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Requirements

Requirements for the Ph.D. in Sociology

Our graduate program has both structure and openness. The Department has specific requirements. 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. Most petitions are handled at the departmental level; a few go to the Graduate School, but even those start with the Department.

For further detail information of The Graduate School requirements, students should read Doctor of Philosophy Degree Requirements.

• A Note on Good Standing
• Course Requirements
• Typical Program
• Second-year Paper
• Special Fields
• Advising
• Dissertation
• Graduate Student Handbook

A NOTE ON “GOOD STANDING”

Although the Graduate School has rules about what is required for students to be in good standing, part of their requirement is that the student is 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 by the end of the third year (some requirements must be done earlier):

1. Complete all specifically required courses with a grade of B or better.
2. Complete six sociology elective courses with a grade of B or better.
3. Complete all departmental writing requirements: second year paper, special field, and dissertation proposal by the required dates.
   

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: Independent Study—to be determined by the Director of Graduate Studies and professor.

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 9 courses required by the Graduate School, but not toward 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 exclude from the program students who do not keep up with the requirements and expectations of the Department.  Should the Department vote to exclude a student, that student can appeal the decision.  A written appeal should be submitted to the DGS, who will then take it to the faculty for further discussion and another vote.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

Two theory courses – 406-1 and one other theory course
Two statistics courses – 401-1 and 401-2
One field methods course – 403
One additional – elective methods 400 level-course
Two Teaching Seminar – 570-1, 507-2
One Second-Year Paper Seminar – 490
Two Non-credit Pro-seminar – 480-1 and 480-2
Six (6) sociology electives

Students without a statistics background are also strongly advised to take a 400 course.

Some of these requirements can be waived if the student has completed an equivalent course at another college. To get a course or requirement waived requires a petition, and the process begins with the Director of Graduate Studies (DGS).

TYPICAL PROGRAM OF A SOCIOLOGY GRADUATE STUDENT

COURSEWORK REQUIREMENTS COURSES

UNITS First Year: 9 courses plus Pro-Seminar

SOCIOL 400 Analysis of Social Data
Not required but advised for those without any statistics background: 1

SOCIOL 401-1,2 Statistical Analysis of Social Data: 2

SOCIOL 403 Field Methods or one elective methods course: 1

If you are not sure if a course will fulfill the requirement, submit the syllabus to the DGS. Note that not all methods courses are taught every year, so you’ll need to plan ahead. This additional methods course may be taken in the first, second, or third year.

SOCIOL 405 Research Methods: 1

SOCIOL 406-1 Classical Theory: 1
Or some other departmentally approved theory course (the Department requires at least two theory courses, 406-1 and one other).

SOCIOL 480-1, 2 I ntroduction to the Discipline (2 quarters): 0
This is a non-credit departmental course held in the fall and winter quarters. The first quarter is to introduce faculty and their research. The second quarter focuses on professional issues such as seeking fellowships and grants, getting articles published.

SOCIOL 570 Seminar on College Teaching: 1
This is a real course, with weekly assignments, but is ungraded (P/F). Students are required to 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 (2) other courses, or they may choose to take three (3) courses plus 570; doing so is essentially equivalent to taking three courses and TAing.

Elective: 2

Because of the importance of substantive courses during the early years of graduate study, no independent studies (499’s) should be taken during the first-year without permission from the DGS.

Second Year

One of those listed below, or other theory courses: 1

SOCIOL 406-2 Modern Theory in Sociological Analysis or
SOCIOL 406-3 Contemporary Theory in Sociological Analysis

One or two 490’s Second-Year Paper Seminar: 2
The second quarter of 490 is not required but strongly recommended. These are real courses, with frequent assignments, but are not graded (P/F).

Six substantive electives: 6
To meet the requirement for 6 sociology electives), workshops and/or 499’s Independent Studies.

Third Year

Substantive electives, as desired or if needed to meet the requirement for 6 sociology electives: 6

499s (2 or 3) to work on the Special Field requirement (paper and course syllabus): 3

499s or workshops to prepare the thesis proposal: 1

Fourth Year and After

Admission to Candidacy by end of fourth year; dissertation work.

Total required units: 28

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 an MA 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.

Note: most Second-Year Paper projects will necessitate a submission to the Institutional Review Board (IRB).

A minimum of two professors read and evaluate each second-year paper. It is up to the student to develop the topic with a professor who agrees to be the primary advisor; the student also gets a second professor to serve as a reader. In most cases the student will have gotten an advisor and worked out a 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 advisor may require.

It is best 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 (DGS) and the Graduate Program Assistant (GPA) 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 (1) should be conversant with the major issues in these areas and prepared to do research in them and (2) should be able to teach courses in these areas. Students demonstrate mastery of one general subfield of sociology by writing a special field paper. Mastery of 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. Generally these fields should be recognizable to other sociologists (sections of the American Sociological Association (ASA) are a good guide to recognized fields) and neither too broad (so impossible to cover) nor too narrow (so not qualifying one as knowing the general field). A special field might therefore be on the broad topic of an ASA section but with a special emphasis on some subpart of that field. Examples of what would be too narrow would be “jurisprudence” in the field of the sociology of law, “resource mobilization” in the social movements field, “new institutionalism” in the organizations field, or “popular music” in the sociology of culture field. Thinking about this from the perspective of a course, the scope should be similar to a survey course offering at the graduate or advanced undergraduate level.

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 for an advanced undergraduate course and (2) write a synthetic essay (roughly 30 pages) that reviews and criticizes some of the field’s core empirical and theoretical issues. The papers in the Annual Review of Sociology are a good model for the synthetic essay. The same timing applies to special field papers as with second-year papers — both the advisor and the reader must approve the special field 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 field 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 TGS 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 the Graduate Program Assistant for the departmental 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. The second-year paper becomes the primary advisor until the student chooses an advisor for the special field paper. The special field advisor serves as the main 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 requirements. The Director of Graduate Study and Graduate (DGS) Program Assistant will send email asking students for updates in preparation for the faculty meeting(s) to review students; after these faculty meetings, students will receive another letter informing them of the faculty evaluation of their progress and of any concerns.

DISSERTATION PROPOSALS, DISSERTATIONS, AND DISSERTATION DEFENSES

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 rules about the composition of dissertation committees were changed in 2010. The committee must still include at least 3 faculty members, but now only 2 of them must be members of the Northwestern Graduate Faculty). The Graduate School requires students to defend their dissertation proposals no later than by the end of their fourth year. Both TGS and the Department strongly encourage students to meet this requirement sooner if possible. Doing so allows students to compete for internal and external fellowships in the fall. Note also that almost all dissertation projects will necessitate a submission to the Institutional Review Board (IRB).

Once the proposal has been approved by the dissertation committee, the student is “ABD” (all but dissertation, not really an official status, but one often referenced by academics). During the writing stage, students should be in close contact with their chair and other committee members, updating them regularly on the progress of the dissertation, sending draft chapters, and consulting them about any changes in direction and about methodological, substantive, and ethical issues.

As the dissertation nears completion, the student should consult his or her chair about reconvening the dissertation committee for the final defense of the dissertation. The student will want to ask his or her chair how to assess when the dissertation is ready to defend, how much time to allow for faculty reading and response to the draft, how much time might be needed after the defense for revisions before the final dissertation can be submitted to The Graduate School (TGS), and so forth. Information about submission requirements is available on TGS’s website.

Please note that on the timing of degree completion, TGS’s official statement is that “Only rarely under extenuating circumstances will students be granted permission to continue beyond 9 years.” Those who are permitted to continue beyond nine years also face a stiff requirement to pay tuition.