Requirements

Ph.D. Requirements

Course Requirements
Typical Program
Supervised Research (Second-year Paper)
Special Fields
Advising
Timetable

Our graduate program has both structure and openness. The Department has specific requirements, as outlined below. Students may petition to have requirements waived whenever they can present evidence showing that they have met the requirement in some other way. Petitions should be in writing following discussion with the student’s faculty advisor and with the Director of Graduate Studies. Some petitions can be handled at the departmental level, while others will go to the Graduate School, but all start with the Department.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

The Sociology Department requires students to take two theory courses (406-1 and one other), two statistics courses (401-1 and 401-2), two methods courses (403 and 405), the Teaching seminar (570), the Second-Year Paper seminar (490) and the non-credit Pro-Seminar (480-1 and 480-2). Students without a statistics background are also required to take 400. Some of these requirements can be waived if the student has done the equivalent elsewhere; to do this requires a petition, and you should talk with the DGS first. Here is the typical program for each year:

First Year (9 courses plus proseminar):

401-1 (Basic Statistics) and 401-2 (Intermediate Statistics);
400 (Analysis of Social Data, also known as Baby Stats, not required but advised for those without any statistics background)
403 (Field Methods)
One additional methods course, which may be taken in the first year or later. This may be Comparative-Historical Methods, Methods for Cultural Analysis, an advanced statistics course, Event History Analysis (Palloni), Logic of Social Inquiry, Evaluation Methods (Cook), or another methods course as approved by the department. If you want to see if a course will fulfill this requirement, submit the syllabus to the DGS, who will run it by the methods committee.
406-1 (Classical Sociological Theory)

570 (College Teaching and Research Preparation) This is a real course, with weekly assignments, and is graded (A, B, C). Students take this course in conjunction with teaching or co-teaching a discussion section for Introduction to Sociology. Attendance at the Introduction to Sociology lectures is a required part of this course. Students may take it with two other courses, or they may chose to take three courses plus 570; doing so is equivalent to taking three courses and TA-ing. In spring 2008, Erin Metz McDonnell will teach 570.

One, two, or three substantive electives. Because of the importance of substantive courses during the early years of graduate study, no independent studies (499s) may be taken during the first year without written permission from the DGS.

480-1 and 480-2 (non-credit Departmental Proseminar in Fall and Winter). The first quarter is to introduce faculty and their research. The second quarter will focus more on professional issues such as seeking fellowships and grants, getting articles published. Students may take the second quarter of the Proseminar during their second or third year. In 2007-2008 the Proseminar will be led by Nicole Van Cleve.

TYPICAL PROGRAM OF A SOCIOLOGY GRADUATE STUDENT

First Year (9 courses plus a non-credit proseminar):400-0 (not required but advised); 401-1; 401-2; 402; 403; 405; 406-1; 480-1; 480-2; 570 and substantive electives.

Second Year (9 courses): 406-2 or 406-3 or one other departmentally approved theory course; two 490s (second-year paper supervision); five substantive electives or workshops and/or 499s (Independent Study).

Third Year: Two or three 499s to write special field paper; 499s or workshops to prepare the thesis proposal and the thesis-related special field and substantive electives.

Fourth Year and After: Admission to Candidacy by end of fourth year; dissertation work.

SECOND-YEAR PAPERS

By the third quarter of the first year, each student will be consulting with professors and developing a topic for the second-year paper, which may qualify as a Master’s thesis. The second-year paper, an introduction to carrying out academic research in sociology, takes the form of an abstract and a research report of roughly 30 pages or so, the length of an article. It should apply sociological theory and methods to some kind of data. This project should demonstrate the student’s mastery of a substantive area, including familiarity with the relevant literature and with appropriate research methods. The final product should approach journal-article quality, and indeed it is common for these papers to reach publication.

Two professors read and evaluate each second-year paper. It is up to the student to develop the topic with someone on the faculty who agrees to be the primary advisor; the student also gets a second faculty member to serve as a reader. In most cases the student will have gotten an advisor and worked out their topic by the end of the first year.

Both the advisor and the reader must approve the second-year paper by the end of the Spring quarter. This means that students should turn in their finished papers by the beginning of May to allow for any changes that their faculty may require. Of course it is desirable that the student submit drafts to their advisor and reader throughout the year. It is also desirable that the student be far enough along to submit a version of the paper to the ASA in January. If the paper has not been completed and approved by the end of the Spring quarter, the student and his or her faculty advisor need to write a letter to the Director of Graduate Studies and the Graduate Program Assistant indicating what has created the delay and setting a firm due date in the early summer. The student and advisor must let the DGS and GPA know when the paper has been accepted. A detailed schedule will be passed out in the Second-Year Paper seminar (490) in the fall.

