Information for Current Graduate Students

FAQ for Current Graduate Students

The questions below have been posed by graduate students at various stages of their careers. They seem to fall into two categories: technical, and those which ask what happens if I (and to what extent can and how do I) do things which are perceived to be beyond the written policies of the department.

The remarks below represent an interpretation of current policies by the Graduate Program Committee, but just as our own court system constantly refines its interpretation of laws, the interpretations below can and no doubt will change with time.

Let the questions begin

The most important question: Who or what is the definitive source for answers about policies affecting your status in the graduate program?
Answer/Opinion

Registering for Classes: What is the department policy on signing up for independent studies, taking classes outside the department, dropping or adding a class late? What does it mean to sign up for thesis research versus graduate research versus a reading course versus independent research versus supervised teaching, etc.? What classes count towards the 8-course requirement for a master's degree? What should you do if you haven't taken 8 "real" classes?
Answer/Opinion

Opting out/auditing of required courses: What classes count as qual prep classes (73? 81?)? What do you do if you don't want to take a qual prep class (because you've already seen the material)? Can I audit a class?
Answer/Opinion

Grades in Classes: How do grades in graduate classes work? What does it actually mean if you get a low pass? Do graduate students have classes on days that undergrads get off?
Answer/Opinion

Quals: What do you do if
- you think you won't be able to make a deadline (including extended deadlines)?
- you think you want to change your committee?
- you're having trouble finding a time before deadline that both committee members can be there?
- you fail part of a qual (both traditional and non-traditional ways that people have been asked to finish their qual)?
What are the policies on pre-quals? What circumstance warrant an extension? How does the GPC view missing a deadline? How do qual deadline impact the teaching seminar and advancing to candidacy? What happens if you don't make the deadlines?
Answer/Opinion

Travel Funding: What kinds of funds are available for graduate students to attend conferences? How do I request funding? What are examples of the kinds of things that have and haven't received funding?
Answer/Opinion

Teaching Seminar: What is the teaching seminar? What are my responsibilities within it? What are my responsibilities in addition to it? Does passing the seminar mean I am in charge of my own courses?
Answer/Opinion

Seminars: What seminars exist in the department? Should you attend them if you haven't picked an area yet? How do you find out about seminar talks? What about colloquia? What's the point of going to talks if you get lost all the time?
Answer/Opinion

Being away from the department: for a day, a week, a month, or forever -- when does going on vacation count as a leave of absence? What do you do if you're a first or second year, and your potential advisor tells you you should go to a conference, but the professor teaching your course says you shouldn't? If you don't get GPC approval before leaving to do something math-related, what happens? What's department policy on leaving campus during Dartmouth breaks?
Answer/Opinion

How much trouble am I in?: If you're not on probation, do you automatically count as a student in good standing?
Answer/Opinion

Outside Funding and Tutoring: Can I receive outside funding? Can I get a tutoring job? Can I get paid by a summer workshop or REU?
Answer/Opinion

I've passed quals, now what?
Answer/Opinion

Choosing an Advisor: What are good strategies for finding an advisor (and secondary advisor)?
Answer/Opinion

Advancing to Candidacy: What forms? Where do you get the forms? To whom do you turn them? What do you do if you don't have enough thesis passes?
Answer/Opinion

Having Trouble with a Thesis Advisor:: What do you do if you're having a problem with your thesis advisor? What do you do if you want to change thesis advisors? What's the department policy on interdisciplinary work and thesis advisors outside the math department? What about thesis advisors at other schools?
Answer/Opinion

Language Exam: I didn't know there was a deadline...
Answer/Opinion

Thesis Defense: What happens if you don't finish your thesis on time or need to reschedule your thesis defense?
Answer/Opinion

Teaching: What are the policies on using other people's problems or tests? What's the procedure if you're going to fail someone? What do you do if you have problems with your evaluation by the teaching committee? What happens if the department is unhappy with your teaching?
Answer/Opinion

Fifth Year Teaching Experience: How do I propose a project and to whom? What are some possibilities for what to do?
Answer/Opinion

Who's Who: What are the roles of the GPC, the Graduate Student Representative, the Graduate Student Advisor, Advisor to First Year Graduate Students, Head of the Graduate Program, the Graduate Admissions Committee, Department Administrator, Department Secretary, etc? What kinds of questions do each group or person handle?
Answer/Opinion

Tea: How do I handle tea (getting the card, setting up, cleaning up, turning in receipts), plus what to do if you forget or lose the card?
Answer/Opinion

Answers and Opinions

The most important question: Who or what is the definitive source for answers about policies affecting your status in the graduate program?

