Admission to Candidacy

The student is admitted to candidacy for the doctoral degree when the following requirements have been successfully completed. These are not necessarily listed in order of completion:

Course Work. Completion of all courses listed on the Work Program approved by the Advisory Committee with a grade of A or B.
CSD 398T Teaching Course. Students complete the course offered by the Center for Teaching Effectiveness or receive a waiver on the basis of a similar course or prior college teaching experience at another institution.
Teaching Experiences. Guided teaching experiences (described above) include preparation and presentation of at least one section of a course (4-5 consecutive class meetings), planning for evaluation of student learning (development of tests and/or assignments), and grading of the material (development of grading rubrics).
Course Development. Students design a course that is presented to the Advisory Committee for review and approval. The material shall include a detailed syllabus, reading list, assignments, and handouts/overheads/slides if applicable. At the discretion of the committee, the course may be an adaptation of an existing course, or it may be a course in a topic area in which the student has not previously taught. The student may receive credit for this activity by registering for a CSD 380E.
Analytic Paper. Completion of an analytic paper, presented for review and approval by the Advisory Committee. It is recommended that the focus of this paper be theory or a critical review during the first year of doctoral study. However, the exact nature and timing of the assignment will be at the discretion of the Advisory Committee.
Research projects. Students must plan and conduct a minimum of two research projects under the supervision of at least two different mentors. A project proposal should be approved by the project/faculty mentor prior to initiation. In accordance with UT policy, the student must receive IRB approval before initiating any research project. It is expected that these projects will involve development of a research design, data collection and analysis, and will be reported in journal article format in APA style. The reports summarizing the results of these studies should be of publishable quality and must be approved by the Advisory Committee. It is expected that some or all of these papers will be submitted to juried research conferences and/or peer-reviewed journals, but this is not a requirement to meet this competency.
Colloquium/proseminar presentation; Oral defense meetings. Students are required to present ONE of the two research projects at a CSD Friday Research Colloquium. Each of the other two required papers will be discussed, at separate times, in oral defense format before the student's Advisory Committee. The first part of each of these meetings will be open to other members of the departmental community (other doctoral students are particularly urged to attend) and will consist of a presentation and questions from the committee and the audience. The second part will be closed to the public; the student will defend his or her work before the committee. The committee will then deliberate privately to determine whether the work is considered acceptable, and, if not, to formulate recommendations for improvement and later resubmission for approval.

To summarize the requirements described above, students will be admitted to candidacy for the doctoral degree when they have completed the requirements for

(1) Coursework;

(2) Research experiences and

(3) Teaching experiences.

In addition to meeting these requirements students must also complete an (A) annual review and a (B) portfolio review:

Annual Review. Each student will submit an annual report (similar to that prepared by academic faculty) documenting achievements from the previous year. The student's academic advisor will present this report for discussion with the whole faculty at the Spring review of graduate student progress. (Download the Annual Review form in MS Word format.)

Portfolio Review. The student must prepare a portfolio of their accomplishments for review by the Advisory Committee. The portfolio is to be presented to the Advisory Committee at a meeting, and defended orally, with special attention to the way the body of work relates to the existing work in the relevant field(s) of study. This oral defense may be considered the culminating experience of the doctoral program. Approval of the portfolio will be the last step leading to candidacy.