Certificate of Committee Approval
Requirements for the Certificate of Committee Approval
It is the student's responsibility to proofread the Certificate of Committee Approval (CCA) carefully before obtaining signatures on the document. The CCA must contain:
- The student's UIN
- The date on which the thesis was approved by either the master's adviser or the doctoral committee.
- The student's name (must match official version of name in University records and name on title page)
- The title of the thesis (must be spelled correctly and match the title found on the title page)
- The correct degree for which the thesis is being submitted
- The required number of signatures
Signatures
Required signatures for the master's CCA = student's adviser + department head.
Required signatures for the doctoral CCA = director of research (adviser) + the department head + ALL voting committee members. (Please note that, if a student's director of research or the department head is also a member of the student's final exam committee, that person must sign the CCA twice to indicate that he or she filled multiple roles.)
The signature of the department head must be original, and all signatures must be on the same form. The use of erasers, correction fluids, or correction tapes on this form is not permitted.
Using a Word Template to Prepare the CCA
If your thesis title contains special characters or is longer than four lines, you may not be able to complete the PDF version of the form. The Graduate College provides a Microsoft Word template version of the CCA, a .dot file, that you can use for these special cases.
Downloading the Word Template
- Click here to download the document template. Please note that when you are prompted by the browser for where to save the download file, you will need to save the file with a dot extension. Your browser may default the name to CertCommitteeApproval.doc. This should be changed to CertCommitteeApproval.dot.
- Copy the download file to the folder for your Word document templates. (If you do not know where Microsoft Word stores templates, open a document in Word and select Tools/Options from the menu. Check the File Locations tab to see where the User Templates are stored. This is the location to place the new template. See your network administrator if you are still unsure of how to add a template to Word.)
- Create a new word document. When prompted by Microsoft Word, select the CertCommitteeApproval.dot template from the template list on the General Tab. (If you do not see CertCommitteeApproval.dot on the template list, you have not saved the template file to the correct location.)
- Enter the information on the form. You will only be permitted to type in the data entry fields. You can tab between fields or use your mouse to move to a specific field. If the thesis title contains special characters, Word may prevent you from directly typing them in the form field; however, it will allow you to cut and paste text containing special characters into the form field. You can now save or print the completed form; your template will remain unchanged.
Please note that you should not modify the Word template format. The location of the border and each field must be consistent with the approved form layout. The Graduate College reserves the right to reject any forms where the formatting of the original form has been modified.
PDF files require Adobe Reader.