If you have any question about whether an action or inaction on your part will have repercussions for your graduate career, the Graduate Program Committee (GPC) is the definitive source for answers. The GPC formulates policy, which is considered, modified, and then approved by the department, and the GPC then carries out that policy.
The GPC controls your stipend, grants (or not) extensions to deadlines, sets the terms for you to regain good standing should you fall out.

The members (and chair) of the GPC changes from year to year, but membership is listed in committee assignments list which can be found on the department website via the Department Documents page.

Registering for Classes: What is the department policy on signing up for independent studies, taking classes outside the department, dropping or adding a class late? What does it mean to sign up for thesis research versus graduate research versus a reading course versus independent research versus supervised teaching, etc.? What classes count towards the 8-course requirement for a master's degree? What should you do if you haven't taken 8 "real" classes?

As stated in numerous published sources (e.g., the ORC), students must take at least 8 courses of graduate quality to qualify for a masters degree. Additionally, they must register for (and successfully complete) three courses per term in order to be considered a full time student (and hence receive a stipend). Course descriptions can be found here. A tip to understanding the numbering system in math is that courses numbered above 20 are generally categorized by their last digit: Courses ending in
- 0 correspond to probability and statistics
- 1 correspond to algebra
- 2 correspond to geometry
- 3 correspond to analysis
- 4 correspond to topology
- 5 correspond to number theory
- 6 correspond to applied mathematics
- 7 (generally unused)
- 8 correspond to combinatorics
- 9 correspond to logic and set theory
In preparation for qualifying exams, students are expected to have taken the following courses: in analysis (73, 103, 113); in algebra (81, 101, 111); in topology (74, 114, 124) as well as three or more topics courses of choice. Note that while 73 is technically an analysis course, it is considered a prerequisite to the differential manifolds course (124), and in particular is not part of the analysis syllabus. A typical schedule would be
Year 1: Fall: 101, 103, X; Winter: 81, 113, X; Spring: 73, (74 or X), 111;
Year 2: Summer: 114, X, Y; Fall: 124, X, Y

N.B. As a fourth course, every student in their first two years needs to register for one offering of Math 107 (supervised tutoring) in the second term that they tutor that year. In each case X or Y can be another "real" graduate course covering a topic outside of the three core areas of algebra, analysis, and topology, or can be a supervised reading course (127) in which the student pursues a topic to advance their progress toward certification in four areas of mathematics. In the event that two reading courses are needed to fill the course load, 127 and 137 should be selected. Note they are both essentially the same course with distinct numbers to make it clear to the Registrar's office that two different courses are being taken. In the first three terms, students should strive to take two "real" courses per term even if they have been exempted (by the advisor to graduate students) from some of the standard courses listed above.

Note that Math 74 (Topics in Topology) is required, but currently only offered officially on a biannual basis. In the off years, students should pick up these topics through a reading course or the course may be available via a fifth-year teaching experience from a graduate student working in topology.

Also note that courses 127, 137 are typically taken (almost exclusively) prior to advancement to candidacy. In the summer after advancement to candidacy, students register for both 147 and 148 (which constitutes the teaching seminar), and 137 or 156 (reading or research as appropriate). For subsequent terms, the default is 156, 157, 158 with perhaps 158 replaced by a 149 in the term in which the student teaches (or their fifth-year teaching experience), or a "real" course of interest to the student.

It would be quite unusual to take courses outside the department in the first two years unless their content clearly advances the student towards certification in one of the four areas. After advancement to candidacy, the student's thesis advisor should concur that such a course advances the student's research program.
Students should endeavor to register for courses when requested by the Registrar. Adding courses late (and dropping courses) cause numerous problems for the department. The graduate program is small and graduate course enrollments are correspondingly small. The Dean's office reviews the (official) enrollments of all courses in the first week of each term, and those with an enrollment of less than five are subject to immediate cancellation. Cancellation of a course means the student will no doubt have to learn this material on their own, perhaps find a viable alternative course to replace the canceled course, and certainly creates problems for the faculty member who was scheduled to teach that course.

