Current PhD Student Resources

Assistantships may be awarded to the most qualified doctoral students. Each doctoral assistant who receives an assistantship will be guaranteed three years of salary as an instructional or teaching assistant (IA/TA) at $32,000 per year for a 50% nine-month appointment as long as adequate progress is being made. Adequate progress is defined as receiving a B or higher in each course and taking at least 9 credit hours in each long semester. Tuition is not included in the assistantship. Currently, Texas State University’s graduate tuition and fees for an 18 semester credit hours per year is around $8000. The latest graduate tuition rate can be found here. 

There are a few scholarship opportunities that are dedicated just to Ph.D. students. 

• GAANN Ph.D. Fellowship

Students in the Ph.D. program in Computer Science can apply up to a maximum of 12 hours of coursework through a prior learning assessment (PLA) evaluation process when they demonstrate mastery of applicable skills and learning outcomes. PLA course credit can be satisfied through experiential learning students gained through work, non-course-based advanced studies, internships, or externships prior to beginning the Computer Science Ph.D. Program. There are a limited number of credits that can be earned through PLA and course transfer combined, which depends on the number of credits in the degree program; for the Computer Science Ph.D. the total is 12. Students who apply for PLA credit must meet the following conditions:

• Full-time students must make the request for PLA credit in the student’s first year in the program. Part-time students must make the request before completing a total of 18 credits.
• The PLA experiences on which the student is basing the request for PLA credits must have occurred within five years of when the request is made.

By the time 18 semester credit hours have been accrued, each doctoral student is expected to have secured a qualified dissertation advisor who agrees to advise and mentor the student. The Dissertation Committee Chair Assignment Form must be completed by the student and the dissertation advisor and submitted to the department administrative assistant for processing. 

By the time the student has completed 27 semester credit hours and after the dissertation advisor has been assigned and approved by the Dean of The Graduate College, the student, in consultation with his/her dissertation advisor, must establish a dissertation committee that consists of the dissertation advisor, two other doctoral faculty members from the Department, and one external member that satisfies the eligibility rules of doctoral faculty. This means the member should at least has a terminal degree in computer science or related fields, published an average of 2 papers per year in the last five years. The Dissertation Committee Request Form must be completed by the student and submitted to the department administrative assistant for processing.  

Ph.D. students must take the qualifying exam after the required breadth courses and CS7300 are completed. The qualifying exam is a 3-hour written exam that is offered at the beginning of a long semester (only offered in the fall semester currently). Students must answer questions from three of the research areas the Ph.D. program is based on (the number of areas can vary from year to year depending on the availability of faculty). In general, the areas will be 1) Data Analytics and Management, 2) Human-Computer Interaction and Computer Vision, 3) High-Performance Computing, 4) Cyber Security and Networking, 5) Software Engineering and Real-time Systems.

Students must have taken classes in three out of the six research areas. The following are the research areas in the two concentrations. Research area is mostly defined by the third digit of the course number, however, there are some exceptions, so take note of that.

IM: Artificial Intelligence: CS7313, CS7323, CS7389J, CS7389H
Data Science and Engineering: CS 7311, CS7312, CS7315
Human-Centered Computing: CS7321, CS7322, CS7324

SS: High-Performance Computing: CS7331, CS7332, CS7333, CS7334
Network, Security and Cyber-Physical Systems: CS7341, CS7342, CS7343, CS7389F 
Computer Systems and Engineering: CS7351, CS7352

The qualifying examination will take place in the second/third week of the fall semester. At the end of the spring semester, a reading list for each of the exam areas will be made available to the students. Each reading list will include at least five research papers that cover fundamental concepts in the given area. The exam will have at least two questions about each area, except software engineering. The students only need to answer one exam question per area. The exam questions can be as general as explaining how a particular algorithm outlined in a certain paper performs or a critical analysis of the results presented. The grading will be on a scale of 1 to 5. The average score over the three areas must be at least 3 to pass the exam. This is an open book exam. All types of notes are allowed but no electronic devices of any sort are allowed. This means no tablets, cell phones, or computers. Annotated papers are encouraged.

Should a student fail the exam, he/she has the option of taking a second and final qualifying exam at the next offering. Students will be dismissed from the program if they do not pass the qualifying exam the second time.

