Form your final oral examination committee

  • A Ph.D. final oral committee must have at least 4 members, 3 of whom must be UW-Madison Graduate Faculty or former Graduate Faculty up to one year after resignation or retirement. If you have more than four members on the committee, the additional member(s) should vote and sign the degree warrant too.
  • A minimum of 4 members is a change in Graduate School policy.  Your department has the right to continue to require 5 members.
  • Check with your department/advisor to see if your department has additional rules on the formation of the final oral committee.
  • At least one of the four (or five or more) members must represent a different UW-Madison graduate program outside of your major field.
  • Your advisor chairs the committee. You can also have another faculty member co-chair the committee if your department approves it.
  • If your advisor has retired or resigned, she or he has one year to remain “current,” after which you will need to add a co-advisor, who is current UW graduate faculty in your department.
  • If one of the members of your committee has retired, she or he remains current for one year.  After one year, as long as the other 3 are current UW graduate faculty, the retired faculty member can remain on the committee. 
  • If you have more than one member who has retired or resigned more than a year ago, you will need to add another member (or more) so that you have a minimum of 3 current graduate faculty.
  • The Graduate School requires a minimum of three (3) readers on the committee.
  • To pass the oral exam/defense, you must receive no more than one dissenting vote from the oral committee.  A missing signature is considered a dissent. You cannot pass if your advisor dissents.
  • If any committee members participate via Skype or teleconference, or skip out of town before your warrant is signed, the advisor of your committee or chair of your department can sign the warrant for that distant professor, followed by the chair’s own initials with that distant professor’s authorization.
  • You can find Grad School PhD committee rules on our website under Committees:

https://grad.wisc.edu/documents/committees/