The Department is to complete a "Defence Report Form" for each final oral defence of a PhD Dissertation and Master's thesis, major paper, or internship paper.
The Department will populate the final grade assigned by the Committee and will hold the Defence Report Form until the student has made any committee-requested changes and has submitted to the Department their fully signed post-defence Committee Approval form - as detailed below.
Students who successfuly passed their oral defence should be instructed to follow the post-defence Deposit instructions.
The graduate program secretary (or designate) downloads a copy of the Defence Report Form (.pdf) and fills in the information with input by the candidate's Master's/Doctoral Committee.
ALL fields on the form must be populated, including the final grade in the "GRADE" field.
Voting Outcome
Refer to page 2 of the Defence Report Form for details regarding voting outcome options.
Note the following additional requirement for a voting outcome of "Pass with major changes": the committee shall decide how satisfactory completion is to be determined (e.g., full committee approval, a second opportunity to defend, or simply approval by the Supervisor). If the Committee recommends a Pass with major changes, a recommendation from the committee, by the Chair of the Defence, should be forwarded to the Dean of Graduate Studies (deanfgs@uwindsor.ca) outlining how satisfactory completion is to be determined. For a "Pass with major changes", the Report Form should be retained by the Supervisor until all changes have been satisfactorily completed by the student, after which time the Report Form with the final grade assigned may be forwarded to Graduate Studies (thesis@uwindsor.ca).
Final Grade
Populate the final grade in the "GRADE" field as follows:
PhD Dissertation: to be graded "Satisfactory" (S), or "Unsatisfactory".
Thesis, Major Paper, Creative Writing Project or Sport Management Internship: to be graded either a percentage grade, or Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory, according to the procedures adopted by each program.
ALL necessary signatures must be obtained on the form:
The Defence Report Form must be signed by the student's Supervisor (or both Co-Supervisors, if applicable), chair of defense, and the AAU/program chair.
Departments may use any preferred method to obtain signatures on the form, such as digital signature, inserting a photo or scanned image of handwritten signatures, or having each person in turn manually sign the form and return a scanned signed copy of the form to the next person. Refer to the step by step instructions for inserting a digital signature to a PDF form.
If an individual is unable to insert a digital or scanned handwritten signature, an email from them confirming approval will be acceptable in lieu of a signature. The graduate program secretary will forward the email along with the Report Form to Graduate Studies.
The graduate program secretary will hold the completed and signed Defence Report Form until all committee-requested changes have been made by the student.
It is the student's responsibility to make any post-defense changes requested by their Master’s/Doctoral Committee and to obtain approval signature from each committee member (per the Instructions for students to obtain approval signatures on the Post-Defence Committee Approval Form).
The student should be advised by the Department to submit their fully signed Approval form to the graduate program secretary upon obtaining all committee member signatures and to promptly proceed with the post-defence deposit steps - as outlined on Instructions for post-defence document submission (Deposit) with Graduate Studies.
Upon receiving the fully signed Post-Defence Committee Approval form from the student, the Department will submit to graduate studies via email to thesis@uwindsor.ca the Defence Report Form along with the student's signed Post-Defence Committee Approval.
After the student has completed the Post-Defence Deposit with the graduate studies office, the Report Form will be processed by Graduate Studies and the final grade submitted to Registrar's for posting on UWinsite.
