Entry to PhD with a MS Route

Program Requirements

Complete 42 credits from seven or eight courses including four required courses, two electives, and one to two dissertation/research courses.

Doctoral candidacy: Candidates must pass a written qualifying exam at a time to be designated by the student’s pre-dissertation committee. Content covered in the exam is agreed upon by the major faculty advisor and the student. The exam will be completed over the course of several days within a two-week period. Students must pass all areas on either the first or second try before being allowed to continue in the program and work on their dissertation proposal.
Dissertation: Candidates must propose and ultimately compose and defend a dissertation based on original research. The dissertation document will include an introduction, rationale and hypothesis, review of the literature, description of methods, presentation of results, and discussion of the relevance of the study’s findings to the field at large. The results of the research will be presented in manuscript-ready format, including two or more separate papers that are ready to be submitted to peer-reviewed journals. The student will be required to submit at least one of these papers to a journal prior to orally defending their dissertation; the paper must be under peer review to meet this requirement.

Statute of limitations: Eight years.

Course Requirements