Academics

Decisions regarding any individual student’s status in the graduate program are based on an interpretation of the entire record, including any special circumstances. (Note that somewhat different rules apply to students in the Chemical Physics graduate program, see Chemical Physics Graduate Program for details). The following is an approximate guide to the academic expectations of Ph.D. students.

If students have any doubts regarding their present academic status, they should consult with their Three- Member Advising Committee, research advisor, or the Director of Graduate Studies. In the following, whenever grade point average (GPA) is mentioned, it means the GPA in actual courses graded on the A-F scale and appearing on the Degree Program Form, exclusive of research credits. Grades of D, F, and N cannot be made up or replaced, and are not included in the Degree Program.  While officially allowed by the Graduate School, retaking courses is not allowed in the Chemistry graduate program. According the Graduate School rules, if a course is taken a second time, the grade earned for the initial attempt is the only one that will be used in the calculation of your GPA. Hence there is no benefit to the GPA to retaking a course.


Academic performance

When a student is on track to complete their Ph.D. in the expected amount of time (4 to 6 years) based on the program milestones then they are considered to be "in good standing". A student in good standing in the Chemistry graduate program should:

What does it mean to be "not in good standing" in the graduate program? This depends to some extent on the circumstances. For example, while most of our students complete their six courses in their first year, there are always some students who opt to take one or two of the courses in the second year due to the availability of certain courses in the fall and spring. Depending on the number of credits completed this can put a student "not in good standing" at the end of their first year.  As long as the student is doing fine in their first year classes, this is not usually a reason for concern and they will be back in good standing after completing the courses in the second year. On the other hand, a student who reaches the end of their second year and has still not completed the required courses with the required GPA will usually be reassigned to the M.S. program. Long before this situation arises, the student should have a conversation with the Director of Graduate Studies and their research advisor about their options and a strategy to succeed. A student who has not completed their WPE or OPE by the end of the second year is more concerning and may be on track for removal from the Ph.D. program.  In situations when accommodations are needed, a discussion with the Director of Graduate Studies and the research advisor needs to happen, and the earlier in the process the better!  Some cases have no flexibility within the rules of the UMN Graduate School, such as a second failure of the oral preliminary examination, which requires permanent removal from the Ph.D. program. We want to prepare for (and if possible, avoid) these situations before they occur.  Again, regular communication with your advisor and the DGS is key.


Annual Review of Student Progress

Each term the Director of Graduate Studies reviews the progress of first-year graduate students. Other than in exceptional circumstances, a decision to reassign a student from the Ph.D. to M.S. degree program is not made until the end of the first year and would not be made without consultation with the student and their research advisor. 

Following the first year, academic review is done annually at the end of Spring term for Ph.D. and M.S. students. The University of Minnesota policy requires graduate programs to complete a performance evaluation for all graduate students annually.  The goal of this process is to provide a mechanism for improved student-adviser communication regarding efficient completion of your degree. 

The evaluation forms are sent out to students at the end of each spring semester. On the form, we encourage adviser(s) to provide any suggestions to students for improvement and in making good progress toward degree completion. Once received, the following procedure should be followed to complete the form:

 Note that this procedure is mandatory and all students are required to complete an annual performance evaluation.


Time Limitations for Completing Degree Requirements

The Graduate School imposes various limits on the total duration of various courses of study leading to graduate degrees. These are summarized below, although anyone wishing further clarification should contact the Graduate Office for the "long" version of the Graduate School requirements from which these were distilled.

It is possible to petition the Graduate School to request an extension in the time limit for either degree. However, Graduate School policy states that "only under the most extraordinary circumstances will a petition be considered to extend the deadline to more than six years beyond the date of the [Ph.D.] oral preliminary examination" or to "more than eight years from the date of the earliest [M.S.] program coursework."


Authorship Questions

The often cited phrase “Publish or perish” summarizes very distinctly how important it is in the sciences to become an author. Not surprisingly, authorship questions can lead to disagreement among students and faculty. Some basic knowledge can help to avoid misunderstandings and conflict in first place, and will make it a lot easier to manage disagreements if they do arise.

There are no general rules on who must be included as author and who should only be acknowledged, and there are no strict rules on the order of orders in papers of multiple authors. Different subdisciplines and different research groups handle these issues differently. While one group may always have the faculty member as first author and students following in alphabetical order, other groups may have principle investigators last and students in the order of the extent to which they contributed to a paper. While some groups make a first decision on the order of authors before they start a project, others write down the list of authors only when they start writing a manuscript or when the manuscript is finished. What guidelines a research group uses to determine authorship is part of the group culture. Faculty members should make an effort to clarify these guidelines for their research group, and students should actively seek clarification if those guidelines are not sufficiently clear to them.

Keep in mind that the authorship question may be revisited as a project and eventually the writing of a manuscript proceeds. For example, if a student leaves the group after a very long time on a project and another student is put in charge of collecting a few additional data points, the first student who worked on the project should be probably first author. However, if it becomes clear later that a substantial amount of additional data is needed and that the data from the first student require complete reinterpretation, the authorship assignment needs to be revisited to test whether the order of authors should be changed.

