Doctoral Program Degree Requirements
Minimum Graduate School doctoral degree requirements:
• Students must complete, including the dissertation, at least 90 credits of graduate work beyond the bachelor’s degree, at least 40 of which, excluding dissertation credits, must be in the major. A minimum of 48 of the required 90 credits must be completed at Ball State University.
• For all doctoral programs, except the doctor of audiology (AuD), a minimum of 10 credits are required for the dissertation. A maximum of 24 dissertation credits may be counted toward a student’s program of study.
• For all doctoral programs, except the doctor of audiology (AuD), students must complete a rigorous research component. Students will be expected to demonstrate competency with research tools applicable to their major areas. Such tools include additional languages, statistical methods, computer science, and research techniques. The required research tools will be determined by the student’s doctoral committee and included on the student’s program of study.
Departmental doctoral degree requirements may include, but are not limited to, the following:
• Cognates—Candidates may be required to have one or more cognate fields, each of which may consist of either 15 credits or 24 credits. For the 15-credit cognate, 9 credits must be taken at Ball State University; 12 credits of the 24-credit cognate must be taken at Ball State University. Programs will determine the format of cognates that are applicable for their course of study and the courses that will be taken. The candidate, the program director, and the student’s doctoral advisor will determine how the cognate appears on the candidate’s program plan. In cases where programs want cognates to appear on the students’ transcripts as a separate credential, the cognate curriculum must be approved through the normal curriculum process and appear in the Graduate Catalog.
• Internship—Candidates in some doctoral programs may be required to take a full-time internship at an approved site.
• Additional Language—If an additional language is required, the selection is made by the student and the committee and must be approved by the director of the student’s doctoral program. Additional languages typically contain a significant body of available materials in the student’s field of research or are essential to the student’s career objective or to a field of study in which the student will participate as part of the doctoral program. For international students, non-native languages other than English will be accepted at Ball State University if they meet these criteria. See “Policies Related to Doctoral Degree Completion” (p. 30) for specific guidelines concerning additional languages.
Candidates must meet any additional program requirements established by the academic unit responsible for each doctoral degree.
Doctoral Committee
The student’s committee is appointed after the student has been admitted to study for the doctoral degree—usually during the first year of doctoral work. Until the committee has been appointed, the departmental program director will serve as the student’s program advisor.
Upon the recommendation of the departmental program director, the dean of the Graduate School will appoint the student’s committee and the at-large member. The committee will consist of either four or five voting members (approved for full graduate faculty status), depending on the student’s program of study. All committees will consist of two members from the student’s major area and an at-large member from a field or department not already represented on the committee. The rest of the committee will be structured as follows:
• Program without Cognate(s)—a fourth voting member will be a representative appropriate to the individual student’s program of study.
• Program with Cognate(s)—a voting member will be appointed for each cognate on the individual student’s program of study.
The committee chairperson will represent the student’s primary area of study and must meet the criteria for Dissertation Chairperson Endorsement in the department of the student’s major.
Please see specific degree program requirements for detailed policies concerning the appointment of doctoral committees.
In consultation with the student, the committee will determine the student’s plan of study and guide the student’s dissertation (at the department’s discretion, separate committees may be appointed for advising/comprehensive examinations and the dissertation stage). The plan of study will be filed in the departmental office of the student’s major area and the Graduate School as soon as possible after the committee has formed. Students who fail to do this in a timely fashion may have a registration hold at the recommendation of their departments.
The committee, in cooperation with the Graduate School, will determine whether the student is qualified to continue study during any of the three stages leading to the doctoral degree.