Opting out/auditing of required courses: What classes count as qual prep classes (73? 81?)? What do you do if you don't want to take a qual prep class (because you've already seen the material)? Can I audit a class?

Courses which count for and are required for certification include 73, 74, 81, 101, 103, 111, 113, 114, 124. One should not expect to be exempted from a course based solely on the assertion that you have seen the material. It is of course obvious that having seen material and having mastered material are two very different things; ask most people who take quals! But at the very least you should be able to provide a detailed syllabus of the course you took, and be able to demonstrate a knowledge of the material which suggests your time would not be well spent "repeating" the course. It is prudent to consider that qualifying exams are meant to assess not only your assimilation of discrete facts, examples and proofs, but also the integration of ideas that span these courses. For example, the theory of finitely generated modules over PIDs enhances the perspective not only of finitely generated abelian groups, but also a great deal of linear algebra.
On the other hand, students who have seen and indeed mastered material in qual courses can reasonably expect to be exempted with the idea of shortening the time to passing the respective qual. Another possibility is to audit such a course, but with enrollments a critical issue, this option is sometimes problematic. An auditor does not appear on the course enrollments from the Registrar which could endanger the existence of the course, and generally diminishes the appearance of activity in the program to the Deans. However, when auditing a course is viable, details of the course requirements (attendance, homework, exams, etc) should be worked out with the instructor by/at the inception of the course.

Grades in Classes: How do grades in graduate classes work? What does it actually mean if you get a low pass? Do graduate students have classes on days that undergrads get off?

Requirements for a class are entirely the purview of the instructor, so there may well be all manner of requirements including attendance, homework, exams, required x-hours, and so on. There may be a distinction between the requirements for undergraduates and graduate students enrolled in the same course. There may be times graduate students have extra responsibilities; there may be time that students who have passed a qual in a given area or advanced to candidacy will have fewer requirements. All these variations are entirely normal.

Grades come in two flavors and have distinct consequences. There are the formal grades turned into the Registrar HP, P, LP, NC. A P (pass) is a standard grade; many instructors rarely use HP (high pass) as there is no notion of a GPA for graduate courses, and it is your certification process and thesis which carry the significant weight. On the other hand, LP (low pass) and NC (no credit), are grades taken very seriously by the Graduate Office. Two LPs (cumulatively) or one NC automatically places the student on probation and scrutiny from the Dean's office means that there must be significant measurable positive progress in the next term to return to good standing. Failure to return to good standing jeopardizes your receipt of a stipend.

In 2009, the department instituted a system of internal grades which convey to the student a finer-grained assessment of the student's progress towards qualification level; the numerical score is ideally accompanied by comments from the instructor. These grades are destroyed after the student advances to candidacy or leaves the program.

Quals: What do you do if
- you think you won't be able to make a deadline (including extended deadlines)?
- you think you want to change your committee?
- you're having trouble finding a time before deadline that both committee members can be there?
- you fail part of a qual (both traditional and non-traditional ways that people have been asked to finish their qual)?
What are the policies on pre-quals? What circumstance warrant an extension? How does the GPC view missing a deadline? How do qual deadline impact the teaching seminar and advancing to candidacy? What happens if you don't make the deadlines?
There is a completely new section on quals in the Information for Graduate Students document which answers all of these questions and more, available here.

Travel Funding: What kinds of funds are available for graduate students to attend conferences? How do I request funding? What are examples of the kinds of things that have and haven't received funding?

Conferences are an integral part of every professional mathematician's career. They are places to present your work to the community, gain a sense of the vista in your own field, meet new colleagues whose work you have seen online, and gain new perspectives or new insights on problems that are part of your research program. As such they are most appropriate when your own research program is underway, or at least burgeoning, though there are notable exceptions.
For graduate students in their first and second year, there are often workshops appropriate for those who are "still looking". As an institutional member of MSRI, the department can often send two graduate students for summer workshops spanning a week or two. Other research institutes will offer workshops and solicit applications for funding for graduate students. Even small conferences will often have funding available to those who apply early. As you advance in your graduate career, conferences related to your research will become relevant. At the very least, you should probably attend the AMS winter meetings in your fifth year since you will be on the job market and many prospective employers will be there. In your fourth or fifth year, it would be ideal to give a talk at a research conference to begin to make yourself known to other researchers in the field; perhaps a prospective letter writer will be among your new acquaintances.

