Ph.D. in Informatics - Computing, Culture, and Society Track

A student must successfully complete ninety (90) credit hours of graduate-level course work. The specific track requirements are listed below.

Required courses

All required courses provided by faculty in the Computing, Culture and Society track, including I609 and I709, are open to and welcome students from other tracks and programs.

Qualifying exam, dissertation proposal and thesis CCS Qualifying Examination

All students take the CCS qualifying examination after completing the core coursework requirements for the track. During the fall semester of the second (for those who entered with a masters degree) or third (for those who entered with a bachelors degree) year, each student works with the CCS faculty to assemble a qualifying examination committee consisting of three faculty, at least two of whom are from the CCS track. The exam will be largely shaped, administered, and graded by this committee.

The qualifying exam consists of a written examination and an oral examination.

The written component has three parts:

1. An analytic-synthetic essay [1] required of all students, written in response to a question determined by the CCS faculty and based on authors’ arguments found in the list of CCS Qualifying Examination Readings
2. [2] An analytic-synthetic essay addressing a question customized for the student according to their interests and based on a list of specialty readings within the CCS tradition, both of which are determined by the student and their three-person faculty examination committee, working in consultation with each other.
3. One of three options intended to establish competence in appropriate research methodology either:
   1. An analytic-synthetic review essay on how a particular concept, behavior, etc., is observed or measured using a variety of approaches.
   2. A methodological critique of a recent peer-reviewed journal article
   3. An original, proposed research technique, methodology, or plan designed to answer a specific research question.
4. The decision of which of these methodology components the student will address is also decided by the faculty examination committee and student working in consultation with each other.

The oral examination is given by the faculty examination committee and takes place after the written examination It is one to one and a half hours in length. It provides both the student and the examination committee with an opportunity to further discuss the content of the written examination.

The qualifying examination is given to all participating students at the end of the Fall or Spring semesters, with the precise exam schedule announced well in advance. Answers to questions 2 and 3 (for which work should have continued throughout the respective semester) are due on Monday when the exam period starts, and question 1 is made available at that time. Students have five days to complete question 1, with final answers due Friday of the qualifying exam week at 5:00 PM. Answers to all questions must be original and written independently. Faculty grade the exams over the next several days, prior to the oral examination. The oral examination commences according to scheduled appointments, generally on a single day. Students will be informed of their exam grade by the end of the week of the oral exam. [3]

The student’s faculty examination committee grades the qualifying examination, based on a combination of both the written and oral exams. Each part/question of the exam is assigned a grade of “pass,” or “fail.” Students must receive the grade of “pass” on all three parts of the exam in order to progress in the PhD program. Students who do not pass one or more parts of the exam may be required to revise and re-submit one or more answers; this must be done by the end of the summer (for Spring exams) or by the start of Spring Break (for Fall exams).

[1] Analytic-synthetic essays are built on careful readings of others’ claims (this is the analytic part) as well as the essay writer’s observations/claims about those claims (this is the synthetic part). Analytic-synthetic essays demonstrate mastery of existing domain knowledge by demonstrating understanding of individual scholars’ works as well as how a body of works relate to each other.

[2] This is a list developed by the faculty consisting of general CCS-related readings. It is an on-going endeavor, available to all students. The version available at the start of their second year of studies is the version on which students will be tested during their qualifying exam.

[3] For example, during the Spring 2018 term, classes ended on Friday, April 26 th. Question 1 of the qualifying exam was distributed to students at 9:00 AM on Monday, May 13 th. Students had until 5:00 PM on Friday, May 17 th to complete the exam. Each student then met with the faculty for their oral exam for one hour on Wednesday, May 22 nd, and received notification of their evaluations at that time.

Timeline

Typical minors

CCS students declare a wide range of approved minors in order to supplement their training. There is no typical minor, as there is no typical dissertation topic in this track.

Sample dissertation titles

Sample curriculum

The following is a sample three-year curriculum. Students should consult with their advisors in order to select courses that will best support their plans of research. Courses in bold meet the minimum CCS PhD requirements. Additional courses may be necessary to fulfill the student’s minor or other programmatic choices.