Biology

Students must be enrolled full time and complete a minimum of 36 units (nine courses) of graduate (200 or 500 series) and/or upper division (100 series) course work for the master's degree. Within this overall requirement, students must complete 20 units (five courses) at the graduate level for a letter grade. Of these 20 required graduate units, 16 must be in the 200 series and 4 may be in the 200 or 500 series. Students must complete one advanced quantitative course (100 or 200 series) in statistics, biomathematics, or bioinformatics. Students must also complete one advanced course (100 or 200 series) in ecology, evolution, or behavior. The guidance committee establishes other specific course recommendations individually for each student.

Students pursuing the ecology and evolution of medicine track must take 185 and 186 (which can be used to meet the advanced quantitative course requirement).

Teaching Experience

Not required.

Field Experience

Not required.

Capstone Plan

All students must complete a capstone project at the end of the first year in residence. The capstone project consists of a first-year literature review and research proposal that, combined, is four to five pages in length. The first version of the proposal must be submitted to the student's advisory committee for comment by the first week of spring quarter. A final version of the proposal, which should incorporate the advisory committee’s comments, must be submitted to the advisory committee in the eighth week of spring quarter. The advisory committee evaluates and grades the proposal as pass or not pass. The results are forwarded to the graduate adviser.

Thesis Plan

Every master's degree thesis plan requires the completion of an approved thesis that demonstrates the student's ability to perform original, independent research.

Doctoral students may pursue the thesis plan only if they have not passed their doctoral qualifying exams and have been approved to transfer to the M.S. program. Before beginning work on the thesis, students must obtain approval of the subject and general plan from the master's thesis committee, which consists of three faculty. The thesis must be prepared in accordance with University formatting requirements in UCLA Policies and Procedures for Thesis Dissertation and Filing, available on the Graduate Division website. The completed thesis is presented to the thesis committee for approval.

Time-to-Degree

The normative time-to-degree for the master's degree is six quarters.

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Advising

All academic affairs for graduate students in the department are directed by the departmental graduate adviser who is assisted by the administrative staff of the Graduate Division. The graduate adviser establishes, at the time of admission to graduate study, a guidance committee for each student that consists of three faculty members for each student. The guidance committee supports the student until a doctoral committee is established.

The chair of the guidance committee acts as the provisional adviser until the student secures a permanent adviser, ideally by the end of the first year. Service as a provisional adviser is designed to be provisional for both professor and student. It does not commit the professor to supervise the dissertation, nor does it commit the student to a provisional adviser. The provisional adviser serves until a permanent adviser is found and the doctoral dissertation committee is established.

Students are required, as part of their degree requirements, to find a faculty member who agrees to serve as their permanent adviser and dissertation research supervisor/chair of the doctoral committee. Students who fail to find or retain a permanent adviser and dissertation research supervisor will be placed in departmental probationary status for one quarter. If the student does not find an adviser by the end of that quarter, they are recommended for academic disqualification to the Graduate Division. Students are urged to discuss permanent sponsorship and dissertation research with faculty at the earliest opportunity, to pick a permanent adviser by the end of their first year, and are expected to advance to candidacy by the end of Winter Quarter of their third year of graduate study.

Major Fields or Subdisciplines

Study consists of course work and research within the department and within related programs in biochemistry, geology, microbiology, and molecular biology on campus. Opportunities are also available off-campus for intensive study of the following subjects: marine biology at a marine science center in fall quarter, field biology in spring quarter, and tropical biology through courses offered by the Organization for Tropical Studies.

Foreign Language Requirement

No foreign language is required for admission to the Ph.D. program, and there is no uniform language requirement for the Ph.D. degree. However, at the discretion of the faculty, students who pursue certain subspecialties of biology may be required to gain proficiency in one or more foreign languages.

Course Requirements

Students must enroll for full-time study as defined by the university. Doctoral students must complete a minimum of 20 units of graduate-level courses (200-series). Students must take the following courses during their first year: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology M200A, 200B, and 250. Students also must complete an advanced course (100 or 200 series) in statistics, biomathematics, or bioinformatics. Other specific course recommendations are established individually for each student by the guidance committee.

Teaching Experience

Each student is required to serve a minimum of three terms as a teaching assistant.

Written and Oral Qualifying Examinations

Academic Senate regulations require all doctoral students to complete and pass university written and oral qualifying examinations prior to doctoral advancement to candidacy. Also, under Senate regulations, the University Oral Qualifying Examination is open only to the student and appointed members of the doctoral committee. In addition to university requirements, some graduate programs have other pre-candidacy examination requirements. What follows in this section is how students are required to fulfill all of these requirements for this doctoral program.

All committee nominations and reconstitutions adhere to the Minimum Standards for Doctoral Committee Constitution.

Students are required to take the Departmental Written Qualifying Examination during their first year in residence. The examination consists of a research proposal that is eight to ten pages in length. The first version of the proposal must be submitted to the student's advisory committee for comment by the first week of spring quarter. A final version of the proposal, which should incorporate the advisory committee’s comments, must be submitted to the advisory committee in the eighth week of spring quarter. The advisory committee evaluates and grades the research proposal as pass or not pass. The results are forwarded to the graduate adviser.

The University Oral Qualifying Examination is conducted by the doctoral committee and must be completed by the end of the second year of graduate study. Students prepare, present and defend an original written dissertation proposal, which may or may not directly build upon their research proposal for the Departmental Written Qualifying Exam. The oral examination focuses on the content of the dissertation proposal and topics directly related to it. The dissertation proposal generally follows the format of a National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant and forms the basis of the student's oral defense of the dissertation proposal. The oral qualifying examination is graded pass, fail, or repeat. A repeated examination is graded pass/fail only. Students who do not pass this repeated oral qualifying examination and advance to doctoral candidacy by the end of winter quarter of their third year will lose fellowship support and access to departmental grants, and will be recommended for academic disqualification.

Advancement to Candidacy

Students are advanced to candidacy and awarded the Candidate in Philosophy (C.Phil.) degree upon successful completion of the written and oral qualifying examinations.

Doctoral Dissertation

Every doctoral degree program requires the completion of an approved dissertation that demonstrates the student's ability to perform original, independent research and constitutes a distinct contribution to knowledge in the principal field of study.

Final Oral Examination (Defense of Dissertation)

Not required for all students in the program. The decision as to whether a defense is required is made by the doctoral committee.

Time-to-Degree

The normative time for the Ph.D. degree is 18 quarters.

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Termination of Graduate Study and Appeal of Termination

University Policy

A student who fails to meet the above requirements may be recommended for termination of graduate study. A graduate student may be disqualified from continuing in the graduate program for a variety of reasons. The most common is failure to maintain the minimum cumulative grade point average (3.00) required by the Academic Senate to remain in good standing (some programs require a higher grade point average). Other examples include failure of examinations, lack of timely progress toward the degree and poor performance in core courses. Probationary students (those with cumulative grade point averages below 3.00) are subject to immediate dismissal upon the recommendation of their department. University guidelines governing termination of graduate students, including the appeal procedure, are outlined in Standards and Procedures for Graduate Study at UCLA.

Special Departmental or Program Policy

In addition to the standard reasons outlined above, a student may be recommended for academic disqualification for one or more of the following reasons: unsatisfactory performance as determined by the advisory committee, failure to pass all areas of the written and oral qualifying examinations, failure to pass the master's capstone project or thesis plan, and failure to maintain a provisional or permanent adviser. A student may appeal a recommendation for academic disqualification in writing to the appropriate subgroup or the departmental chair.

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