Assuming that your schedule permits you to attend (e.g., classes, tutorials, teaching responsibilities), you can go to virtually any conference you like. Getting funding is of course the trick. You should solicit financial support in the following order:
1. Request funding from the conference itself: often a conference will have some external funding, in many cases directed specifically at graduate students and/or junior faculty. You should apply for it. In fact you have little chance of getting funding from Dartmouth unless you can document your failure to receive external funding. Often this funding provides for travel expenses, sometimes hotel, generally not food.
2. If you are giving a talk at a conference (always a good idea), you can receive at least $500 from the graduate office once during your graduate career.
3. Depending on how department resources look, graduate students can often request funding from the department itself through the Graduate Representative. This is always after all other sources of support have been exhausted. The information sheet for Academic year 08 - 09 is here, and is usually emailed to all graduate students once per year. If you are presenting a paper at a conference (and meet the other departmental criteria), you can reasonably expect to receive support for one conference per year from the department. If you are just an attendee, your priority is a good deal lower, and funding will be highly dependent on the availability of resources.
4. There may also be a new bit of funding available from the College Graduate Student Council, but this will be available only after all the above sources of money have been exhausted. We have at least one graduate student representative to the council, so ask around for who it is to get more information.

Teaching Seminar: What is the teaching seminar? What are my responsibilities within it? What are my responsibilities in addition to it? Does passing the seminar mean I am in charge of my own courses?

Assuming a student successfully advances to candidacy at the end of their second year of graduate study, they are eligible (and required) to take the teaching seminar. Formally they register for both 147 and 148, and a third course (156 or 157) as appropriate. In recent offerings, the seminar has been condensed to an intensive course lasting six out of the ten weeks of summer term. While the teaching seminar will keep you quite busy, most advisors (you will have a thesis advisor before advancing to candidacy) will still expect some degree of interaction with you during this period.
The teaching seminar is a highly visible centerpiece to our graduate program which distinguishes our program from the vast majority. It is taken seriously by the department, and hopefully by you as well. As with many things in life, its value will increase as you begin to teach courses on your own and grapple with the dynamics in the classroom while trying to optimize the classroom experience for all.

You will have two teaching opportunities as part of the graduate program, one in each of your third and fourth years, and a flexible fifth-year teaching experience described below. As with all temporary and junior faculty in the department, you will have a course supervisor for each course you teach, with whom you must discuss and obtain agreement on your choice of textbook, syllabus, and grading scheme. In addition, you must show your course supervisor drafts of all exams (prior to them being given), and consult with him or her about the assignment and distribution of final grades. Hopefully you will also take advantage of your supervisor's experience to engage in broader discussions should unexpected issues arise in the class. Beyond the formal oversight by the course supervisor, you will also have a teaching mentor whose job is to advise and assist you as an instructor regarding both teaching and development as a teacher. For students teaching their first course, the teaching mentor will at a minimum review the first week's worth of lesson plans and visit at least three classes throughout the term. Classroom visits will be preceded by a review and discussion of the objectives and lesson plan for the day and followed by a discussion of how the class went. The teaching mentor may also (if they and the course supervisor wish) replace the course supervisor in reviewing drafts of syllabi, exams and so forth. You should also make a point to ask the Teaching Evaluation Committee to visit your class (optimally in the second week), both for feedback for you, and to write a formal review which can be used for part of a teaching letter when you apply for jobs.

Seminars: What seminars exist in the department? Should you attend them if you haven't picked an area yet? How do you find out about seminar talks? What about colloquia? What's the point of going to talks if you get lost all the time?

There are numerous seminars in the department supplemented by weekly colloquia and special lectures series at various times in the year. The obvious starting point for learning about them is the activities link on the department web page. There you will see links to the aforementioned items.
All graduate students should attend the graduate student seminar. This seminar consists of talks by graduate students for graduate students; faculty are not in attendance. Oh, there is also free food.

You should get in the habit of attending colloquia. When you are a newbie, sit in the back and bring something to work on for when you get lost. Sometimes you will get lost in the first ten seconds, sometimes the first ten minutes, sometimes not at all. As you learn more, it will (usually) take a longer time to get lost.

