As I have just submitted the mysterious “pink sheet,” I can now shed some light on it.

The pink sheet is the “request for final oral examination.” There’s a note at the top stating that this “form must be on pink paper; it will not be accepted otherwise,” which I found to be both amusing and bewildering. I asked Melanie Gulick about this, and she said that it was a holdover from the days when all important forms needed to be color-coded.

The form has places for you to list your name, EID, address, and your phone number. You also state the date/time/place of your defense. In addition, you sign the form to allow UT to publicize your defense.

Each member of your committee needs to sign the form to indicate that they’ve received a copy of your dissertation and agree to attend your defense. If any of your committee members plans to attend the defense but can’t sign the form, your advisor (or Dean Neikirk) can sign the form in their place. Then, Dean Neikirk needs to sign the form.

If any of your committee members can’t attend the defense, they can indicate that by signing the back of the form (again, your advisor or Dean Neikirk can act as a proxy in this case).

When you submit the pink sheet to the Graduate School in the Main Building, you also bring along a hard copy of your abstract, vita, title page and “committee certification of approved version” (which will require more signatures). The doctoral degree evaluator does a cursory check of those pages to see if there are any obvious formatting errors.

Assuming all goes well, I will learn about the “gold sheet” and the “green sheet” (if they actually exist).