At <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">North Carolina Charlotte</st1:placename></st1:place> our Organizational Science doctoral program involves 13 core faculty from Management, I/O, Org Soc, and Org Comm. Given our genuinely interdisciplinary manner, we decided to take a somewhat different approach to this experience. I will embed our guidelines below. Hope they are helpful. Best, Steven
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steven G. Rogelberg, Ph.D.
Professor and Director, Organizational Science
<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">North Carolina Charlotte</st1:placename></st1:place>
Home page: http://www.orgscience.uncc.edu/sgrogelb/
Org Science page: http://www.orgscience.uncc.edu/
Organizational Science Qualifying Examination
Some Key Notes
First, the experience is named "Qualifying Examination", rather than "Comprehensive Examination".
This may appear minor on its surface, but this rhetorical change is more appropriate given the nature of the guidelines that follow. The word "comprehensive" denotes "complete", "full", "all-inclusive", "wide-ranging", "broad", "widespread", "far reaching", and "thorough". This is counter to our process which would serve as a mechanism to "Qualify" students to advance to the next natural marker of writing their respective dissertations.
Underpinning this notion is the idea that the concept of a comprehensive exam assumes a well-defined test specification that can be written; that is, that the domain of relevant knowledge can be clearly proscribed. And that we do not believe there is a high consensus on how the core knowledge of OS can be well defined. If we try to define it in an inclusive way, the domain would be too broad for students to grasp when they prepare for the exam within a short period of time.
Second, the qualifying process is an emergent, 'bottom-up' approach, with the student primarily shaping the experience, instead of the traditional one size fits all approach typical of many doctoral programs. Hence, we replace the broad Comprehensive Examination Committee charged with creating generically-broad questions with a more organic and emergent structure consisting of a smaller student- selected faculty member committee charged with customizing examination questions based upon their research and career interests. The qualifying experience should not be a distinct entity divorced from the dissertation experience. Instead, this experience, as all other aspects of the interdisciplinary graduate student experience, should be fluid and customized to fit within the scope of their career trajectory. Tailoring each examination to the research interests of each respective graduate student is more appropriate given the nature, spirit, and tightly structured timetable of our unique doctoral program.
Third, the qualifying process should serve as the point in which the triangle or trans-disciplinary "T" is inverted and the funnel metaphor is realized. Appropriately at the beginning of the students' graduate study experience there is little curriculum flexibility and the students are exposed and assimilated into the culture of an interdisciplinary doctoral-level program with a wide range of approaches, domains, methods, theories, concepts, and paradigms from a number of disciplinary (multi, inter, intra, and trans) perspectives. However, as students transition from doctoral students to doctoral candidates, they must assume greater ownership of their research program and begin to narrow their focus both in terms of their research and post-graduation placement to make them a more viable candidate and accelerate the dissertation process. The qualifying examination should serve as this milestone. This model assumes that it is appropriate and advantageous for the students to specialize at this point, and the qualifying examination accelerates this process and "jump starts" the dissertation process. In other words, the "T" model can be inverted and students should construct their unique dissertation projects based on a solid, interdisciplinary foundation. It is assumed the students already have a robust repertoire of interdisciplinary tools that they can effectively employ based on their multiple faculty-student research projects and coursework experience under the interdisciplinary auspice of Organizational Science.
Qualifying Examination Parameters
Given, the three important considerations outlined above, certain qualifying examination parameters exist to ensure consistency of experience (but not content) for all doctoral students, an operational standard of performance for the program, transparency within and between the process for both students and faculty of the Organizational Science Program, integrity of the doctoral process, and a means to modify and adjust the qualifying examination in the future.
Although each examination will vary based upon the individual research interest of each respective doctoral student, certain parameters should be considered in all cases when designing the qualifying examination to assess each student's breadth and depth in Organizational Science.
Content
The questions should tap into the dissertation content area from both theoretical and methodological perspectives. Ideally, this will become a starting point of the dissertation proposal.
First, each examination should have a concepts, theory, and/or content component. Many of the courses in the curriculum provide a basis for this requirement including but not limited to: Organizational Science Overview, Micro Issues in Organizational Science, Macro Issues in Organizational Science to name a few.
Second, each examination should have a research methods, design, and/or statistical component. Several courses in the curriculum provide a basis for this requirement, including but not limited to: Quantitative Research Methods, Qualitative Research Methods, Statistics, etc. The specific components that are included will be unique to each student; only the methodological/statistical content deemed relevant to a student's chosen specialty area should be included (e.g. if a specialty area predominantly utilizes qualitative methods, the student's exam would cover mainly qualitative methodologies).
Finally, each examination should reflect an area(s) of specialty within one or more of the core disciplines in Organizational Science: Organizational Sociology, I/O Psychology, Organizational Communication and/or Management. That is, as noted above, the content of the qualifying exam should be closely related to the student's dissertation topic. As such, an exam may cover literature within a single core discipline, or it may cover literature from multiple core areas; the coverage depends on the nature of the specialty topic.
Process
There will be three times each academic year for the Qualifying examination (Fall, Spring, Summer).
In consultation with the Qualifying examination committee chair, the student will select at least two other OS faculty committee members. However, students can select more than three committee members if they desire. Having other disciplines represented is an ideal situation, but because of the individualized nature of each examination, this is a difficult aspect to mandate. Further, the degree of cross- or trans-disciplinarism will vary across students; some students will choose a specialty area that is naturally more cross-cutting than others. In some cases, a student may select a specialty area that prepares them for a career within a particular discipline. Again, the assumption is that students have been prepared successfully in their course work and research experience to think and appreciate the value of interdisciplinary perspectives, but it is recognized that some students may choose to focus within a particular area.
The student should have developed a working reading list, approved by the chair and committee. The purpose of the reading list is to define the test domain for each student (i.e., it will define the scope and content of the exam). It is assumed that the student will work with the committee to develop a reading list that appropriately reflects the breadth and depth of relevant theories/concepts, methods, and specialized content areas given the student's specialty area.
As noted above, we believe the content of the Qualifying examination will be unique to each student. However, we also believe the nature of the experience should be consistent. In this respect, we recommend a testing format similar to that explained in the original document. The Qualifying examination would be a single exam consisting of 4-8 broad questions that ask the students to display the ability to work with and integrate multiple relevant concepts and methodologies (again, the content is defined by the reading list). Page limits on answers will be provided to offer direction in terms of answer breadth and depth. This also limits the time commitment necessary for committee members. Students will have a common testing experience. The examination will be scheduled one week each fall, spring, and summer. Testing should occur over a two day period within the assigned week, with the selected days of testing within that week left at the discretion of the student and committee. The total testing time for the entire in-house examination is a maximum of eight hours. Typically, students will be tested four hours per day over the two day time period.
The Qualifying examination will be graded on a pass/fail basis. Students who fail the first Qualifying examination need to retake the examination in one of the two following exam windows. The breadth of the retaken examination will be determined by the committee. It is expected that a student who fails the qualifying exam twice will be dropped from the program.