PhD committee

For each doctoral school, a PhD committee is set up. The PhD committees help to ensure that PhD students and academic staff have influence on discipline-specific and academic issues of the PhD programmes. The PhD committee advises the head of doctoral school on issues presented by the head; furthermore, the committee may comment on academic issues of significance to faculty activities, which the committee considers to be relevant.

The responsibilities of the PhD committees include:

• to submit recommendations to the dean on the composition of assessment committees
• to approve PhD courses
• to prepare proposals for internal guidelines for the doctoral school, including PhD supervision, to the head of doctoral school
• to comment on the evaluation of the PhD degree programmes and PhD supervision, including international evaluations of the doctoral schools, to the head of doctoral school.
• to approve applications for credit transfers, including advance credit transfer, and for exemptions.

Members

The dean determines the number of members of the PhD committee; however, the committee must consist of a minimum of six and a maximum of 14 members. Two of the members must be elected by and among the PhD students, whereas the other members must be elected by and among the academic staff.

The representatives of the academic staff are elected for four-year terms, whereas representatives for the PhD students are elected for one-year terms. Upon recommendation by the PhD committee, the chair and the deputy chair must be approved by the dean. The recommended chair must be one of the academic staff members of the committee and the deputy chair must be one of the PhD students of the committee.