REPORT OF THE DOCTORAL STUDIES COMMITTEE

GSLIS-UT Austin

May 2, 2002

Lori Eichelberger, PhD student

Ron Houston, PhD student

Belinda Boon, PhD student

Barbara Immroth, faculty member

Ron Wyllys, faculty member

Glynn Harmon, faculty member

Don Davis, faculty member

Philip Doty, faculty member and chair

INTRODUCTION

In addition to its regular duties of reviewing candidates for admission and reviewing current doctoral students’ work, the Doctoral Studies Committee (DSC) was charged with a general consideration of all facets of the GSLIS PhD program. While we did not review every conceivable topic over the course of the past months, we tried to consider and address those most pressing concerns as identified particularly in:

  • Concerns of faculty members, current and past PhD students, and other GSLIS constituencies
  • Discussions with UT-Austin administrators
  • The 2001 Weech and Schallert report on the PhD program.

Among our chief aims were:

  • Making the doctoral program more productive along all metrics, especially addressing the research culture of the program and the School as a whole
  • Making the doctoral program more successful along all metrics
  • Increasing the depth and frequency of interaction among doctoral students
  • Increasing the depth and frequency of interaction among doctoral students and faculty members.

At the end of these recommendations is an addendum (at p. 8) resulting from a discussion between Dean Dillon and the chair of the DSC on April 30, 2002.

ADMISSION

Some admission criteria

We suggest the following changes to the GSLIS Web site’s language about admission to GSLIS for doctoral study.

The second paragraph of the current version reads:

To be admitted to the doctoral degree program, an applicant ordinarily must have either a master's degree from a school of library and information science accredited by the American Library Association, a master's degree in a related field, or an equivalent degree from an institution outside the United States. Often, applicants have had a substantial period of appropriate work experience after completion of the master's degree.

We recommend the following alternative:

To be admitted to the doctoral degree program, an applicant ordinarily must have a master’s degree from any field that demonstrates potential for making significant contributions in the broad field of information studies. Outstanding applicants without graduate degrees may be considered for admission.

One member of the committee disagrees with this change, but the majority of the committee supports it. Even with the older language, the faculty has always reserved the right to admit outstanding applicants without graduate degrees to the doctoral program.

Admission logistics

As adopted this year with regard to admitting doctoral students, there will be three tiers of review:

  1. All faculty members of the doctoral studies committee will review all complete folders starting on the final day for application and determine if applicants should be considered for further review; a simple majority of these faculty members will suffice. The unsuccessful applicants will immediately receive denial letters, while the applicants who pass through this first round will proceed to the second tier of review.
  1. All members of the full-time faculty will review the remaining folders to determine if they are willing to serve as members of an applicant’s initial committee. If an applicant cannot garner a minimum of three faculty members to make such a commitment, then that applicant will be denied admission. The applicants who pass through this second round will proceed to the third.
  1. All faculty members of the doctoral studies committee will make a formal determination to admit or not to admit the remaining applicants. As with the first review, a simple majority will be sufficient for a student to be admitted.

The chair of the doctoral studies committee will then notify the successful applicants in writing of their admission, the identities of their initial three-member committee, and the date for the doctoral orientation (see below).

Admission dates

The committee supports continuing to admit doctoral students three times a year (fall, spring, summer).

Admission deadlines

Given the three rounds of review and the early dates for submission of students’ materials for financial aid, we will need to move our fall deadline from February 1 to a slightly earlier date. The committee did not discuss the specifics of that move.

NAME OF THE DOCTORAL DEGREE

After considerable discussion of the question, the committee reached a strong consensus that the name of the degree is not all that significant. We should consistently say that we offer a PhD with various emphases dependent upon each individual student’s previous experience and education as well as the student’s professional goals. Further, we should provide illustrative past dissertation topics, titles, and abstracts, as well as links to the doctoral student information to be made available on the Web.

ANNUAL REVIEW OF DOCTORAL STUDENTS

These reviews shall apply to all new applicants and to all current doctoral students who have not yet presented a proposal.

Rationale and dates

These reviews, as initially described below, will be held for all doctoral students from February 1 to March 1 every year, beginning in 2003. From the student’s point of view, the major goals of the review are to:

  1. Allow the student to report to the faculty what s/he has accomplished over the previous year.
  2. Indicate the student’s goals for the coming year.
  3. Indicate the student’s intentions for meeting the various doctoral deadlines, e.g., presenting a program of work, completing coursework, taking comps, presenting a dissertation proposal, and so on.
  4. Allow the student to establish and maintain relationships with as many of the faculty members as possible.

