A doctoral supervisory committee must have at least four members, including at least one member from outside the Department of Communication to serve as Graduate School Representative (GSR). The committee chair must be from the Department of Communication. The GSR must be a member of the graduate faculty who is endorsed to chair doctoral committees. The GSR has full voting responsibilities on the committee, and students have the option to invite the GSR to serve on the reading committee and write general exam questions.

Students who enter the UW Communication PhD program with an MA from another university must select a committee chair by the end of the third quarter in the program. A full supervisory committee must be in place by the end of the fourth quarter (excluding summer).

Students who complete the MA in Communication at the UW, will select a doctoral committee chair by the end of the first quarter in the PhD program, and establish a full supervisory committee by the end of the second quarter.

A student may change advisers and/or the membership of their supervisory committee any time prior to scheduling the general exam with the Graduate School, and/or after passing the general exam (i.e. both the written and oral components). After the general exam has been scheduled and before the student has passed it in full, changes in the committee membership may only be made with the adviser’s written approval. If an adviser is incapacitated during this period, the other internal committee member(s) may approve a change in advisership and/or committee membership.

• Graduate students should initiate conversations with faculty with whom they share scholarly interests about potential advising/committee relationships. In general, faculty welcome these conversations and want to help grad students identify an appropriate adviser and thesis/dissertation committee members. It is not unusual for a graduate student to change advisers and/or committee members when their scholarly interests develop in a different direction than originally anticipated. Talking with your adviser and/or the Graduate Program Coordinator might help you clarify the optimal (re)configuration of your committee.
• Intellectual alignment matters. As you develop a preliminary proposal for your thesis or dissertation, (re)consider the apparent fit between your research and a prospective adviser’s areas of expertise, and the expertise held by current or prospective members of your committee. If possible, find an adviser whose has expertise in the primary topic or literature on which you will be focused, and/or in the main method(s) you plan to employ in your research. As you determine the key domains in which you hope to develop expertise, your adviser can help you identify faculty with expertise in those areas for you to consider inviting to join the committee.
• Connection and interpersonal communication style also matters. As you consider who to ask to serve as your adviser, think about which faculty you feel comfortable working with, and which are likely to work well with you. When possible, it is best to take a graduate seminar with a prospective adviser or committee member before inviting them to join the committee.
• Review program guidelines and requirements with your adviser. In addition, talking with your adviser about their expectations for your interactions, preferred modes of communication, and potential travel/leaves that might impact your own timetable will help foster a good working relationship.

• By the fourth quarter in the doctoral program (excluding summer), students are required to develop a Program of Study.
• If you completed your MA in Communication at the UW, you should submit an approved Program of Study by the end of the second quarter as a post-master’s student.
• This document requires the signed approval of all members of the supervisory committee, including approval of any course waiver or course substitution requests.
• The Program of Study must also be approved by the Graduate Program Coordinator (GPC) on behalf of the Graduate Committee to ensure compliance with program requirements. The GPC may bring questions, concerns, or waiver requests to the Graduate Committee for consultation. Once approved, the program of study should be turned in to the Graduate Program Manager.

• The Department of Communication offers a set of one-credit proseminars and an internship course to help students develop a range of professional competencies.
• PhD students are required to take three of these courses as part of their program of study.
• MA students also may enroll in them. In these proseminars, faculty share their experiences as teachers, researchers, and public intellectuals and students engage in workshop-style discussions. 
• There are six different COM 594 proseminars taught regularly:
• Graduate School and Career Choices
• Ethics, Research, and Teaching
• Research Funding: Identification and Proposal
• Public Scholarship
• Writing for Academic Publication
• Advanced Communication Pedagogy

The latter two, “Writing for Academic Publication” and “Advanced Communication Pedagogy” proseminars are offered every spring quarter; the other four are offered autumn or winter quarter once every two years.

• The purpose of the General Examination is to test a PhD student’s mastery of foundational communication subjects and theory, research, and methods relevant to the student’s main areas of study.
• Before beginning the General Exam process, students are expected to familiarize themselves with Graduate School and Communication Department policies.
• The General Exam has both written and oral components, sometimes referred to as the written exam and the oral exam or defense. Further details provided below.
• In the Department of Communication, the supervisory committee assesses a student’s performance on both components at the conclusion of the student’s oral exam. The successful completion of the General Exam indicates that a doctoral student is ready to design and produce a doctoral dissertation and advances the student to PhD Candidacy. Failure to pass the exam ends a doctoral student’s enrollment at the University of Washington, as explained in more detail below.