Each Ph.D. student must pass a comprehensive examination (it is a combination of the qualifying exam and the proposal defense). This should be done by the time the student has completed 36 semester credit hours for a student who enters with a master's degree and can only be done after identifying the dissertation committee, passing the qualifying exam, fulfilling the programming requirement, and completing all required courses. Any student who does not pass the comprehensive exam by the time 45 semester credit hours have been accrued will be dismissed from the program. If the comprehensive exam is not passed, the student has the option of taking a second and final comprehensive exam in the following long semester. Students will be dismissed from the program if they do not pass the comprehensive exam the second time.

Students who have passed the comprehensive exam requirements, must prepare and submit the Doctoral Comprehensive Examination Report Form to the department administrative assistant for processing.  

Extensive programming expertise is essential given the applied focus of the Ph.D. program. Hence, all graduating students must have significant experience in designing and implementing a substantial piece of software, which is defined as a piece of software where the student 1) wrote at least 500 statements, 2) employed at least one non-basic data structure (beyond built-in types, arrays, structs, and vectors), and 3) implemented a non-trivial algorithm (more complex than linear search).

There are several ways to satisfy this requirement. For example, a student can take a course with a project that has a large programming component. Alternatively, the student can satisfy this requirement through programming projects that are, for instance, part of a job in industry, independent research, or his/her dissertation. In any of these cases, the student must obtain a support letter from the course instructor, independent-study advisor, manager, or dissertation advisor with a short explanation of how the three software properties stated above are satisfied. The Ph.D. program director must approve this support letter to certify that the student satisfies the programming requirement, which must be met before the student is allowed to defend his/her dissertation proposal.

Each Ph.D. student must prepare a written dissertation proposal and defend it orally. Any student who does not defend his/her dissertation proposal by the time 45 semester credit hours have been accrued will be dismissed from the program. If the proposal defense is not passed, the student has the option of taking a second and final defense in the following long semester. Students will be dismissed from the program if they do not pass the proposal defense the second time.

Following a successful dissertation proposal defense, students must complete the Dissertation Proposal and Proposal Defense Form and submit to the department administrative assistant for processing.  

The goal of the Ph.D. program is to produce well-rounded applied researchers who have demonstrated breadth in computer science, depth in a specific area of concentration, and enhanced abilities in leadership, innovation, and communication. To ensure that these goals are met, doctoral students must fulfill the requirements and pass the exams outlined in this section. Students who do not meet these requirements within the specified timeframes or fail any of the required exams twice will be dismissed from the program.

The requirements, their dependencies, and the expected semester credit hours (SCHs) to fulfill each of the requirements are shown in the below image. Note that only doctoral-level credit hours count toward the listed SCHs for students entering with a master's. For example, master’s-level background courses that a student may want to take are excluded. But some of those courses are counted for students entering with a bachelor's degree. The requirements are discussed in more detail in the following paragraphs. The commercialization courses and boot camps are optional as of Fall 2022. They can be replaced by taking two additional 7000-level classes.

The dissertation defense consists of two parts. The first part is a public presentation of the dissertation research. The second part of the defense immediately follows the public presentation. It is restricted to the student’s dissertation committee and all core faculty and entails an oral examination of the dissertation research. Approval of the dissertation requires a positive vote from the student’s dissertation advisor and no more than one dissenting vote from the remaining members of the dissertation committee. Notice of the defense presentation will be publicly posted at least two weeks in advance. 

Once a student passes their dissertation defense, they must prepare both the Dissertation Defense Report Form and the Dissertation Submission Approval Form and submit to the department administrative assistant for processing.  

If the dissertation defense is not approved, the student has the option of taking a second and final dissertation defense in the following long semester. Students who do not pass the dissertation defense the second time will be dismissed from the program.

Students must pass the dissertation defense by the time 90 semester credit hours have been accrued. The Ph.D. program committee will review each student annually to ascertain his/her progress toward the degree and will consult the student’s dissertation advisor and dissertation committee on this matter as needed. Any student who does not pass the dissertation defense by the time 90 semester credit hours have been accrued will be dismissed from the program.

CS7387 Independent Study Request Form 

Dissertation Registration Request Form

Graduate College Forms:

Form A - Dissertation Committee Chair Assignment Form

Form B - Dissertation Committee Request Form

Form C - Doctoral Comprehensive Exam Report Form

Form D - Dissertation Proposal and Proposal Defense Form

Form E - Application for Advancement to Candidacy

Form F - Dissertation Defense Report Form

From G - Dissertation Submission Approval Form