approved by the Philosophy Department, April 30, 2012
To ensure that doctoral students move through the program in a timely fashion, three “milestone” reviews will be conducted by the student’s guidance committee. The milestone reviews will supplement the annual reports that guidance committees conduct each year.
For each milestone review, the chair of the student’s guidance committee will submit a report specifying that the work has been completed (forms for each review are linked above). If there are inadequacies, students will be notified that they are not making satisfactory progress toward the degree (see Graduate Handbook, sec 3.4) and that they have one semester in which to address the remediable deficiencies (sec 4.4).
At the end of the subsequent semester (ordinarily not including summer), if the problems have not been remedied, the student will lose eligibility for financial aid and—after the Middle Milestone Review—may be refused permission to continue in the program (sec 3.4.4). Students unable to remedy deficiencies after the Early Milestone Review may write a Master’s paper and complete the M.A. degree before leaving the program.
Although some adjustments to the Milestone timetable might be allowed in an individual case, these must be for sound programmatic reasons and must be arranged in advance—not after the fact (sec. 3.4.1). Records of such approved adjustments will be filed in the student’s academic portfolio.
Since these Milestone Reviews are new (as of Sp '12), the Department agreed to implement them according to this time table.