Curriculum Design

The Doctoral Program curriculum follows an interdisciplinary, liberal arts design with a focus on four dimensions of leadership studies: personal systems, organizational systems, global systems, and research.

Students satisfy the liberal arts component of the degree through electives. Courses that have a title of „Leadership and…“ have an especially strong emphasis in the humanities and enhance interdisciplinary thinking about leadership. The research component is satisfied through core and required courses, dissertation credits and can be supplemented with selected electives. 

Students are encouraged to develop a concentration in the personal, organizational, or global systems dimensions by taking at least 9 additional hours of elective coursework related to one specific dimension. 

See [Conceptual Framework]

Curriculum Structure

A total of at least 60 applicable credits must be successfully completed for graduation from the program.

The curriculum is structured into four main components:

• core courses component
• required research courses component
• required ethics courses component
• electives component

See also [Course Planning Guide]

There are four main phases and three major milestones in the process toward the Ph.D.

Phases and Milestones

1. PRE-CANDIDACY Phase: completion of core courses.

2. CANDIDACY Phase: Application to begin candidacy, completion of a candidacy paper.
Milestone 1: successful granting of candidacy status

3. PROPOSAL Phase: Selection of dissertation committee, successful admission to proposal seminar, completion of a dissertation proposal.
Milestone 2: successful defense of the proposal before the dissertation committee

4. DISSERTATION Phase: Successful passing of the IRB to gain permission for conduction dissertation research, completion of the dissertation.
Milestone 3: successful signing off of the dissertation by the dissertation committee.

See also [Ph.D. Degree Requirements]