Climate Dynamics Program in Top Physics Today Stories
AOES faculty members Timothy DelSole and Paul Dirmeyer’s article was cited as one of the Most Popular Physics Today Stories of 2024. Physics Today is the flagship publication of the American Institute of Physics and is widely read by scientists and students in physics and related fields such as geoscience and biophysics.
The article, Fixing the PhD Qualifying Exam, describes innovations in the AOES Climate Dynamics PhD program. In a doctoral program, the qualifying exam determines whether students are ready to begin work on their dissertations. Traditionally, the exam consists of a combination of written and oral tests about the discipline. Several years ago, AOES replaced this exam with a new format designed to better test – and improve – students’ readiness to do independent research.
DelSole and Dirmeyer developed a semester-long format in which students prepare a scientific paper or a proposal for a paper to be submitted to a journal the following year. The students give several presentations of the proposal to faculty. In each round, faculty members give feedback to the student, who then improves the proposal for the next round. In this way, students are introduced to the proposal process, learn how to incorporate constructive criticism into their work, and get practice defending their ideas. Faculty, in turn, are familiarized with each student’s work. The work completed as part of the qualifying process contributes to the student’s eventual dissertation work.
Climate Dynamics graduate coordinator Barry Klinger notes, “We have exit interviews with finishing graduate students, and they typically tell us that they found the new qualifying exam format very helpful for getting started on their doctoral thesis.”
