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PhD Core Requirements

 

The Ph.D. student must:

(1) satisfactorily complete all required coursework for the Ph.D. ,
(2) pass all Written Ph.D. exams,
(3) pass the oral defense for the proposal for dissertation research,
(4) pass the oral defense over the thesis, and
(5) deposit the final, approved thesis with the Office of Graduate Studies (OGS).

 

Detailed definition of each component:

 

To satisfy (1) above, the Ph.D. student at The Institute should satisfactorily complete:

  • 6 credits as a supervised teaching assistant. This requirement is typically filled by enrolling in ECS250-254 - Supervised Teaching, with the approval of the supervising faculty and the Director of Academic Programs.
  • 12 credits of doctoral seminars (ECS290). As currently constructed, the professional ethics and skills year of these seminars completes in full The Institute Ph.D. Program’s requirement for training in research ethics.
  • 4 credits of the Advanced Statistics & Methods course (ECS 245)
  • 6 credits of the Advanced Methods in Health Services Research course (ECS 147)
  •  At least 12 credits (or equivalent of Dartmouth College's credits) of coursework at the graduate level other than doctoral seminars or courses reflecting teaching or directed research. Note: work toward the proposal defense (usually taken as directed research, ECS197-9) does not count towards this requirement.
  • A minimum of the equivalent of 12 graduate level credit credits (or more if student has not fulfilled the minimum required for establishing residency at Dartmouth).

These should all generally be completed within the first two years of the Ph.D. Program.

 

To satisfy (2), the Ph.D. student at The Institute should satisfactorily complete:

  • All parts of the required Written Ph.D. Exams

Written Ph.D. Exams should generally be completed by the end of the first year of the Program. Ph.D. Written Exams are offered annually, each summer term. There are four area exams, each of which has an integrative [cross-area] component. The four areas include: decision making, health policy, epidemiology and statistics and quality improvement.

 

To satisfy (3), the Ph.D. student at The Institute should satisfactorily complete:

  • the oral defense of the thesis proposal. (The Examining Committee is the official Dissertation Research Committee.)

This should generally be completed before the beginning of the third year of the Program. Steps 1-3 must be completed before the student can be considered a ‘candidate’ for the Ph.D.

 

To satisfy (4) and (5), the Ph.D. Candidate must satisfactorily:

  • defend the written thesis before an official Ph.D. examining committee (the Thesis Defense Committee),
  • complete all formatting or substantive requests to change the thesis which arise from the examining committee, and
  • submit the approved thesis to OGS.

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