What's the point of coming if you get lost all the time? A very good question with at least three answers. The first is that mathematics is about making connections, and really interesting mathematics comes from making connections among ideas that appear quite disparate. All of a sudden in a colloquium (which are supposed to be aimed at a "general" audience) you find the speaker talking about something which you have seen in a very different context. Following that connection can often lead to an interesting research problem. Second, you will be giving many talks in your life (seminar talks, thesis defense, job interview talks), and attending colloquia allows you to form strong opinions about what constitutes a good or bad talk including what styles and approaches are most effective. And last, but not least, is that these speakers have been invited by someone in the department to speak to us. Common courtesy suggests the hosts show up! A good turn out reflects well on how the department is viewed by the outside which can have all manner of positive effects.

The schedule of colloquia is available on the department's web site under the activities link. If an upcoming talk looks particularly interesting you can ask the colloquium chair who invited the speaker, and then perhaps ask to meet with the speaker or ask to be considered to go out to dinner with the speaker.

Research seminars are often more specialized, but equally often will have periods in which talks are given which are intended to introduce a more general audience to aspects of the field. Usually the web pages for these seminars (see the activities link) gives information about the subject. Find out who the speaker is and see if they think you will understand. If you are not sure on what area you would like to work in, a seminar can be an excellent vehicle to observe not only the types of problems people in the department like to work on, but also the personalities of prospective advisors.

Often at the beginning of each term, emails will be sent to the entire department asking if you want to be on a mailing list for announcements and giving organizational information. The mailing lists are low volume and usually contain an abstract of the upcoming talk.

Being away from the department: for a day, a week, a month, or forever -- when does going on vacation count as a leave of absence? What do you do if you're a first or second year, and your potential advisor tells you you should go to a conference, but the professor teaching your course says you shouldn't? If you don't get GPC approval before leaving to do something math-related, what happens? What's department policy on leaving campus during Dartmouth breaks?

Well this is a broad spectrum of questions! To begin, graduate students in this program are supported 12 months out of the year, whether it be (partially) through a grant or entirely from a Dartmouth Fellowship. The official policy from the Associate Dean of the Sciences is that aside from College holidays (e.g., Christmas, New Years, Fourth of July, etc), students on twelve-month contracts receive a total of four weeks of vacation, that is twice as much as you would get starting a job in the "real" world. For example, if you take one week off between each term, that constitutes your four weeks of vacation. The rest of the time is "on the clock".
Certain activities are generally construed not to count as vacation, e.g., attending a week-long conference, though attendance presupposes that there are no conflicts with ongoing obligations. The scenario of a conflict between a potential, future advisor telling you that you should go to a conference and your course instructor saying you should not is probably a bit distorted. One could easily see a potential advisor suggesting it might be useful for you to go to a conference, but realistically if you are still taking qual courses, you probably lack the background to get a great deal out of the conference, and you need to absorb the material in your course(s) to pass your quals. In the event of real conflict, the student should take themselves out of the discussion and let the two faculty members work it out. Perhaps there is some extraordinary reason the student should attend that the other faculty member would acknowledge supersedes the need for your presence in his or her course. Unlikely, but possible; let them work it out.

If you leave campus for an extended period without consent of the GPC, you are in breach of contract, and can have your stipend suspended. The reason for your absence is of little consequence if it has not been officially approved. Obviously leaving for an emergency would of course be approved. But the bottom line is that you are paid to be here; if you are not here, you don't get paid. For perspective, faculty are paid a nine-month salary and so have a commitment to be on campus for only nine months out of the year. While many faculty remain on campus for much of the year, there is no contractual obligation (and no matching financial compensation afforded them) to do so.

Also, just as a faculty member on sabbatical cannot be paid by another institution, a graduate student on stipend cannot receive salary which supplements his or her income.

How much trouble am I in?: If you're not on probation, do you automatically count as a student in good standing?

