Applicable only to students admitted during the 2014-2015 academic year.

Conservation of Archaeological and Ethnographic Materials

Admissions Requirements

Master’s Degree

Advising

The chair/director of the program serves as the graduate adviser. Each student selects a faculty adviser who agrees to serve as the student’s MA committee chair and principal adviser. Student progress toward the degree is discussed each academic quarter by the student’s committee members and by the members of the UCLA/Getty Conservation IDP Faculty Advisory Committee.

Areas of Study

Students should consult the program.

Foreign Language Requirement

Demonstration of proficiency in at least one modern foreign language is required. There are three options for fulfilling this requirement: (1) complete the third quarter in an introductory, regular sequence of the selected language at UCLA (or an equivalent course) with a grade of A or A-; (2) take a reading/translation examination administered by the program; or (3) take a UCLA Foreign Language Department Placement Test to demonstrate equivalency to completion of the third quarter of instruction in a foreign language.

Course Requirements

Our program is a three-year program with two years of instruction, a 10-week internship following the first year and a 9-month internship during the third year. A minimum of 130 units of coursework are required for graduation. Graduation unit requirements: 80 units of graduate courses; 8 units of 598 (MA thesis preparation) and 42 units of 290 (internship).

Teaching Experience

Not required.

Field Experience

Eleven months of internship are required: one 10-week summer internship between the first and second year of study, and one 9-month internship following the second year of study. To expose the student to both field and institutional environments, it is preferred but not required that one internship be associated with a field project and the other be within a museum. The field project may include work on an archaeological excavation within an ethnology field project, work at an indigenous cultural center, or at other similar venues. The collections project may include work at a museum or other collecting institution, or at a regional laboratory where collections are curated and conserved. All intern placement must be pre-approved by the program and will be developed in collaboration between the student and faculty.

Comprehensive Examination Plan

None.

Thesis Plan

Every master’s degree thesis plan requires the completion of an approved thesis that demonstrates the student’s ability to perform original, independent research.

Each student organizes a research project in consultation with the assigned faculty adviser no later than the end of their first year. The research project includes some or all of the following aspects of conservation-related research: examination of archaeological and/or ethnographic artifacts, assessment of the cultural context, analysis, experimentation with treatment or analysis techniques along with conservation treatment. The MA project includes the establishment of a methodology that guides the development of the research. The results are presented in a research paper between 7,500 and 10,000 words to the student’s three-member master’s thesis committee for evaluation.  In light of the number of courses required for the MA degree, students should carefully consider the subject and scope of their proposed MA paper in terms of the feasibility to complete it within the time-to-degree guidelines for the program.

Time-to-Degree

The M.A. degree is to be completed within three years.

Termination of Graduate Study and Appeal of Termination

University Policy

A student who fails to meet the above requirements may be recommended for termination of graduate study. A graduate student may be disqualified from continuing in the graduate program for a variety of reasons. The most common is failure to maintain the minimum cumulative grade point average (3.00) required by the Academic Senate to remain in good standing (some programs require a higher grade point average). Other examples include failure of examinations, lack of timely progress toward the degree and poor performance in core courses. Probationary students (those with cumulative grade point averages below 3.00) are subject to immediate dismissal upon the recommendation of their department. University guidelines governing termination of graduate students, including the appeal procedure, are outlined in Standards and Procedures for Graduate Study at UCLA.

Special Departmental or Program Policy

In addition to the reasons noted above, a student may be recommended for termination for failure to fulfill the foreign language requirement or an unsatisfactory master’s thesis. A student may appeal a recommendation for termination through a request for a hearing before the Executive Committee.