The Graduate School offers a way for a Ph.D. candidate to pursue a concurrent master’s degree (the link is to a PDF form), which could be helpful for your desired career. There are a few steps to take if you want to pursue this opportunity.
- Before being eligible to fill out the above form, you must complete your preliminary examination (prelim) to advance to doctoral candidacy. You may want to start planning your coursework around your master’s degree before this, though!
- Be sure you and your advisor are on the same page: a master’s degree will take significant extra coursework and will likely affect your trajectory as a Ph.D. student!
- Plan out a course of study: you will need to satisfy the requirements for both the chemistry Ph.D. and the concurrent master’s degree. For instance, if you were to pursue a coursework-only M.S. in ECE, you would not need to do extra research beyond your dissertation, but you would have to take extra courses and a final exam at the end of your graduate career. Counting courses toward both requirements should be okay: you won’t need 22 credits for the Chemistry Ph.D. and (say) 30 more for a M.S.
- Before the final semester of your Ph.D., fill out Part 1 of this form: you will need signatures from the Director of Graduate Studies in both the Chemistry and master’s departments. (The Chemistry DGS is Michael Fitzgerald.) You also need to get letters of recommendation from both departments, as well as to write a one-page “statement of intellectual relationship” between the programs. In some cases, the master’s department may submit the form to the Graduate School on your behalf to get the final signature, but it’s good to check up on the submission process anyway.
- Finally, in the semester you’re planning to graduate, fill out Part 2 of the same form: this also requires an attached copy of your Duke transcript, with the courses you’re counting for the master’s degree. This needs the same signatures as before and must be submitted at least 30 days before the graduation deadline date. You also have to apply to graduate separately for both the Ph.D. and the master’s degree!
If all goes well, you will receive two advanced degrees at once. Note that if you withdraw from your Ph.D. program after finishing the master’s requirements, you have the option of receiving the master’s degree—but you’ll owe retroactive tuition on it.
Current Students in Concurrent Master’s Programs:
Jacob Williams (jacob.z.williams@duke.edu)- Electrical and Computer Engineering
Niven Singh (niven.singh@duke.edu)- Computer Science
For questions on this process, feel free to contact Jacob Williams (jacob.z.williams@duke.edu).
