Guidelines for Advancing to PhD Candidacy

Guidelines for
Advancing to PhD Candidacy

FINANCIAL MATHEMATICS

The following Guidelines are applicable to students who enter the FSU Financial Mathematics Program in Summer 2007 or later. Students who entered earlier have the option of following the previous edition, linked here.

FORMS for ATE and PhD Defense

See the Guidelines for PhD Progress for a description of departmental expectations for timely progress toward the PhD degree.

To pursue a doctorate in Financial Mathematics, the student should consult with appropriate faculty members who direct or co-direct research in that area. In the narrative below “Major Professor” should be read as “Major Professor or Co-Directors”.

The PhD in Mathematics requires a substantial dissertation written under the direction of a major professor in the Department. Eligibility to submit a dissertation requires that the student first formally advance to candidacy for the PhD degree. We describe here the requirements for advancement to PhD candidacy.

As explained further below, advancement to PhD candidacy in Financial Mathematics requires (1) passing two approved preliminary exams, and satisfying the requirements for the Financial Math Master's degree, and (2) passing an Advanced Topics Exam (ATE) prepared under the direction of the major professor.

Students are responsible for finding a professor who agrees to direct their dissertation work. Students are encouraged to find a major professor as soon as possible, so that they may assist in choosing qualifying exams and courses appropriate to their research area. On request, and when mutually agreeable to the student, professor, and department chair, the department chair will officially appoint the major professor and then, in a timely manner, the remainder of the supervisory committee. In any case, students must have a major professor and supervisory committee before taking the ATE.

Upon appointment, this committee will be in charge of the work of the student until completion of all degree requirements. The committee must include, in addition to the major professor, one faculty member from another Department to serve as representative-at-large, and will normally include at least three additional Mathematics graduate faculty members.

To assure timely progress toward the doctorate, the student shall cooperate with the major professor and the supervisory committee in the implementation of their responsibilities:

approve the student's remaining courses;

approve the eligible student's request to proceed to the ATE;

announce the time and place of the ATE in a timely fashion, and serve as the ATE examining committee;

recommend if appropriate, based on the qualifiers or ATE performance, subsequent formal or informal study;

notify the departmental chair when the requirements for Admission to Candidacy are satisfied;

annually assess in writing the progress of the student toward the degree, and report appropriately; the student will supply a progress report to assist their assessment;

approve, in a timely fashion, a Plan for the dissertation, to form the basis for evaluating the dissertation at the Defense;

serve as the examining committee at the dissertation Defense.

STAGES OF PROGRESS

Three Financial Math faculty members appointed by the Director will serve as the Financial Math Qualifying Committee (FMQC).

[I] PRELIMINARY EXAMS:: The student who begins graduate work at FSU will satisfy this requirement by passing two written preliminary examinations, and completing all requirements for the Financial Mathematics Master's degree. Each written preliminary exam will be based on a two-semester course sequence of beginning graduate material, to be chosen from among the following five options: Measure and Integration I and II, Foundations of Computational Mathematics I and II, PDE I and II, Complex Analysis I and II, and PDE I/Numerical PDE.
For one of these exams, a student's supervisory committee may, with the approval of the FMQC, substitute another written exam based on material at a similar level and scope.
[II] ADVANCED TOPICS EXAMINATION:: After passing the preliminary exams, satisfying the requirements of the FM master's degree, and obtaining an approved major professor and PhD supervisory commitee, the student is eligible to take the ATE.; A. The student, with the approval and guidance of supervisory committee, will choose a one-semester graduate course, not among the prelim courses listed above, such as Stochastic Calculus, Monte Carlo Methods in Finance, Numerical SDE, Numerical PDE, etc, to be their "ATE course". The student and supervisory committee may also choose, with approval of the FMQC, a course-sized body of material that may not be available as a course at FSU.; B. The student will prepare a carefully written expository paper on an advanced topic selected with the guidance of the supervisory committee. The paper should be in dissertation format and cite recent literature on the topic. This ATE paper will be distributed to the supervisory committee for comment at least three weeks in advance of the Exam.; On the announced day, the student will deliver a public lecture on the material covered by the ATE paper. In closed session, the supervisory committee will examine the candidate on the ATE course and the material covered by the expository paper. The student must demonstrate scholarly competence and knowledge sufficient to begin work on dissertation research.
[III] ADMISSION TO CANDIDACY:: With the agreement of the major professor to direct dissertation research, and on the recommendation of the supervisory committee, the departmental chair will certify Admission to Candidacy for the doctoral degree.

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