All doctoral students are required to pass a qualifying examination prior to writing and defending their dissertation proposal, and formal admission to candidacy for the Ph.D. degree.
Process:
1. The student must have completed all required coursework in the semester previous to the one in which they begin the exam. Exceptions may be granted if there is only one course remaining and it is not a STEM Ed core course.
2. Under advisement of their faculty mentor/chair, the the student decides on one of 3 formats for their QE:
a)
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Small-scale empirical research study
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{using data the student collects or data to which they have access from a prior project, faculty mentor, national data, etc.
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} written in the general format of an article for an academic research journal;
b) Conceptual/theoretical paper written in the format of an article for an academic research journal;
c) Either a) or b) above, written in the format of a piece for a practitioner journal – the intended audience is educational practitioners.
3. The student (with approval from the chair and the other 2 committee members) decides on the semester to start the exam and the committee and student must agree on this no later than the end of the second week of the semester (Note: the committee is comprised of a total of 3 STEM Ed GSC members, but at least one STEM Ed program area faculty must be on the committee).
Timeline:
1. The student has 2 consecutive semesters to complete the exam (either Fall/Spring, Spring/Summer, or Summer/Fall)
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