2009 Candidacy Examination Guidelines

All graduate students affiliated with BGS (Biomedical Graduate Studies) are required to pass a Candidacy Examination in their second year. The examination consists of both a written research proposal and an oral defense of the proposal. Only students in good academic standing are eligible to take the Candidacy Examination.

A. Candidacy Examination Committee

A Candidacy Examinations Advisory Group, consisting of members from the BMB Graduate Group will administer the Candidacy Examination.  One member of this Advisory Group will serve as chair of the student’s candidacy exam committee, which will consist of a total of three faculty members.

The student’s candidacy exam committee will be selected approximately six weeks prior to the oral exam. The students will choose the chair of their committee from the Advisory Group.  Students will be asked to suggest faculty for inclusion on their preliminary exam committee; however, the final committee will be chosen by the chair. Students will be notified of their committee and may contest one member of the committee.

B. Purpose

The purpose of the written Candidacy Examination is to examine the ability of graduate students at the end of their first year to:  1) identify an important problem in biochemistry and biophysics;  2) review the literature;  3) formulate a testable hypothesis; and  4) write an NIH-style research proposal that tests the hypothesis. Although most proposals will be hypothesis driven, technology-driven proposals are also acceptable, if they clearly address a major need in biochemistry and biophysics.  If a technology-driven proposal is selected, the proposal must clearly articulate how this technology will address a specific scientific problem, and it must clearly appraise competing technologies. 

The purpose of the oral Candidacy Examination is to examine the ability of students to: 1) defend the design and feasibility of the written proposal; 2) explain basic concepts in biochemistry; and 3) to explain both the theory and practical application of various biophysical techniques.

C. The Written Proposal

The student may choose a topic for the research proposal that is either thesis or non-thesis related. If a student chooses a topic related to his or her proposed thesis research, the proposal must be the original work of the student. The purpose of the written proposal is for the student to independently consider and formulate research goals. Students can read portions of their advisor’s grants as examples. However, in no case should portions of the advisor’s grant be reproduced or narrowly paraphrased in the student’s proposal. In preparation, the student should conduct a very thorough review of the literature relating to the proposal topic, and should also be familiar with the fundamental theory and practice of techniques that will be employed. Students are free to seek the advice of their advisor, other graduate faculty, and students to help select a topic, formulate aims, and in providing input on early drafts of the entire proposal.

The proposal should provide a succinct account of the literature and a detailed experimental approach.  The proposal should represent a logical series of experiments to provide a solution to the stated problem.  The proposal should provide a description of the predicted results.  The level of quantification should match the level of the question being asked.  It is recognized that certain experiments and/or techniques may fail, so it is important to describe outline alternative approaches.

The proposal (excluding references) should not exceed 10 typewritten pages and should have the same structure as an NIH postdoctoral training grant.  References are not included in the page count. Font Requirement follows that of the NIH: Arial, Helvetica, Palatino Linotype or Georgia typeface and a font size of 11 points or larger. (A Symbol font may be used to insert Greek letters or special characters; the font size requirement still applies. A smaller font size may be used for figures, graphs, diagrams, charts, tables, figure legends, and footnotes, but this type must follow the font typeface requirement and be readily legible.)  The left and right margin should be set to 0.5 inch, and the top and bottom to 0.7 inch. Proposals that exceed the page limit or use smaller fonts will be returned without review.

The written proposal will consist of the following. The number of pages indicated below are suggestions, and can be modified somewhat as needed as long as the proposal (excluding references) does not exceed the 10 page limit.

1. Specific Aims: state the specific purposes of the research proposal and the hypothesis to be tested. (1 page)  There should be two or more specific aims, and it is sometimes convenient to break them into sub-aims.  Each aim should address a question or a hypothesis!  It is not appropriate to simply state what one wishes to do experimentally without a larger context of what questions are being addressed.
2. Background/Significance: sketch briefly the background to the proposal.  State concisely the importance of the research described in your proposal by relating the specific aims to broad, long-term objectives.  Compare your approach to other approaches or related studies in the literature, and explain why your study will advance the field significantly beyond previous studies. (3 pages)
3. Preliminary Results: Presentation of preliminary results is not required.  If the proposal is directly related to the student’s thesis research, then preliminary results may be reported, especially when those results will help to establish the feasibility of the proposed experiments.
4. Research Design and Methods: This section includes the research design and procedures to be used to accomplish the specific aims, a tentative sequence for the investigation, the statistical procedures by which the data will be analyzed, and denote any procedures, situations, or materials that may be hazardous to personnel and the precautions to be exercised.  Potential experimental difficulties should be discussed together with alternative approaches that could be used to achieve the desired aims. (up to 6 pages)
5. Literature Citations: At the end of the research proposal.  Each citation must include the names of all authors, title of article, name of the book or journal, volume number, page numbers, and year of publication.  Citations do not contribute towards the page count.            
6. Figures: Figures should be embedded throughout the proposal.  They can greatly contribute to the explanation of the background material, preliminary results and how those results will be analyzed.  All figures should include a legend that explains the contents of the figure and cites published sources; the legends should be placed with each figure and not on a separate page. 