At the end of the day, the U of MN is the “owner” of our research and our resulting paperwork (lab notebooks, image files, etc…). The supervisors/advisors are nearly always the initiators of the work and serve as representatives of the U of MN. As such, the advisors have the final say about the content of the submitted manuscript and about authorship and the author order.

Disagreements about the content and authorship of a manuscript are best solved in an amicable way among the authors. The experience of others has shown that in a lot of cases an honest discussion can clarify issues; there is no sense in keeping dark secrets of dissatisfaction. If discussions among the authors are not sufficient to settle an issue, it may help to consult informally with an outside party whom you trust, such as a student or faculty on campus with some knowledge pertinent to the paper (scientific or not), as they may provide some fresh insight. To the extent that this appears meaningful, the authors may agree to submit and let reviewers of a journal decide on a scientific argument, as they are indeed a truly independent scientific group. If agreement cannot be achieved in an amicable fashion, the correct way to deal with authorship issues is to file a formal complaint with the Office of Conflict Resolution. Such a formal investigation is likely time-consuming and painful for all involved. Everyone should keep in mind that even with the best intentions, the order of authors is sometimes not entirely obvious and authors should not overrate the order of authors. What matters in the end is the whole body of work of any individual and not the order of authors in one individual paper. Recommendation letters from principal investigators will often highlight contributions from individual students and add some clarity to the authorship question.


Collaborative Research Contributions in M.S. (Plan A) and Ph.D. Dissertations

The Chemistry Graduate Program strongly encourages collaborative research carried out by graduate students, undergraduate students, postdoctoral associates, and faculty within a given research group and with other research groups from this or other graduate programs or from outside of the University of Minnesota. Collaborative research can contribute a significant part of a graduate student’s M.S. Plan A or Ph.D. dissertation research and may be included in a Chemistry M.S. Plan A or Ph.D. dissertation document with advisor(s) approval. At a minimum, it should be identified in the document by the following footnote:

"This chapter/section describes the outcome of a collaborative research project carried out by student-postdoc-list (and advised by advisor-list). A report on this research project will be submitted for publication [ref]/has been submitted for publication [ref]/has been published [ref]."

The term in parenthesis is only required if multiple advisors beyond the official set of thesis advisors were involved in the research. The second sentence is not required if there is no intention to publish the research. A very brief statement (one or two sentences) that describes the specific contribution of either the Ph.D. thesis writer or the other author(s) is encouraged as this allows the reader of the thesis to understand the contributions of the thesis writer.

In contrast, although joint authorship on publications is a normal part of collaborative work, the Chemistry Graduate Program strongly discourages collaborative M.S. Plan A or Ph.D. dissertations with joint authorship by multiple students. In other words, joint authorship on papers is good, but joint authorship on a dissertation document (i.e. two students working on the same project and publishing a single joint dissertation) is not.


Plagiarism

Copying of text and figures without full credit to the source is plagiarism and is gravely unethical both scientifically and in fulfillment of coursework. Graduate students learn more about plagiarism in CHEM 8066, a course that every graduate student must take. In short, if anyone copy-pastes a figure or a string of words longer than four words without clearly indicating the source, they risk accusation of plagiarism and may be guilty of misconduct that will negatively affect their grades and status in the graduate program. Faculty are required to report cases of suspected plagiarism to the Director of Graduate Studies and the Office of Scholastic Dishonesty. If an author wants to use whole phrases and sentences from others, the copied text passages need to be clearly identified by indentation or quotation marks. Simply adding a reference to the original text at the end of a copy-pasted sentence is not sufficient to show that a phrase or sentence was copied without modification, as a reader will typically expect that the reference refers to the topic but not that it is the source of the copied sentence. For more information, check, e.g., the most recent edition of the ACS Style Guide or the syllabus of CHEM 8066. (Note that, as a matter of style, in science writing copying text word by word, even when accompanied by proper references, is rare and typically only done for special emphasis or to pay homage to the original author.)


Use of AI Tools in Scientific Writing

Recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) have resulted in widely available tools, such as ChatGPT, that are able to generate text about scientific topics. As AI becomes more ubiquitous in our everyday lives, it is important to consider the strengths and pitfalls of using such tools for written assignments, publications, and the written preliminary exam. A timely assessment of AI tools in scientific writing and graduate education is found here (link to: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acsnano.3c01544). All students are encouraged to read this article for details on the known limitations of current AI tools and for guidance on their appropriate and ethical use. The authors highlight that although AI tools can be fast and convenient, the generated text cannot exceed the information in its training set, i.e. the internet, and as such, it is rarely profound or creative, and is sometimes inaccurate. Further, one major goal of pursuing a Ph.D. is to be the originator of new knowledge, and this is exactly what ChatGPT cannot do.  For our graduate program, we follow the recommendations of the ACS editorial cited above, which are concisely summarized below:

Recommendations for the Use of AI Language Bots for Scientific Communication