SPECIAL FIELDS

Upon completion of the Ph.D., a student should have expertise in at least two fields of sociology. This means the student should (1) be able to teach courses in these areas and (2) be conversant with the major issues in each. Students demonstrate mastery of one general subfield of sociology by writing Special Field Papers. The second, more specialized body of literature is shown in the successful completion of the doctoral dissertation.

Students and their advisors negotiate the scope of the Special Field Paper; the scope should be similar to a course offering at the graduate or advanced undergraduate level, rather than focus on a narrow subfield. Examples of what would be too narrow would be “jurisprudence” in the sociology of law field, “resource mobilization” in the social movements field, “new institutionalism” in the organizations field, or “popular music” in the sociology of culture field. Special Fields might be as broad as sections of the American Sociological Association.

In consultation with a faculty advisor and a second faculty reader, the student will identify a suitable subject area and prepare a reading list. From this, the student will (1) organize a course syllabus and (2) write a synthetic essay (roughly 30 pages) that reviews and criticizes some of the field’s core empirical and theoretical issues. The synthetic essay often resembles a paper in the Annual Review of Sociology. The same timing applies to Special Fields Papers as with Second-Year papers: Both the advisor and the reader must approve the Special Fields Paper and associated syllabus by the end of the Spring quarter. This means that students should turn in their finished papers by the beginning of May to allow for any changes that their faculty committee may require. Of course it is desirable that the student submit drafts to their advisor and reader throughout the year. Most students take one or two 499s as they work on these papers.

Completing the Special Fields Paper meets The Graduate School’s requirement for passing comprehensive exams. When the paper has been accepted, a form signed by both readers and the DGS (or Chair if the DGS is a reader) goes to The Graduate School and, if all other requirements have been met, the student advances to candidacy.

ADVISING

Every student in the Sociology Department has a faculty advisor. That advisor may change several times over the course of a student’s graduate career, but there will always be one professor who is the current advisor and is up-to-date on the student’s progress. Students may change advisors at any time if they find a professor more suited to their intellectual interests. Students should report such changes to Murielle Harris for the department records.

All entering students are assigned an initial faculty advisor. This person usually remains the advisor until the student has selected an advisor for the Second-year Paper. Then the Second-year Paper becomes the primary advisor until the student has an advisor for the Special Field paper, and that person becomes the advisor until the student has a Dissertation Chair. Thus the student might have as many as four advisors or as few as one. Regardless of who the “official” advisor is at any particular time, all faculty members are happy to give intellectual advice, and graduate students should seek this out. Students should meet with their advisors often, especially at the beginning of each quarter, to plan their courses and research and to discuss their progress.

Early during the Spring quarter of each year, the entire Sociology faculty meets to evaluate all graduate students. It is imperative that a student’s faculty advisor be completely up-to-date on the student’s progress, especially if there have been any circumstances that have resulted in Incompletes in courses or delays in meeting some requirement.

DISSERTATION PROPOSALS AND ADMISSION TO CANDIDACY

Students must write a dissertation proposal, in consultation with their Dissertation Chair, and defend the proposal before a dissertation committee consisting of at least three members, including the Chair. The Graduate School requires students to defend their dissertation proposals no later than by the end of their fourth year. Both the Graduate School and the Department strongly encourages them to do so sooner, ideally by the beginning of the fourth year. Doing so allows students to compete for internal and external fellowships in the fall.

A NOTE ON “GOOD STANDING”

While the Graduate School has requirements for students to be in good standing, part of their requirement is for the student to be in good standing in his or her own department.

To be in good standing in the Sociology Department, a student must do the following no later than by the end of the third year (some requirements must be done earlier):

complete all required courses with a grade of B or better.
complete six sociology elective courses with a grade of B or better.
complete all departmental writing requirements by the dates indicated.

Students who do not meet the first requirement (e.g. the student gets a B- in 406-1) will need to retake the class or do some equivalent work—possibly set up as a 499—to be determined by the faculty.

Students who do not meet the second requirement (e.g. the student gets a B- in a Sociology class that is not a departmental requirement) will be able to have the course count toward the 27 courses required by the Graduate School, but not toward a sociology elective.

Students who do not meet the third requirement (e.g. the student does not have the second-year paper approved by the end of the spring quarter of the second year) will need to petition the department with a firm date of completion.

Graduate study takes a great deal of energy, time, and commitment, so it sometimes happens that a student does not make a good fit with the demands of the program. When a student is out of good standing or seems to be struggling, the Director of Graduate Studies and/or the student’s faculty advisor will counsel him or her on the necessary steps to improve. The Sociology Department , following a vote of the faculty, can terminate students who do not keep up with the requirements and expectations of the Department