A rough draft of the specific aims for the proposal should be turned in to the members of the committee approximately five weeks prior to the exam.  The members should approve a final title and specific aims four weeks prior to the exam.  If the committee members fail to contact the student, the student can assume that the proposed aims meet the approval of the committee members.  If committee members wish for changes to the aims, they should work with the student directly. The completed proposal must be in the hands of the committee one to two weeks prior to the scheduled exam date (but in no case less than a full week prior to the exam).

D.  Defense of the Proposal

The student will begin the Candidacy Examination by presenting an approximately 15-minute synopsis of the proposal consisting of not more than eight prepared slides or transparencies.  The presentation should emphasize the specific experiments proposed in the written proposal. The faculty may interrupt to clarify specific points, but the questions and answers should be brief to allow the student to complete the presentation within about a half hour.  Committee chairs and the students themselves should be cognizant of the need to keep questions to a minimum until completion of the student’s oral presentation.

Following the presentation, the committee members will ask questions.  The student should field these questions verbally, using a chalkboard or whiteboard to write equations, reactions, or pathways as necessary. In defending the proposal the student should show an in-depth knowledge of biochemistry and biophysics.  Since the Graduate Group offers a Ph.D. degree in biochemistry and biophysics, a thorough knowledge of the fundamentals of these disciplines is expected.  For example, if a binding assay is used, the student should understand the thermodynamic basis of binding (including basic concepts such as changes in enthalpy, entropy, heat capacity, etc.).  If a biophysical technique such as NMR is used, the student should be familiar with physical principles underlying the technique and what the technique can and cannot measure.  Students are reminded that biochemical and biophysical phenomena are often explained by consideration of rate-theory, thermodynamic considerations, ligand affinities, and kinetic constants, and questions on these topics are generally quite appropriate.  Furthermore, students should demonstrate an understanding of the amounts (nmoles, micrograms etc.) and concentrations (micromolar, nano-molar) of biochemicals they need to perform their experiments and an understanding of the magnitude of the changes they will be measuring.

While no topic is off-limits, overly technical questions in an unrelated subspecialty may be unreasonable. For example, a student studying transcriptional regulation would not be expected to understand technical aspects of making spin relaxation measurements by NMR, unless the research proposal incorporates this technique.

Students should also be prepared to discuss in detail literature in their fields describing past work and alternate methods or approaches to solving their biochemical problem. 

E.   Review and Pass/Fail Procedures

After the oral examination, the committee will meet without the student present to discuss the student's performance.  The committee will decide whether the student has passed or failed and will unofficially inform the student of its decision immediately. The student’s committee chair will write a summary of the discussion. All members will write a review of the oral and written content of the proposal. The critiques should be electronically sent to the chair of the student’s committee within one day of the presentation. These reviews and the chair’s summary should be communicated to the student within two days, and will remain in the student’s permanent file.

Pass with distinction: If the student passes, the chair of the committee will notify the Graduate Group Chair immediately. The student will receive written confirmation of passage of the Candidacy Examination from the Graduate Group Chair along with the written critiques from the committee.

Provisional pass: A preliminary pass will be provided if the student needs to address one or more problems identified by the candidacy committee.  These items might be associated with the written proposal, a problem with the presentation, or a lack of background knowledge.  The committee chair will outline a course of action to address the issue (which might not require reconvening the committee) and the student will have a week to address the concerns. It is expected that the concerns will be addressed, in which case the provisional pass will convert to a pass. If for some reason the concerns are not addressed within this time frame, a provisional pass will convert into a fail.

Fail:  If a student fails the first attempt at the Candidacy Examination, the committee will recommend revising the proposal and/or repeating the oral exam.  For the second attempt, an additional member of the graduate group’s Prelim Advisory Committee might be added to the student’s committee. The student will have four weeks to rewrite the proposal and/or prepare for the second oral exam. In addition, the chair of the student’s committee will solicit a letter of support from the proposed Thesis Advisor and will obtain a copy of the student’s academic file to assist in reaching a final pass/fail decision. The chair of the student’s candidacy committee will notify the Graduate Group Chair, the chair of the graduate group’s Prelim Advisory Committee, and Academic Review Committee the outcome of the examination. If the student fails the second exam, the Graduate Group Chair and Academic Review Committee are ultimately responsible for reaching a final decision regarding whether the student should leave the graduate program. In the case where termination is deemed necessary, the student may, if all other requirements have been met, be eligible for a terminal Master of Science degree.

Candidacy Examination Preparation Course

This half semester course instructs second year BMB graduate students in the proper structure of an NIH-style grant proposal. The students will read and critique sample grant proposals and begin formulating and writing their specific aims. This course will meet 1.5 hours per week, is worth 1/2 credit, and is graded. Grades will be based on attendance, discussions, and presentations.