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Annual Graduate Student Review & Satisfactory Progress

The tenure-track faculty, as a body, conducts annual reviews of each student in the graduate program. These reviews typically take place late in the spring semester. The exact date of the reviews will be scheduled at the beginning of the fall semester. Students will be reviewed according to the guidelines established in the Satisfactory Progress Policy (Appendix C). Students are responsible for constructing a dossier for faculty review, but they should do this in consultation with their major professor. The dossier should include the following items:

  1. Statement of Accomplishments - a statement of no more than 2 pages outlining progress in the program and plans for the upcoming year
  2. Curriculum Vitae
  3. Copies of papers that have been published, accepted for publication, or are under review. A copy of the MS Analytic Project should be included if the paper has not yet been published.
  4. Letter of support from the major professor (no more than 2 pages)

Review Procedures:

The tenure-track faculty will review each student annually in order to assess whether satisfactory progress criteria have been met (see Appendix C for satisfactory progress). The review will normally occur late in the spring semester. The faculty will assess the student’s progress, consider whether the progress is satisfactory, and vote on the student’s continued status in the program by secret ballot. If a student has not made satisfactory progress, the faculty must decide if the student can continue in the program under a revised set of conditions or whether the student should be dismissed from the Graduate Program.

As a result of this review, the Graduate Faculty will recommend one of the following:

  1. Continue in the Graduate Program,
  2. Continue in the Graduate Program with Conditions, or
  3. Dismissal from Graduate Program

Students who receive a majority vote of “Continue in the Program with Conditions” are required to discuss those provisions with their major professor, or if a major professor has not been designated, with the Department’s Graduate Director. The purpose of the discussion will be to make explicit those areas in the student’s performance that require improvement in time for the student’s next annual review.


2nd Year Master’s Student Review:

Students who have entered the graduate program without a MA/MS degree in sociology will be considered for acceptance into the PhD program once the Analytic Project and all M.S. degree requirements have been completed.  This decision will normally be made during the Annual Review of Graduate Students towards the end of their second year.

Faculty will vote according to the following recommendations:

  1. Met Satisfactory Progress for Completion of MS Degree-Continuation to the PhD Program,
  2. Met Satisfactory Progress for completion of MS Degree-Do Not Accept into the PhD program,
  3. Did not meet satisfactory progress for completion of MS degree, continue in Graduate  Program with Conditions,
  4. Did not meet satisfactory progress for completion of MS degree, Dismissal from the Graduate Program