Degree Requirements

The Ph.D. degree in Fiber and Polymer Science symbolizes the ability of the recipient to undertake original and scholarly work at the highest levels without supervision. The degree is, therefore, not granted simply upon the completion of a stated amount of course work but rather upon demonstration by the student of a comprehensive knowledge base and high attainment in scholarship. The student demonstrates this ability by passing a series of courses, creating a written critical literature review and original research proposal, defending an oral preliminary examination, writing a dissertation reporting the results of an original investigation, and making a final oral defense of the research before the student’s advisory committee and other interested members of the University community.

Additional Requirements

• A minimum of 72 credit hours is required of students entering the program with a B.S. degree, or a minimum of 54 credit hours beyond the M.S. degree is required. (Students, who enter the Ph.D. program directly upon completion of an M.S. at NC State, may be allowed credit for up to 30 hours of their M.S. and thus would require 42 additional credit hours to complete the Ph.D.)
• Most of these credit hours are expected to be research credits (FPS 893 Doctoral Supervised Research or FPS 895 Doctoral Dissertation Research).
• Following successful course completion, the student needs to pass the defense of a research proposal to obtain the candidacy for the Ph.D degree.
• The final examination is an oral exam where the student presents and defends her/his research procedures, results and conclusions. The presentation will be made to an examining committee consisting of the student’s advisory committee and is open to interested faculty, staff and students. After the presentation the student will be orally examined by the examining committee. The final oral examination can be scheduled once all coursework requirements have been fulfilled and the committee is satisfied that the dissertation is complete, but not earlier than one semester after admission to candidacy.
• The anticipated time for completion of the Ph.D. program is four years for a student entering from a B.S. degree and three years for entry from an M.S. degree. The minimum time required (in exceptional cases) is two years beyond entry if the student obtained an M.S. degree from NC State.

Faculty