From the faculty’s point of view, among the major goals of the annual review of doctoral students are to:

  1. Ensure students’ steady progress through the program.
  2. Ensure the achievement of excellence by all GSLIS PhD students and to counsel students about improving their performance.
  3. Allow students the ability to demonstrate their breadth of vision of the field and their evolving professional personae within it.
  4. Ensure that all students have an opportunity to participate with as many faculty members as possible in doing research and teaching as well as to interact with all members of the faculty.
  5. Focus on the student’s research and publication record and to offer opportunities for enhancing it.

What the student must produce

To help accomplish these goals, each student will write a self-assessment of 3-4 pages for each annual review discussing the major facets of the student’s work. The student will also attach a current version of his/her curriculum vitae to the self-assessment.

Logistics

The annual reviews will ordinarily be face-to-face meetings, last about 60 minutes, and include, at a minimum, the student’s three-member committee. As the reader will recall, all PhD admittees will have a three-member committee from the beginning of their study, and all current PhD students who have not yet presented a proposal will also have such committees.

Other members of the GSLIS faculty that the student has worked with since the previous review, either in class, in research, or in teaching, are to be invited as are all other members of the faculty.

The faculty members will read the student’s self-assessment, review the student’s CV, and discuss the student’s strengths and weaknesses in order to offer an evaluation of the previous year’s work and specific suggestions for improvement and direction. The PhD student’s advisor will notify the student of the outcome of the review in writing.

A student who does not participate in the review cannot proceed in the program. Students who are counseled that their performance is inadequate may be dropped from the program.

COMPREHENSIVE EXAMS

The committee believes that comprehensive exams are still a good idea, especially as we increase our efforts to attract students from a wide variety of disciplines. Further, we believe that having outside members contribute questions is still a very good approach. The committee expressed strong support for continuing both the written and oral parts of the comprehensive doctoral exams.

“Comps GPA”

The committee unanimously supports the elimination of the current method for determining whether a doctoral student can continue in the program after the comps. We recommend:

  • That the algorithmic approach to the comps, including the comps GPA, be dropped.
  • That, in its place, we demand simply that PhD students must earn a minimum of a pass (≥ B) on each comps questions.
  • That the current method of joining the seminar GPA to the comps be eliminated.
  • That the oral part of the exam continue to be in camera with only the student and the student’s comps committee in attendance.

Pending questions

The committee believes that the GSC faces a number of questions that must be resolved:

  1. What are the goals of the comprehensive exams? They should be explicitly identified and publicized.
  1. If the doctoral program still includes seminars in whatever form:
  • What should the relationship between the seminars and comps be?
  • How can we use the seminars as a sort of practice for the comps, without unnecessarily limiting the comps to review of the seminar topics?

3.Under what logistical conditions shall the comps be administered?

  • Instead of the current two-day format, the committee recommends a two week period for responding to the comps. A particular benefit of this approach is that the comps could then be written to serve as synthesizing catalysts for students’ dissertation proposal lit reviews, statements and justifications of the evolving dissertation problem, a stand-alone publication, and so on.
  • Thus, we also recommend that the comps be open-book rather than closed-book format.
  • The committee recommends that the current approach to scheduling the orals within a week or two of the writtens be continued.

4.The overarching question that remains is whether the comps should still be offered in a centralized fashion, i.e., with all students answering the same questions from GSLIS faculty members and during the same time period. An alternative model is one that GSLIS has used in the past wherein the student’s committee would write and evaluate the questions, and then notify the GSC of the outcome.

DOCTORAL RESEARCH APPRENTICESHIPS (DRA’S) AND DOCTORAL TEACHING APPRENTICESHIPS (DTA’S)

The committee strongly urges the GSC to adopt this approach, especially as the current seminar approach evolves. See the attached documents (at pp. 9 and 10) for more about the rationale, logistics, and other characteristics of the research and teaching apprenticeships.

If the GSC adopts the apprenticeship approach, we recommend that it be in place for doctoral students beginning in fall 2003, and current doctoral students will be encouraged to participate in both forms of apprenticeship. We will want to consider carefully about how these apprenticeships will figure into new and current doctoral students’ annual reviews.

