PhD Roadmap for Success
The “Roadmap for Success” for a PhD in Engineering Education is an integrated professional development plan that encourages you to design your own pathway, self-reflect on your progress, and be a constructive and courteous community member. Success involves:
- a strong sense of adventure
- curiosity and an inquiring mind
- tolerance of uncertainty and ambiguity
- resourcefulness and persistence
- being more comfortable with questions than answers
- taking responsibility
- holding yourself and others accountable
- supporting a virtual cycle linking research and practice
- in short: a pioneering disposition
The program has the following critical milestones:
- A Portfolio that supports professional development (formative assessment and self-reflection) and provides evidence of your capacity regarding 10 competencies.
- A Plan of Study (POS) that includes the specific courses you are expected to complete and other requirements of the degree being sought.
- A Readiness Assessment exam (RA) that indicates your ability to progress successfully in the PhD program by synthesizing ideas, reviewing literature, and critically evaluating topics related to your research.
- A Mentored Teaching Practicum as part of your portfolio to promote professional development and reflective practice that links research with teaching.
- A Preliminary Exam that indicates your preparedness to conceive and undertake a suitable research topic. The content of this exam is your dissertation proposal. This is also the point at which you become a Doctoral Candidate.
- A Final (Thesis) Exam, in which you write and defend thesis research. This exam indicates if your thesis research warrants a PhD in terms of originality and merits publication in the scholarly literature.
PhD Degree Requirements
Obtaining a Purdue Master's While Completing a PhD in Engineering Education
You may use a maximum of 9 credits from your master's program toward meeting the PhD specialization requirement. The remaining 21 credits of a 30-credit program may be used as Master's Transfer Courses.