The normal status of a graduate student is to be in good standing, meaning you are currently meeting all deadlines and satisfactorily completing all requirements of the program. To not be in good standing represents a broad spectrum of noncompliance with a correspondingly broad set of responses, some of which are internal to the department and some of which come to the attention of the graduate office.
Doing poorly in your courses quickly comes to the attention of the graduate office and can immediately place you in a position in which your stipend is in jeopardy. For example, if a student fails a course or (cumulatively) receives two low passes in previous terms, the graduate office automatically places the student on probation. As a consequence, the department must be able to provide concrete evidence that the student has made significant progress towards remediating these deficiencies. Failure to do so could easily result in a suspension of stipend and conditions and deadlines issued to avoid separation from the program.

A student who gets a low pass in one course will probably get a letter of concern from the graduate office, and one from the GPC. The letter will require a response: what went wrong? how will you recover?, etc. If this is the first such stumble, probably no further action will be taken. If the spiral continues downward (e.g., now a missed qual deadline in addition to a LP), concern is growing and the student is now changing status to not be in good standing. The GPC will no doubt issue a letter expressing increased concern and ask for more detailed input for how and when you will get back on track and perhaps for a note of support from a faculty member with whom you are working to remedy your deficiencies. Further downward spiral suggests you are reaching a point from which recovery is becoming problematic. At this point, deadlines may be imposed by the GPC and failure to meet those deadlines will result in a suspension of stipend. If a stipend is suspended, no doubt one last set of deadlines will be imposed after which you would be separated from the program.

The GPC and the department in general is here to help you stay in good standing. Talking to the GPC when any difficulty arises is a good idea. As you can see from above, it takes several steps to be separated from the program, but if you get caught in a downward spiral, things tend to happen quickly.

Outside Funding and Tutoring: Can I receive outside funding? Can I get a tutoring job? Can I get paid by a summer workshop or REU?

Financial support for graduate students comes from Dartmouth Fellowships, faculty research grants, departmental grants (e.g., GAANN), and from grants and scholarships obtained by students themselves (e.g., NSF graduate fellowship). Students are encouraged to apply for any external fellowship for which they may be eligible. Outside fellowships sometimes pay more than Dartmouth Fellowships, and it is certainly something notable to put on your vita. In addition, outside fellowships supplement the limited pool of internal resources, allowing more flexibility in the size of our graduate program.
In terms of graduate students receiving salary in addition to their stipend, we quote from the Graduate Student Handbook downloadable from the Graduate Offices Academic Services and Policies page. The relevant quotation is:

Graduate students who are fully supported (a full tuition scholarship and a full stipend) cannot receive additional payment from Dartmouth College for services rendered and cannot accept employment outside the College while enrolled. Exceptions may be granted in cases of unique academic or professional benefit or documented financial hardship. Any exception will normally not exceed eight hours per week and must have the written approval of the graduate student's advisor, department chair or Graduate Program Committee, and the Dean of Graduate Studies.

I've passed quals, now what?

All graduate students are strongly encouraged to read the (58 page) document written by a former graduate student (Ph.D. 2002) who posed precisely this question: See Mark Tomforde's guide which offers a great deal of insight into the entire process of choosing an advisor, successfully writing your thesis, and thoughts for how to sustain a research program.

Choosing an Advisor: What are good strategies for finding an advisor (and secondary advisor)?

Reread the first part of Mark Tomforde's guide described above. The choice of a secondary advisor is less critical than that of the advisor. Each year you and your primary and secondary advisor sit down and discuss your progress. Typically you have provided a written summary of where you think you are in the thesis process in advance of the meeting. You all discuss this document, then the advisor discusses where he or she thinks you are. The secondary advisor freely asks questions of both the student and primary advisor. The goal is for the advisor to produce a document which gives a reasonable assessment of where you are and which (hopefully) makes a case for your continued financial support. Stipends are renewed annually based on continued good progress, but need not be otherwise.
In rare cases where there may be some disagreement between student and advisor, the secondary advisor acts as a mediator.

Choosing an advisor in another department or from another institution is very complicated and case sensitive. No general advice is offered here. Talk to the GPC, graduate advisor, graduate representative or department chair as a starting point.

Advancing to Candidacy: What forms? Where do you get the forms? To whom do you turn them? What do you do if you don't have enough thesis passes?

