Doctoral Supervision/Your Doctoral Committee
Who is authorised to award you a doctorate or examine you:
When selecting members for a doctoral committee, the question also arises as to who can supervise your doctorate, review your dissertation and ultimately also take the doctoral examination, i.e. ultimately who can award you a doctorate.
Two basic criteria apply to your doctorate at our Graduate School:
- Your primary supervisor must be a member of the GSH or become one before your admission to our doctorate; one of the two co-supervisors can be external, i.e. from outside the GSH but at the University of Würzburg or from another university (see below*), and
- a doctoral authorisation acc. of the Bayer. University Examination Ordinance (Bayer. Hochschulprüferverordnung).
All current members of the GSH have this authorisation. If you would like a person to be your supervisor who is not yet a member but would like to join the GSH to take over your supervision, they fulfil the above criteria if they belong to the groups of people listed below; in this case, they could also participate in your doctoral committee as your primary supervisor. The following are authorised to do a doctorate:
- Active and retired professors;
- private lecturers (Privatdozenten/Privatdozentinnen);
- by way of exception in individual cases, academic staff including academic counsellors. If a person from this group has been accepted as a habilitation candidate or has not (yet) been accepted as a habilitation candidate, he/she can apply for authorisation to do a doctorate, on which the Director will decide individually.
Such an informal application must be submitted to the Director of the GSH via the GSH office; the application must include the following contents: - proof that the person is working full-time;
- a confirmation issued by the dean of the relevant faculty that the person has been entrusted with the independent performance of tasks in research and teaching;
- proof that he/she has taught the examination subject independently for at least one year at a university;
- proof that he/she has been accepted as a habilitation candidate;
- or, if he/she has not yet been accepted as a Habilitand or Habilitandin, a sufficiently good justification for a possible waiver of acceptance as a Habilitand or Habilitandin by the GSH;
- for persons working part-time: additional separate justification of the special qualification and exceptional eligibility.
For junior research group leaders (Nachwuchsgruppenleiter/-leiterinnen) who have (demonstrably) acquired the funding for the projects in which they lead a junior research group themselves, they are generally able to supervise and examine the doctoral students in their junior research group. In addition, there is nothing to prevent the respective chair holder, where the junior research group leader works, from participating in a supervisory committee as a second supervisor (decision of the GSH Board of Directors of 12 January 2016).
Sources and further information:
a) Bayer. Hochschulprüferverordnung - HSchPrüferV, §§ 2 and 4.
b) Bayer. Higher Education Innovation Act - BayHIG, Art 19.
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* Please note the following early on when putting together your doctoral committee:
Unfortunately, GSH cannot finance travel and hotel costs for external supervisors; i.e. travel for participation in supervisory meetings and the final oral examination must be funded for from another source. It is essential that you inform any external supervisor of this before joining the doctoral committee; we recommend that you approach your primary supervisor for funding.