DOCTORAL SEMINARS AND OTHER COURSEWORK

The committee revisited the original rationale behind the doctoral seminars, and this review informed our recommendations for the seminars. After a spirited and very fruitful discussion which took the bulk of one full meeting and in which all of us participated, we reached a strong consensus:

  1. We should reduce the schedule for required doctoral coursework to one calendar year, with full-time students being encouraged to take 12 credits in each of their first three semesters, including summers, no matter when they start.
  • The possibility of one year for completing coursework will likely increase the School’s ability to attract strong candidates who would otherwise eschew doctoral study or would go somewhere else.
  • This new configuration would also reduce the amount of faculty time required to teach the seminars while making it easier for more members of the faculty to teach in the doctoral program.
  1. The number of doctoral seminars would be reduced to three, with these titles and to be taught in fall, spring, and summer in each academic year, in an order to be determined (see below):
  • Research Methods and Theory in Information Studies; with emphasis on quantitative and qualitative empirical methods and significant theory analysis and development.
  • Research Problems in Understanding Information Users; to be paired with a Friday evening/Saturday morning and afternoon retreat on disciplinary developments in Information Studies.
  • Research Problems in Organizing and Managing Information; would also contain significant elements of management theory and management of information services.

The committee strongly urges the GSC, should it adopt this three-seminar approach, to have the methods and theory seminar taught in the fall, when the majority of new doctoral students begin their study.

Writing seminar

A major question remaining, about which the committee was unable to reach a clear consensus, involves a writing seminar:

  • Should there be a clear demonstration of a minimum competency in writing before PhD students can begin their seminar study, in whatever format the doctoral seminars assume?
  • While some of our doctoral students have expressed very positive evaluations of the Graduate School writing seminars, others have expressed an opposing view.
  • Thus, the GSC must reconsider offering a writing seminar or other, similar venue for our PhD students.

RECRUITMENT

The committee strongly agrees that we need to invest significantly more effort in recruiting PhD students, with a special emphasis on:

  1. Major metropolitan areas in Texas, especially Austin
  1. The nation as a whole
  1. Graduate programs here at UT-Austin.

Among the alternatives discussed in the context of financial support were:

  1. Serious pursuit of half-time research/consulting appointments in governmental and private organizations (both for-profit and not-for-profit) for PhD students.
  1. Consideration of full support of all admitted PhD students for one year, with possible renewal for the second.

This last alternative makes special sense if we reduce the time required for doctoral coursework, or at least for completing the doctoral seminars, to one calendar year.

ORIENTATION AND SOCIALIZATION

PhD students need a dedicated, significant orientation to the School, the discipline, and the University. Similarly, the DSC feels that, while a formal orientation session is necessary, it would not be sufficient to satisfy the full range of needs we identified.

Thus, we make the following suggestions.

Mentoring

Linking each PhD applicant admitted with a current doctoral student mentor even before starting in the program. We could make the interaction as open-ended or as goal-directed as the students and faculty consider useful.

Orientation

An explicit doctoral orientation each semester in which doctoral students start the program, to cover everything from registration to building a program toward a dissertation to housing to which courses to take and which professional organizations to join. This orientation would feature administrative officers of the School, the doctoral program coordinator, faculty members, and senior PhD students.

A secondary orientation session focused on “what you can do with the degree” and “how to cope with a full work and family schedule and doctoral study.”

This secondary orientation session should include recent doctoral graduates. It might also take the form of inviting PhD alumni for a seminar and/or weekend, perhaps in conjunction with existing lectureships.

Some social opportunities

An informal reception, probably a pot luck, with all faculty members, all current PhD students, and all new PhD students, with significant others and children invited as well; to be held each semester.

Informal coffee klatches and/or other social event to be held every month at, e.g., CC’s Coffee House, the Dog & Duck, and so on. One month it would include only PhD students, while faculty members would be strongly encouraged to attend the next.

The Dean and the faculty offering up to $50.00 or so to get the ball rolling for these informal get-togethers – having someone buy always increases the fun!

ADDENDUM FROM 4/30/2002 CONVERSATION WITH DEAN DILLON

As the doctoral studies committee mentioned in its own deliberations, the Dean suggested that we consider admitting students without graduate degrees to the doctoral program conditionally, in an informal way. Andrew’s suggestion involves having such students take Master’s-level courses for their first 12 months in the program, with their performance to be reviewed by the doctoral committee to determine if they should proceed to the “regular” doctoral program. Such students can also wash out and be awarded a terminal Master’s degree provided they have fulfilled the appropriate course and other requirements for a Master’s degree.