Presuming you have passed four quals with at least two thesis-ready passes, you need only obtain an advisor and secondary advisor, and you have already read advice on how to do that above. All that's left is to get the advisor form from Annette and have your advisor and secondary advisor sign it, which says they are aware of their roles. Then turn it back to Annette and the GPC will review things from there.
If you reach the end of your second year and have not secured two thesis ready passes, you are in a sticky spot. If you get to this point not aware there was a problem, do not expect sympathy to abound. Presumably you have petitioned the GPC for some sort of extension which may or may not have been granted. The mechanism for securing thesis ready passes in subjects is up to the original qual committee from whom you presumably received a Ph.D pass. In the absence of an extension from the GPC, you would (presuming you passed all four quals) receive your M.A. and be separated from the program.

Having Trouble with a Thesis Advisor:: What do you do if you're having a problem with your thesis advisor? What do you do if you want to change thesis advisors? What's the department policy on interdisciplinary work and thesis advisors outside the math department? What about thesis advisors at other schools?

A student-advisor relationship is always an important one, and can sometimes be a difficult one, which is why one of the criteria you hopefully applied in choosing your advisor was the ability to communicate easily with him or her. Often tensions arise between student and advisor because of differences in expectations. The advisor believes you should be capable of X, while you are thinking along the lines of X/log X as being great. Perhaps you don't understand what your advisor wants. Perhaps your advisor doesn't understand why you can't push through.
The first course of action is to talk; try to explain that you perceive some tension and try to explore expectations together. If you still feel you are getting nowhere, engage your secondary advisor for counsel. Maybe he or she can more easily see both sides of the issue and act as an intermediary. There are also formal grievance processes described in the College's Graduate Student Handbook.

You think you want to change advisors? This is clearly a major step and it is strongly recommended you consult your advisor, secondary advisor and other faculty whose opinion or insight you value. Other graduate students probably do not have the life experience to advise you accurately, so you should weigh the advice you get accordingly. The underlying issues may be broad. For example, maybe you hate the problem you are working on, but are content with the general area. Your advisor may be happy/able to get you started in a new direction. Maybe you hate the field in general and want to make a large-scale change. Changing advisors generally means that significant retooling will be required, and you are going to lose not only the time up to this point, but the additional time to retool before you can make forward progress again. Compounding this, you have at most five years of funding from Dartmouth. So if you can do anything to avoid changing advisors, do so, or at least do so early in the game. All this amplifies the importance of trying to make a good decision in the first place.

Language Exam: I didn't know there was a deadline...

The current policy on language exams is that they should be passed by the end of the winter term of your fourth year. Admittedly, this deadline is not as rigidly enforced as qual deadlines, but allowing this requirement to lapse into your fifth year is foolish and could well end up being the sole issue separating your from your degree. And yes, I have seen people fail a language exam after they have defended their thesis.
The intent of the language requirement is to be able to read source materials in your research field while you are actively working on your thesis problem. There will be plenty of time you are frustrated with your thesis and want a break. Logoff of Facebook and learn some verbs. Reading mathematics in a foreign language is just not that hard, so do it!

Thesis Defense: What happens if you don't finish your thesis on time or need to reschedule your thesis defense?

Something has happened which precludes you from defending your thesis before the deadline in the spring. It happens from time to time. We'll presume here that your results are in hand, but the thesis not quite written or a committee member unable to make it before the College's deadline.
You have to check the details with the graduate office, but you can maintain your status as a students (no stipend of course), and defend in the summer with your degree granted at the end of summer. You may also be able to walk at graduation with your "class". Of course if the results are not it hand, you may need to apply for a leave of absence formally to give the time needed to complete the thesis. College regulations come to bear in such an instance. For example, the College Graduate Student Handbook says:

Candidates for the Master's degree must spend at least three terms (one academic year) in residence at Dartmouth; for Ph.D. candidates the requirement is six terms (two academic years). However, to prevent unduly prolonged residence, it is expected that the requirements for the Ph.D. degree will be completed no later than seven years after initial enrollment, unless the student enters with a Masters Degree in his or her field of proposed study, in which case the student is expected to complete the doctorate in five years. Failure to complete the work in the time periods specified or failure to meet the academic standards of the student's graduate program shall necessitate re-evaluation of the student's progress and may result in a notice of termination.

Teaching: What are the policies on using other people's problems or tests? What's the procedure if you're going to fail someone? What do you do if you have problems with your evaluation by the teaching committee? What happens if the department is unhappy with your teaching?

