Requirements

All PhD. students are required to meet with the IE Graduate Coordinator before registering for courses each semester until they have chosen a major advisor and then they must meet with their major advisor each semester for course approval.

A list of useful links and forms for Ph.D. students can be found at Resources

Ph.D. IE Program Procedures and Requirements

Total credit hour requirements
90+ credit hours without a master degree.
60+ credit hours with a master degree.

Course credit hour requirements
60+ credit hours without a master degree.
30+ credit hours with a master degree.

Dissertation hour requirements
20+ dissertation research hours. Can only register dissertation research hours after the semester in which the candidacy (qualifying) exam is passed.
Up to 50% of dissertation hours can be fulfilled by directed research credit hours.

Course category requirements
Must have 27+ course credit hours in area of concentration.
Must have 8+ course credit hours in mathematics and/or statistics.
Must have 8+ course credit hours outside area of concentration.
Credit hours in mathematics or statistics can also be counted for inside or outside of area of concentration.
Courses are not allowed to simultaneously satisfy both concentration and non-concentration requirements.

The comprehensive examination
The comprehensive exam should be taken in the 3rd semester but no later than the 4th semester of a student’s Ph.D. study at USF.
The comp exam is a 6-hour (7-hours including 1-hour lunch time) open-book, open-notes exam on a single day. Usually offered on a Friday near the midpoint of the Fall and the Spring semesters.
The comprehensive examination consists of 6 course subjects (4 core subjects and 2 electives). The student can, however, register for three electives and answer questions on any two of these. A student fails the comp exam if (i) he/she fails two or more subjects, or (ii) the average is below 7.5 on a scale of 0-10.
If a student fails the comprehensive examination, he/she is given an opportunity to take it again. If a student fails the examination for the second time, his/her Ph.D. program in industrial engineering at USF is terminated.

Doctoral committee
A doctoral committee consists of at least 5 members, 3 from within the department (including the major professor), 1 from the College of Engineering, and 1 from outside the College of engineering. A student should have his/her doctoral committee selected and formed as soon as possible, but definitely before the candidacy examination.

Candidacy examination
The candidacy or qualifying exam consists of three components:

A 5-15 minute oral presentation of research topic and tools made by the student to the committee, followed by question-and-answer. This allows the committee to get a better understanding of the student’s research direction.
After the committee members provide their questions for the qualifying examination, the student gets eleven days (Friday to Monday) to provide written responses to all questions raised by committee members.
The major professor schedules a second committee meeting for the student to orally defend his/her responses. At this time, the committee can ask a student to take additional coursework to make up any perceived deficiency.

If a student passes the candidacy exam, he/she is officially admitted into candidacy by the Graduate School, and is allowed to register for dissertation research hours starting in the following semester.
If a student fails the candidacy exam, the doctoral committee will decide if the student can re-take the candidacy exam or if the student should be terminated from the doctoral program.
If a second opportunity is granted, the committee will establish the terms, time frame and conditions of the exam. A second failure results in dismissal from the doctoral program.

Proposal defense
A student must schedule a committee meeting to orally defend the dissertation research he/she proposes to do.

Journal paper publication
Must have at least one (1) referred journal paper accepted for publication before graduation.

Final dissertation defense
After the proposal defense, a student will work on and complete the proposed dissertation research. When the work is done and properly documented, a final dissertation defense must be given. There must be at least 4 months between the proposal defense and the final defense. The final defense is administered by a defense chair who is not a member of a student’s doctoral committee. Updated on Dec. 1, 2006

Direct questions or comments about the Web site to A. Tsalatsanis

The University of South Florida is accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (1866 Southern Lane, Decatur, Georgia 30033-4097; telephone 404-679-4500).

.:MSE students invited to present papers at INFORMS annual meeting in Denver, Colorado (read more....)

.:Dr. Suresh Khator,inducted as Fellow of IIE (read more....)

.:IMSE Ph. D. Candidate Mr. Rajesh Ganesan has been awarded the Best Thesis Award (read more....)