1.Program Plan
To be of value, the Ph.D. coursework should complement the intended area of expertise to be developed. The candidate and the advisor should develop a coherent set of courses, the attainment of which would signal readiness for the Qualifying Examination, for review and approval by the advisory committee. The residency requirements represent a bare minimum of credits; ordinarily, the student will take more than eighteen (18) credits of coursework beyond the master’s degree. Remedial coursework assigned to make up deficiencies may not count toward residency.

2.Coursework

At least one-half of the coursework presented for the Ph.D. degree shall be at the 600- and 700-level. Non-organized coursework (780 or 790) and coursework at the 400-level (4xx-G) may not be used to satisfy the minimum residency requirements.

Since the Ph.D. subsumes a master’s degree, the list of courses for which a student is held responsible in the master’s degree also pertains to Ph.D. coursework (see The Masters Degrees, Course Requirements #2, Deficiencies .) The student need not repeat these courses if they or their equivalent have been taken with earlier studies. The student will be accountable for this material on the Qualifying Examination.

3. Foreign Language

The Department of Mining Engineering requires all doctoral students to show proficiency in more than one language, and therefore, maintains its requirement for a foreign language. Reviewing the mining districts of the world and in particular, those that contribute to the technical literature of mining, the Department developed a list of eight languages, and two of which will satisfy the requirement.

Acceptable languages include: Chinese, English, French, German, Polish, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.

Inasmuch as English is one of the languages, students whose native language is one of the other seven may satisfy the requirements by presenting a TOEFL score of 550 or better.

4. Grades

The minimum grade point average for graduation with a Ph.D. is 3.0.