Faculty Council Approves Dissertation Change

The Faculty Council yesterday approved a proposal to raise the number of readers required to sign and approve Graduate School of Arts and Sciences doctoral dissertations from two to three.

The council vote means the full Faculty will consider the legislation at their next meeting in April.

"By formalizing this it signals that the Faculty believes that not less than three people should be involved minimally in the acceptance of the thesis and preferably in the preparation of the thesis," Secretary of the Faculty John B. Fox Jr. '59 said yesterday.

The proposal also requires that at least two of the three signatures on thesis acceptance certificates come from members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). Currently, one of the two required signatures must be from a member of FAS.

Faculty members hope that increasing the number of signatures required to approve a dissertation will lead to more advice for candidates throughout the process, Professor of Physics Daniel S. Fisher '78 said yesterday. Fisher is a member of the Faculty Committee on the Structure of Ph.D. Advising, the group that recommended the change.

"It gives the students the benefit of getting advice and help and support from more than one or two Faculty members," he said.

The council first heard the report of the Committee on the Structure of Ph.D. Advising in February.

Fisher said although imposing advising guidelines on departments is difficult, Faculty committees can make changes to an area like Ph.D. signatures, in the hopes that departments will respond with changes in advising.

"It's hard to require Faculty to sit on [advising] committees, but it's possible to require signatures on Ph.D.s," he said.

Fisher noted that many departments already require three signatures and would not be affected by the change.