The department's course web pages are a tremendous source of teaching material. They often include homework assignments, syllabi, practice or actual exams and so on. Such materials are free for you to use (and web sites to steal) with the caution that copies of homework or exam problems may exist in fraternity or sorority files.
Asking what the procedure is if you're going to fail someone raises all sorts of flags. In particular, your course supervisor has been kept up-to-date on the situation and in reviewing grades for submission agrees that the student should fail. Your supervisor will tell you that you need to fill out a form obtained from Annette (until we move to online grade submission), to document the failure. The more pressing issue is that you have created a paper trail warning the student of their poor progress throughout the term, and alerted the appropriate class dean much earlier in the term of the ongoing problem. Aside from someone zeroing out the final exam, the expectation of a D or E should not be a surprise to the student, their parents, the class dean ....

From another point of view, what if the department is unhappy with your teaching? You will be visited by the teaching evaluation committee for each course you teach here. Ideally they will visit after three to five lectures have passed, enough time to develop some rapport with your class and in sufficient time to suggest style changes if problems are perceived. If you are not contacted about a visit, contact the chair of the teaching evaluation committee. If you don't have a list of committee members or the one online is not current, ask Tracy or Annette.

Teaching is part of the degree requirements and we hope to train you to be as good a teacher as possible. Taking the teaching seminar will not make you perfect and even if there were perfect teachers, they too would have terrible days from time to time. The person from the teaching evaluation committee is there to help you hone your skills. If there are issues, they will be discussed, tactics planned, and your class will be revisited to see how well they worked. The process repeats until things are going smoothly.

Fifth Year Teaching Experience: How do I propose a project and to whom? What are some possibilities for what to do?

Graduate students typically do not teach Dartmouth courses in their fifth year. Instead, they have a flexible fifth-year teaching experience which has been quite broad in scope. Some sample ideas are below, but whatever you choose, you will need a faculty sponsor, generate a proposal which the sponsor approves and which is then forwarded to the GPC for departmental approval. Most reasonable plans are approved. Sample fifth-year projects:
- Teach a mini-course in the x-hours (or equivalent) of an upper-level (undergrad or grad) math class to enhance or complement the regular course material.
- Help to organize/run a pre-grad school summer workshop for Dartmouth and non-Dartmouth students planning to enter grad school. Teach short courses on fun topics or an introduction to qual-level material. (Possibly a very big project for several grad students with faculty involvement, maybe submit a grant for NSF funding.)
- Teach a portion of a regular faculty-taught course.
- Work on a high school outreach program.
- Conduct math education research.
- Be an active TA for a higher level math course. Assist with writing exams, guest lecture, etc.
- Run problem sessions for grad courses.
- Grade for grad courses.
- Teach a class outside of Dartmouth.
- Take an active role in Putnam events and Math Club activities.
- Run a proof-writing workshop for math majors.
- Run an undergraduate seminar on a fun advanced topic.

Who's Who: What are the roles of the GPC, the Graduate Student Representative, the Graduate Student Advisor, Advisor to First Year Graduate Students, Head of the Graduate Program, the Graduate Admissions Committee, Department Administrator, Department Secretary, etc? What kinds of questions do each group or person handle?

The Department Documents page contains the Department Reference Guide, Course Supervisor lists, and Committee Assignment lists. While the Reference Guide needs some updating as to the division of responsibilities between the Graduate Advisor and Graduate Representative, one still gets a good idea of the scope and purpose of the various committees. The committee lists tells you the members of various committees and the course supervisor list tells you what you think it should.

Tea: How do I handle tea (getting the card, setting up, cleaning up, turning in receipts), plus what to do if you forget or lose the card?

One signs out the department credit card by talking to Tracy or Annette. They will tell you the budget, which differs for regular or high teas. If you lose the card, it is really serious, so don't, but should it happen report its loss immediately to Tracy, Annette, or if neither of them is available, to the department chair.
A tradition seems to have developed in which the first-year graduate students are responsible for buying items for tea, for setting up, and cleaning up. This is entirely a graduate student affair. Tea is from 3:30 - 4pm daily, so should be set up by 3:30 and cleaned up promptly after tea ends. If you are going to a colloquium, just remember to clean up after the talk. Take care of dirty dishes, etc.