Academic Programs - PhD
Ph.D. Overview/ Requirements
An individual student's program should reflect the student's developing professional expertise, career goals, and personal interests. This program, therefore, maintains as much flexibility and individualization as possible.
This individualization is built upon the core curriculum through planning for elective course work and enrichment experiences, including teaching and research assistantships. The PhD program provides a set of structured and integrated core courses that can be applied to each student's area of specialization. This core curriculum is supplemented by six elective courses that allow students to obtain more depth in their specialization areas. Faculty advisers work closely with students in planning their course work and progress through the doctoral program.
A minimum of three years of full-time study is required for doctoral program completion. The curriculum is distributed between a nine-course core curriculum and elective courses followed by the comprehensive examination and doctoral dissertation.
Requirements
The doctoral program requires nine core courses, one policy elective, plus a minimum of six electives, which may be 2-, 3- or 4-credit courses. Students will spend two years meeting their course requirements. (Full-time is defined as nine or more credit hours per semester.)
Here's an approximate timetable of the general flow of full-time students through the program:
Curriculum
Courses are taken in the fall and spring terms during the student's first and second years; summer courses are needed if a student desires a nine-credit schedule for fall and spring terms and/or is enrolled in one of the joint degree programs (no more than 12 credits are recommended for the student's first semester in the program). Learn more about our curriculum.
Comprehensive Examination
Students take a comprehensive examination after completion of all required and elective courses. Comprehensive exams are offered once a year, in late August.
Doctoral Dissertation
The doctoral dissertation involves:
- Submission and approval of a brief description of proposed dissertation research: after passing the comprehensive examination (Admission to Candidacy)
- Defense of a dissertation overview: after committee review of dissertation overview, composed of the chapters of the dissertation inclusive of an introduction to the problem, literature review, and research design and methods
- Final dissertation defense: at least one year following admission to candidacy
Ph.D. Courses
Research
SWRES 3020 Research Methods I
SWRES 3022 Capstone Research Seminar I
SWRES 3023 Capstone Research Seminar II
Statistics
SWRES 3029 Inferential Statistics
SWRES 3021 Multivariate Methods
Social Science Theory
SWGEN 3053 Social Science Theory I
SWGEN 3044 Social Science Theory II
Social Welfare
SWWEL 3030 Evaluation of American Social Welfare History and Policy
Social Policy
SWWEL 3037 Social Policy Analysis
Social Policy Electives
SWWEL 3039 Social Policy and Gerontology
SWWEL 3056 Health Systems and Public Policy
SWWEL 3057 Mental Health and Public Policy
SWWEL 3059 Child and Family Policy
Other Electives
SWGEN 3060 Seminar in Social Welfare Education
SWRES 3045 Qualitative Research
SWRES 3024 Directed Study in Research
SWGEN 3025 Directed Study
SWGEN 3039 Comprehensive Study
Dissertation
FTDL 0000 Full-time Dissertation Study