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Program Requirements

Required Courses:

The core graduate courses required for Microbiology Graduate students are:

  • MIBO8600 (Advanced Prokaryotic Biology) 3 credit hours
  • MIBO8610 (Advanced Microbial Diversity) 3 credit hours
  • MIBO8160 (Seminar Presentation) 3 credit hours
  • MIBO8170 (Research Seminar) 1 credit hour (must be taken at least twice)

Other Courses:

  • Other courses taken to fulfill a requirement of  20 credit hours of graduate-only course work, including MIBO8900 (Rotations, max 6 CR) and other advanced courses in genetics, biochemistry, cell biology, etc. (decided on by the student in consultation with their advisor and committee).  
  • Students who earn extramural fellowships may be required to take an additional course in the ethical conduct of science, such as Genetics 8650 (Responsible Science)
  • As noted below, GRSC7770 is a course requirement associated with teaching, and MIBO 9300 is taken during the process of writing the thesis/dissertation.
  • For doctoral students without Master’s of Sciences degrees, the program of study must contain at least 5 credit hours of courses in addition to MIBO8600 and MIBO8610 whose primary purpose is to provide scientific content.  Courses related to policy (for example GRSC prefixes), seminar courses (for example MIBO8160, MIBO8170), or independent research (MIBO8900) do not fulfill this requirement. Eligible courses to fulfill this requirement include but are not limited to: MIBO6030, MIBO6090, MIBO6100, MIBO6120, MIBO6220, MIBO6220S, MIBO6300, MIBO6310, MIBO6320, MIBO6450, MIBO6500, MIBO6600L, MIBO6610, MIBO6620, MIBO6650, MIBO6680, MIBO6700, MIBO6710L, MIBO8110L, MIBO8200, MIBO8260, MIBO8270L, MIBO8520, MIBO8700, MIBO8960, and MIBO8980. Other courses can be used to fulfill this requirement with the permission of the dissertation advisor, doctoral committee and graduate coordinator.

Teaching requirement:

  • Teaching for two semesters in introductory, advanced, or graduate-level courses is required. Most students serve as teaching assistants during their third year.
  • A graduate teaching and career development course (GRSC 7770) is required before the first semester of teaching.  In certain instances, GRSC7770 may be taken concurrently with the first semester of teaching.

Publication Requirement:

The publication of scholarly work is the capstone of your doctoral training. 

  • All Microbiology PhD students are required to publish a minimum of one peer-reviewed research manuscript as first or co-first author prior to defending their thesis.   Manuscripts that are accepted for publication can satisfy this requirement. 

An appeal for an exception to this requirement may be initiated by majority vote of the student’s advisory committee and forwarded to the Graduate Coordinator for review.

Defense requirement:

  • The final step in graduation is passing a thesis/dissertation defense: a public seminar followed by oral exam with committee (PhD aim for Year 5).  
  • Immediately before graduating, students must be enrolled in three credit hours of MIBO9300 (writing thesis/dissertation).

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