• PhD students are expected to take the general exam no later than their seventh quarter in the PhD program (excluding summer).
• Those students with MAs in Communication from the UW are expected to take the exam no later than their 3rd quarter in the PhD program.
• Students may take the exam once they have an approved PhD Program of Study (with no outstanding incomplete grades) and have passed all degree-required courses, i.e. COM 500, COM 501, 5 credits of 591/592, 3 credits of COM 594, and two methods courses beyond 501. The 2 credits of COM 596 are exceptions to this rule; they are required to be taken during students’ initial TA assignment quarters when students receive TA assignments.
• The exam may not take place during a quarter in which the student is enrolled in any degree-required course except COM 596.
• A student’s supervisory committee must be in place at least four months prior to the exam.

• Students prepare for exams in four question areas, one of which represents the core courses (COM 500 and/or 501).
• The other three areas are developed between the student and their adviser, with the approval of the supervisory committee.
• It is strongly recommended that (1) at least one exam question area have a methodological focus to help with preparation for the dissertation, and (2) committee members develop exam questions collaboratively, or each committee member prepares one of the exam questions and the chair reviews all the questions. The committee will not specify any of the exam questions to the student in advance of the exam.
• The “core question” is composed typically by the student’s adviser and should prompt the student to revisit readings from and issues raised in COM 500 and/or 501 while reflecting on their own epistemological and methodological perspective vis-a-vis the field of communication. In answering the core question, students are expected both to demonstrate their understanding of debates, concepts, and vocabularies that animate the broader discipline and articulate how they situate and justify their own scholarship in relationship to the field. In this way, the core question serves as a pedagogical “book end” to the foundational courses (500, 501), in that it provides students the opportunity to synthesize their coursework and to outline their own disciplinary identity explicitly as they move forward in their career.
• For the three other exam areas, each committee member will work with the student to develop a set of relevant readings for each exam area that will comprise the student’s “reading list” for that area.
• Reading lists must be reviewed and approved by all committee members, and the approved versions must be sent to the Graduate Program Manager as soon as they have been approved and at least two business days prior to the start of the exam.
• Once exam areas and reading lists have been approved by the adviser and committee members, the student may change exam areas and/or modify reading lists only with written approval from the adviser, and with email notification from the adviser of any changes sent to the full committee. Any such modifications must be made prior to beginning of the general exam.
• If a student fails part or all of the exam, any retake exam that the committee offers the student must be based on the same exam areas and reading lists. In other words, the exam areas and reading lists are to remain stable through the completion of the exam process.
• As proctor, the Graduate Program Manager will collect exam questions from the committee members and administer the written portion of the exam. All exam questions are due to the Graduate Program Manager a minimum of two business days before the start of the exam.
• There is one exception to this exam structure. A student’s supervisory committee may consider a student’s request to substitute a publishable sole-authored or first-authored scholarly article or book chapter for one of the four exams, not including the “core question”. If this option is selected and approved, then the remaining exams will be written in the traditional open-book style described below. The supervisory committee influences and approves the topics for the student’s publishable paper substitution, under the direction of the student’s chair. A substituted publishable sole-authored or first-authored scholarly article or book chapter should be completed before the written exams begin and must be submitted no later than 9 a.m. on the final day of the written exam. The oral exam in this case will review jointly the student’s written take-home answers and substituted scholarly article/book chapter submitted to the committee. Work turned in for completion of the master’s thesis cannot be used for this substitution.

Generally, students are ready to take their general exams when they have:

• Read all the readings on each list.
• Crafted a conceptual framework or mental map of the various lines of thought represented in the readings.
• Discussed key concepts and the relationships between them with the committee member(s) responsible for each reading list.

The successful completion of the general examination indicates that a student is deemed prepared to complete a dissertation. As such, doctoral candidates may begin to take COM 800 (Dissertation Research) credits the quarter after they pass the general exam.

• Proposal Guidelines [Intranet Link – UWNETID required]
• A formal dissertation proposal is required by the end of the second quarter (excluding summer) following the General Exam.
• It is recommended that a student with an MA in Communication from the UW submit the proposal the quarter after the general exam (excluding summer).
• Typically building on the general exams, and certainly reflecting the mastery required by the general exams, the dissertation proposal should address one or more questions of scholarly significance and propose a study to answer those questions.
• The proposal should identify critical gaps in the literature and offer a study that attempts to fill these. In addition, the proposal should reflect mastery of the methods to be deployed in the study. For many students, a high-quality proposal can develop into one or more of the chapters in the dissertation.
• By writing a formal proposal and earning committee approval, a student ensures that both the student and their full committee clearly understand the nature of the work the student is about to perform.
• The reading committee, a subset of the supervisory committee that includes the chair plus two other members of the graduate faculty (with at least one of those additional two members being primary or adjunct in the department), should be appointed at the time of the dissertation proposal.
• The dissertation proposal requires the signed approval of the reading committee, although it is strongly recommended that all committee members be involved in its review.