[Southeast University News Network, March 13] (Correspondents: Qian Fang and Chen Xue) On March 11, a special doctoral dissertation of Southeast University was held. Le Kai, a doctoral student from the School of Medicine who is right now residing in Fuzhou, Jiangxi Province, is experiencing an unforgettable defense in his life—a video defense of his doctoral dissertation. This is the first defense meeting of doctoral dissertation held by Southeast University since the outbreak of the epidemic.
Upon receipt of student Le Kai’s application for video defense, teachers from the School of Medicine and the Academic Degree Office of the Graduate School well planned and organized an online defense program to help members of the defense committee and the defense student concerned familiarize themselves with the video meeting platform in advance. Besides, they also well prepared for any problem that may arise in actual operation to ensure smooth progress of the defense. Le Kai then became the first student to answer the video defense of a graduate degree dissertation of Southeast University.
At 3 p.m., the video defense of doctoral dissertation of Le Kai from the School of Medicine of Southeast University commenced on time. Le Kai and five committee members from Southeast University, Nanjing Medical University and Chongqing Medical University participated in this extraordinary doctoral dissertation defense meeting in Fuzhou of Jiangxi Province, Nanjing and Chongqing respectively.
The video defense was carried out in strict accordance with relevant procedures and specifications as stipulated in the “Interim Rules for Master’s and Doctoral Degrees Awarded by Southeast University”. In the defense of nearly two hours, student Le Kai reported to the defense committee his dissertation titled “The Role and Mechanism of High Mobility Group Protein B1 and Its Acetylation Modification in Hypoxic-Ischemic Brain Damage of Newborn Mice”, and answered the questions raised by members of the defense committee one by one. Then the members of the defense committee discussed the defense process and conclusions earnestly, then voted by ballot. Finally, Professor Zhang Zhijun, Chairman of the Defense Committee, announced that the committee members unanimously voted for Le Lai’s doctoral dissertation and recommended awarding the academic degree of Ph. D. in Medicine to him.
At the defense, Le Kai said excitedly: “although the epidemic has affected people’s lives, the school adheres to the “student-based” principle and spares no effort to create conditions to reduce negative impacts of the epidemic on the students’ graduation, further education and employment, and guarantee successful graduation of graduate students to the greatest extent. It is believed to defeat the epidemic under the strong leadership of the Party Central Committee and support of the people of the whole country”.
It is reported that after the outbreak of the epidemic, in order to minimize the epidemic impacts on the graduate students’ education and employment while guaranteeing the quality of degree as awarded, Southeast University innovated the management model, simplified the work processes, made full use of information technology, and coordinated arrangements for dissertation submission, defense and degree awarding. In the course, the school has also issued a set of very detailed online defense application methods in succession, such as the “Process of Defense Application for Master’s Degree and Dissertation Submission for Review During the Epidemic Prevention and Control”, and the “Guidelines for Doctoral Students for Defense Application and Dissertation Submission for Review During the Epidemic Prevention and Control”, etc.. In response to the questions that the graduate students are particularly concerned about whether they can conduct online video defense of dissertation, the school’s Academic Degrees Evaluation Committee Office reported to the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council and worked out a detailed “Video Defense Processes of Graduate Student’s Academic Theses During the Epidemic Prevention and Control”, etc. on the basis of such principles of “legitimacy, compliance, standardization, fairness and openness”. This set of online defense and voting plan in compliance with the requirements of the defense processes has carefully designed the defense process and the emergency measures to ensure that the students can graduate successfully and minimize the epidemic impacts on graduate students’ further education and employment.
Submitted by: the Graduate School
(Editor-in-charge: Sun Yan, reviewed by: Li Xiaonan)
