Master’s Degree Progress

All of your activities should be planned with the advice of the Head Graduate Advisor or academic advisors assigned on admission to the program.

1. Take Care of the Basics

• Fulfill residency requirements
• Fulfill any departmental course requirements
• Satisfy any foreign language requirement
• Take and pass preliminary exams if required
• Plan I Masters students: identify thesis committee members
• Complete CITI modules if working with human subjects or animals

2. Teach

The GSI Teaching and Resource Center provides support for your development of teaching skills, offering workshops every semester. Your department is required to offer a course on pedagogy that all first time GSIs must take either before, or at the time of, the first GSI appointment (often numbered 375). Also required of first time GSIs are attendance at the annual Teaching Conference for First-Time GSIs organized by the GSI Center, and completion of the Online Course in Professional Ethics and Standards for GSIs.

3. Consider Interdisciplinarity

Now is the time to decide if you want to formally engage in interdisciplinary study. Masters and doctoral students can add a second degree goal, with the approval of relevant faculty.

Plan I Masters students can add a faculty member from another department to the thesis committee.

4. Pursue Fellowship and Research Grant Funding

Fellowships for continuing students offered by the Graduate Division require nomination by the individual program, usually based on an internal application initiated by the student. Many outside fellowships are available for continuing students, with deadlines and links provided by the Fellowships Office.

The Graduate Division offers workshops on applying for some major fellowships (the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, the Fulbright Fellowship).

Small research grants are available internally from many of the Organized Research Units and Area Studies Centers on campus, as well as the Bancroft Library.

5. Share Your Research

Graduate students already engaged in preliminary research may want to present their results at conferences. The Graduate Division provides Conference Travel Grants for academic Masters and doctoral students. In some disciplines, students at this stage may publish in conference proceedings, student journals, or peer-reviewed journals. Consider registering with ORCID so that your published work is uniquely identified from your earliest days in graduate school throughout your career.

Your discipline may encourage you to be involved in outreach or community engaged scholarship. You may want to participate in a formal research mentoring program like the SMART program offered by the Graduate Division, or other mentoring opportunities you might have through your research sponsor, program, or college. There are many ways to share your research, and you should explore them now.

Provide a title page with the proposed concurrent degrees name, date, and proposing faculty.

Table of Contents (all pages must be numbered)

Proposal Document:

Title: A proposal for a concurrent degree program between the Master of [name] and the Master of [name].

Date of writing:

Proposers-Administrating Department/School (contact information):

1. All proposals should contain the following items:
   1. A justification of the current and potential demand and need for a concurrent degree program in the fields concerned.
   2. A detailed discussion of the ways in which the new program integrates the subject matter and/or methodology of its constituent fields in such a way as to make it superior to consecutive separate degree programs in these fields, including an integrated capstone requirement. (Proposals which appear to be truncated versions of consecutive degree programs are unlikely to be approved.)
   3. A detailed description of the specifics of the program including
      1. 1. admission requirements and procedure.
         2. one or more sample student programs illustrating normal operation of the new program. (If there are concentrations, include a sample program per concentration.)
         3. a chart listing 1) the number of units required for each degree separately and the percentage of units that may be shared/double-counted (no more than 25% of the total number of units if both degrees were earned sequentially); 2) the core requirements of each Master’s degree—including any required internships or electives—and their units; 3) the integrated capstone project and its units; and 4) which courses/units in completion of the one degree will be accepted by the other toward fulfilling the total number of units required for completion of the degree (the capstone project units are always part of the shared unit total).
   4. A detailed description of the examining procedures of the new program (the integrated capstone project).
   5. A description of the provisions to be made for administering the new program within the department of schools concerned, including student advising. At a minimum, an administrative committee consisting of at least one Academic Senate member from each participating unit should be established. The proposal should also be accompanied by a nomination of a Graduate Adviser for the new program. [Nomination of a specific individual is not needed in the proposal itself, but could be included in the covering / forwarding letter to the Council.] The administrative committee would be answerable to the Graduate Council through the Dean of the Graduate Division.
   6. A realistic estimate of how many students would be enrolled in the new program during each of its first 5 years, where they would come from, and what sources of financial support might be available. (For instance, “We expect 12 students of whom four would be from the alchemy department and six from astrology. The other two would be new admissions to both programs simultaneously. The phrenology department has promised 2 GSI appointments / year for our students.”)
   7. The proposed text of a statement of aims, principles, and regulations to be given to students enrolling in the program.
   8. A statement of faculty support for the new program from the participating units.
   9. If one or two programs has a Professional Degree Fee, an MOU regarding the fees to be charged and the disposition of the fees between the two academic units should be attached.
2. An approved program should be reviewed at the end of its first five years of operation. How will it be reviewed by the two departments?

Please note: A minimum of five students is expected for formal establishment of the program.

• How to calculate “shared units”

• Graduate Council
• Committee on Budget and Interdepartmental Relations
• Divisional Council
• Office of the Vice Provost for Academic Planning