Applicable only to students admitted during the 2024-2025 academic year.
Interdepartmental Program
College of Letters and Science
Graduate Degrees
The Conservation of Cultural Heritage Interdepartmental Program offers the Master of Arts (M.A.) in Conservation of Cultural Heritage and the Master of Science (M.S.) and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degrees in Conservation of Material Culture.
Conservation of Cultural Heritage
Admissions Requirements
Master’s Degree
Advising
The chair/director of the program serves as the graduate adviser. Each student is assigned an adviser at the beginning of the first year of the program. Upon selection of a thesis topic, students select a faculty adviser who agrees to serve as the student’s M.A. committee chair and principal adviser. Student progress toward the degree is discussed each academic quarter, initially by the chair, and then by the student’s thesis committee chair and by the members of the UCLA/Getty Conservation IDP Faculty Advisory Committee.
Areas of Study
Students should consult the program.
Foreign Language Requirement
None.
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 course work are required for graduation. Graduation unit requirements: 80 units of graduate courses; 8 units of 598 (M.A. 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, work 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 core faculty and will be developed in collaboration between the student and faculty.
Capstone 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 IDP Core faculty 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 M.A. 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 M.A. degree, students should carefully consider the subject and scope of their proposed M.A. paper in terms of the feasibility to complete it within the time-to-degree guidelines for the program. Students are strongly encouraged to complete thesis research during their second year in the program.
Time-to-Degree
The M.A. degree is to be completed within three years (9 quarters).
| DEGREE | NORMATIVE TIME TO ATC (Quarters) | NORMATIVE TTD | MAXIMUM TTD |
| M.A. | 9 | 9 | 10 |
Academic Disqualification and Appeal of Disqualification
University Policy
A student who fails to meet the above requirements may be recommended for academic disqualification from 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 academic disqualification 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 an unsatisfactory master’s thesis. A student may appeal a recommendation for termination through a request for a hearing before the Executive Committee.
