Our Ph.D. students must complete an approved program of 54 credit hours beyond the master’s level, including a minimum of 12 hours of dissertation preparation with a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or above.

Our program includes 15 hours of core courses and six hours of research methods courses.

Our students choose 12 hours of electives in the School of Information Science from their research area, with a goal of producing work designed for scholarly publication.

They also choose a cognate of nine hours from another area, such as mass communication, sociology, computer science, English, geography, history, marketing, political science, psychology or public administration.

Dissertation preparation accounts for the final 12 hours.

Our students are required to complete at least 18 of their hours on campus over three consecutive major semesters and take comprehensive written and oral examinations before graduating.