Curriculum for Professor Isern’s PhD Students

Our program requires a substantial amount of formal course work in pursuit of the PhD. As you work through the formal curricular requirements, keep your eyes on the prize; the curriculum is a means to an end; insomuch as you can, use course work as a vehicle to prepare for comps and dissertation and to compile professional accomplishments that will be notable outside the classroom—presentations and publications, for example.

Course Work for the PhD
Field		Course #	Title	CH
Required Core	Any item of which can be waived if equivalent already has been completed	701	Methods of Historical Research	3
		702	Historiography	3
		705	Seminar in the Teaching of History	3
Major Field	Readings course	730	Coyote Culture	3
	Research course	790	Grassroots History	3
	Two additional courses chosen in consultation with advisor and committee member			3
				3
Minor Field 1	Three courses chosen in consultation with committee members and advisor		Must include a second readings course and a second research course	3
				3
				3
Minor Field 2 (can be outside History)	Three courses chosen in consultation with committee members and advisor			3
				3
				3
36 total hours of course work required. If none of required core is waived, however, requirements total 39 hours. If more than one course in required core is waived, add course or courses to major or minor fields so as to bring total to 36.				36-39

It’s a good idea, as you begin the curriculum, to start a worksheet that records your completion of course requirements. Here’s a worksheet you can use (Word doc).

The balance of credit hours for the PhD—24 of them—are comprised in the dissertation. Go back to the Wizard home page for more guidance about writing the dissertation.

The other curricular requirement for the PhD is the foreign language requirement. It may be that you already possess competence in two foreign languages—good. It may also be that you pursue a dissertation requiring research in two foreign languages, in which case you should develop those two competencies in fulfillment of the language requirement. Most commonly, however, I expect my PhD students to demonstrate competence in one foreign language and, for the second half of the requirement, in computer applications appropriate to professional aspirations. I consider academic computing and digital communications to be crucial to success in the academy and in the profession, and so I encourage rigor in the satisfaction of this requirement. For outlining and proposing a program to satisfy the requirement in computer applications, we will use this table (a Word doc).

The Wizard / Tom Isern