|
Courses, Teaching, Exams, Dissertation There
are four basic elements that together comprise our strategies for
developing the ability of our students to ask productive questions: 1. Courses.
All of our courses are conducted as small seminars in which all
students are expected to participate. This introduces students to basic
elements of scholarly exchange, the give-and-take that often takes
place at scholarly conferences and departmental colloquia, for example.
Coursework provides the foundation for the capacity to formulate
questions that can lead to original and insightful work in the future. 2. Teaching.
Our students begin teaching in the second year of the program, and
usually continue to do so until they finish. We believe that teaching
provides an indispensable set of experiences informing their future
scholarly work. 3. Exams.
Our version of the University-mandated "comprehensive examination"
prior to embarking on a dissertation explicitly requires students to
formulate questions--or "problems"--that will guide their more focused
work during this stage of the program. In addition, the capstone of
this experience, the oral written and oral examinations, provides
examples of their mentors formulating questions (see the document
attached to the section below, "Tools and Resources"). 4. Dissertation.
The dissertation is the culmination of each student's previous
experiences in our program. We ask that the dissertation prospectus
pose coherent and focused questions that their research will answer. As
with the comprehensive exams, we ask that students hold out the
possibility that their research will surprise them so that
investigating their questions will invevitably involve discovery.
|
