Page 83 - Bowie State University Graduate Catalog 2018-2020.

The Comprehensive Examination
Comprehensive examination is the second examination the students take after
the Qualifying Examination. The examination covers the five Knowledge Areas;
students choose any three of these five areas for their comprehensive exam.
1. Computer Systems
2. Software Engineering and Programming Languages
3. Database Systems and Artificial Intelligence
4. Multimedia Technology/Computer Vision
5. Scientific Computing
The comprehensive examination is a written examination, and is offered in
October for the Fall Semester and in March for the Spring semester. The
student will be tested in any three of the five Knowledge Areas chosen by the
student.
The students can be given two attempts to pass comprehensive exam.
Students have to pass the Comprehensive Examination within the first five
years in the program. Students who do not pass within that time period, will
be automatically dismissed from the doctoral program.

Dissertation Advisory Committee
The student chooses a faculty member in the Department as a research advisor.
The research advisor guides the student to identify a dissertation topic, develop
a research plan and choose dissertation committee members. The dissertation
committee must include a minimum a of 3 graduate faculty members in the
Department in addition to the advisor and the external examiner.

The Proposal Defense
At least two years prior to the dissertation defense candidates must present a
written proposal in IEEE format, of their dissertation work to the advisory
committee. The proposal is to be given to the doctoral program coordinator two
weeks in advance of the proposal defense. Students are encouraged to present
an open seminar on the proposal prior to defending the proposal. The student
must obtain Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval for the proposed work.
The student must orally defend the rationale and experimental procedures for
the proposed research at the proposal defense. Each candidate must
successfully pass the dissertation committee’s oral examination of the
candidate’s literature survey. Students who fail the proposal defense may repeat
the proposal defense a maximum of one time. If a second failure occurs, he/she
may be dismissed from the program.

The Dissertation Defense

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