, 2020
Approved by GPC Fall 2020

Supervisory Regulations

  1. Faculty members who are eligible to supervise and/or teach in the PhD in Urban Health program will have the following: 1) experience teaching and/or supervising at the Master’s and/or Doctoral level and 2) have held external research funding as a Principal Investigator.
  2. Faculty members who have not received external funding as a Principal Investigator or have never supervised at the graduate level, will be provided with an opportunity to engage with doctoral students through dissertation committee membership, serving as external examiner, or chair of an examining committee. Through active involvement with the PhD program, these faculty members will also receive ongoing mentorship in the area of doctoral student supervision and teaching, as well as research mentorship from senior faculty; and thus positioning themselves to move into supervisory roles as their careers progress.
  3. Faculty who have received external funding as Principal Investigator but who have had no supervision of students at the doctoral level could serve as a co-supervisor with an experienced faculty member who has both a) experience supervising at the doctoral level and b) have received external funding as a Principal Investigator.
  4. All faculty members who are supervising and/or teaching within this doctoral program, will be expected to mentor other pre-tenure faculty, or faculty who have not yet received external funding by inviting them to provide guest lectures within their doctoral classes, serve as dissertation committee members, and provide feedback and guidance on external grant applications. 
  5. Supervisory loads will be distributed based on eligibility to supervise and area of expertise; however, each faculty member may not supervise more than 3 PhD or Master's students at any one point in time.

Doctoral Supervisory Committee Composition

A Doctoral supervisory committee consists of a minimum of three faculty members from different disciplines who are approved and affiliated with the Urban Health program:

  1. the dissertation supervisor;
  2. a minimum of two faculty members who are affiliated with Urban Health and are full members of YSGPS;
  3. if approved, one graduate faculty member from outside the Graduate Program in which the student is registered.

It is the responsibility of the student in consultation with the Program Director to constitute the committee. The membership of the committee must conform to YSGPS regulations and be approved by the Director.

Dissertation Proposal

All students must succesfully complete the Candidacy Examination prior to moving to preparation of the dissertation proposal. The proposal contains a brief statement in non technical language on the purpose of the research, its relationship to existing work in the area, and the contribution that the researcher hopes to make to the advancement of knowledge in the field. In addition, the proposal includes a title, the name of the supervisor and the supervisory committee. The title should indicate as clearly as possible the area of research, but it is understood that this title may change. The maximum length of a proposal is 3,500 words. Students prepare a proposal in consultation with their supervisors, then submit it to the Program Director. 

Ethics

TMU’s Policy for Ethics Review of Research Involving Humans can be found on the web site (opens in new window).