Dissertation Committee

1. The dissertation committee is responsible for supervising the preparation of the student’s dissertation and for forwarding the Final Report to the Dean of the Graduate School. At such time as the program coordinator requests, the Dean of the Graduate School will approve, upon departmental or program recommendation, a dissertation committee.
    
2. A doctoral dissertation committee is generally comprised of three to five members, at least three members of which must be members of the UL Lafayette Graduate Faculty and the consortium institution. The UL Lafayette Graduate Faculty members shall always constitute a simple majority of the committee membership regardless of the number of total committee members. All members of a dissertation committee at UL Lafayette shall be voting members of said committee with the privilege of signing the approval page of the dissertation.
   
   Only graduate faculty members at UL Lafayette or the consortium institution may serve as chair and/or co-chair of a dissertation committee. This includes adjunct faculty who are members of the UL Lafayette Graduate Faculty.
   
   Committee members from outside of the UL Lafayette faculty may serve as outside members of the dissertation committee with the privileges of voting and signing the dissertation approval page. These members shall be chosen based upon their qualifications by the dissertation committee.
   
   In addition, the committee must include adequate representation from the candidate’s major field, and secondary field (if any). A minimum of two members in addition to the chair must participate in the defense of dissertation. In addition, at least one committee member must be from the collaborating university (Southeastern Louisiana University). The Dean of the Graduate School may appoint an outside observer to represent the Graduate Faculty, according to the Outside Observers  policies.