Interim Supervisors

Every student not in the Specialized MA program is assigned an Interim Supervisor upon entering the program. If the student finds him or herself seeking most of her advice from a faculty member other than the assigned Interim Supervisor, and if the faculty member is in agreement, the Departmental Graduate Committee will change the Interim Supervisor assignment at the student's request.

The interim supervisor acts as the student's advisor and it is expected that the two shall meet within the first week of the student's arrival and at least once a term thereafter.

Supervisory Committees

The Dean of Graduate studies expects students to acquire a permanent Senior Supervisor early in their program. The choice of Senior Supervisor is up to individual agreements between students and faculty members, although the form does require approval by the Graduate Chair.

The following are the minimum supervisory requirements.  Your supervisory committee may have more members and, in any case, the Department requires that any Faculty Member who made a substantive contribution to the development of your Professional Paper, Thesis, or Dissertation be officially included in the Supervisory Committee.

Specialized MA students must have a Senior Supervisor upon entering the program.

For an MA with a thesis, the Supervisory Committee requires at least one other member in addition to the Senior Supervisor. It may have more, although it is unusual to have more than three members in total.

For a Non-thesis MA, only a Senior Supervisor is required. Sometimes students have larger committees, especially if they have switched to the Non-Thesis option from the Thesis option.