Requirements for the PhD
Credit Requirement: A minimum of 72 credit hours, including the master’s degree, earned from any suitable combination of formal course work, independent study, research, teaching, or dissertation work.
Course Requirements: Students must complete at least four graduate seminars from their examination field and at least three graduate seminars from their second field and receive a grade of an A- or above in at least two of these three classes and a grade of B+ above in the other class.
Comprehensive Examination: Students must successfully pass comprehensive examination in one of the department’s examination fields in August following the successful completion of the MA qualifying paper. The purpose of the examination is to demonstrate that the student is capable of teaching a graduate-level seminar in the examining field and to assure that the student can synthesize and critically evaluate the literature.
Dissertation Overview: The overview consists of a carefully developed research design for the proposed Ph.D. dissertation. Students are expected to defend dissertation overview at the end of their third year in residence.
Dissertation Defense: The final oral examination in defense of the doctoral dissertation is conducted by the doctoral committee and is open to the University community.
Supervised Teaching Experience: Supervised teaching experience is an integral part of the doctoral program. Normally, teaching experience is gained by conducting recitation sections of an introductory course or by assisting a faculty member in an undergraduate course, followed by the teaching of one’s own course, in the fourth or fifth year of study.
The specifics of the PhD degree requirement can be found at Graduate Student Handbook.
Return to: