RHB Doc Program – Curriculum Committee Work Summary – Spring 2014

1. RHB Doc Program – Curriculum Committee Work Summary – Spring 2014 Richie Andreatta Tim Butterfield Dana Howell Patrick Kitzman Jane Kleinert Esther Dupont-Versteegden

2. Committee Charge • Evaluate current curriculum to determine if it is meeting the needs of the current students, faculty and the profession at large and to determine if there are steps that could be taken to provide flexibility for students entering the program. • Flexibility should be considered in light of credit hours, transfer credits, and prior professional/academic experiences. • Evaluate if areas within curriculum may need to be added, revised, or potentially removed.

3. Committee Focus Question & Goals • Do we need a complete overhaul of the curriculum or can goals be accomplished with adjustments and tweaking? • Can we be more efficient at how we prepare our students? • Are we covering all the content as described in our mission statement? • Can we be more nimble and flexible with program requirements? • Do we need all the courses and hrs currently required? • Grad school minimally requires 36 hrsto sit for quals, then 2 hr/sem for dissertation, with a min. of 40 hrs to graduate. • Our students currently have up to or over 60 credits.

4. Core Principles • A student’s committee will need to take greater control and responsibility over the construction and guidance of a student’s program of study. • Programs of study should be more flexible and less driven by specific centrally-defined requirements of the curriculum as it currently exists. • Any changes that are recommended must adhere to our core value of interdisciplinary research and study.

5. Recommendations • Core courses (701, 714, & 720) should be retained. • Modifications to make core more dynamic and fluid to meet the needs of current and future cohorts of students. • Suggest that instructional faculty of Core courses and Prosems periodically evaluate and change course topics and assignments to meet the specific needs of students as their demographics change • Example scenario: As greater numbers of basic science and bench science students enroll in the program, RHB 714 could be modified to include projects other than critical appraisals or clinically-oriented questions. • Alternative projects could be developed that would be better suited to students more interested in experimental research (i.e., comprehensive review).

6. Recommendations • Recommend changing the Research Methods program requirement from a 10 credit hour minimum to a range of credit hours to better accommodate a student’s needs and past experiences (i.e., 6-9 hrs) • Example: Some students may enter with extensive stats experience from Masters programs and thus would not need as many hours in statistics at the doctoral level for their program of study. • Recommend changing the Research Apprenticeship Experiences program requirement from a 9 hr. minimum to a range (i.e., 6-9 hrs). • Again, this adjustment acknowledges that some students may be bringing with them extensive research experience.

7. Recommendations • Recommend that RHB 770 – Research Seminar (Kitzman/Shordike section) become a required course for 1 or 2 credit hours and that the course be expanded to a full weekly schedule rather than the biweekly schedule in current use. • Our Intent is to create a touchstone experience where all RHB Doc students and faculty across the College interact on a weekly basis for one or both academic semesters • Research Seminar would become a comprehensive presentation forum for all students AND faculty to share their work and foster discussion and interaction. • Recommend faculty discussion on the possibility of collapsing the Research Office’s Grantsmanship meetings into the RHB 770 framework to give students a real-world perspective of the conversations and issues related to grant creation and development.

8. Recommendations • Recommend converting all prosems (except the Research Seminar) in to pseudo-electives. • Students would be required to take a minimum number of prosem hours (specific # of hrs required to be decided by faculty), with students picking prosems that are most relevant to their program needs (with committee approval and guidance). • Example: Given our current framework, students would take 2 out of the 3 prosems offered now. This would allow for a modest amount of flexibility for this program requirement. • Recommend modifying and/or combining prosems to reduce redundancy of content. This recommendation is going to require an open faculty discussion. • Example: The “Surviving & Thriving” prosem could be modified to include other career options beyond academia, such an private industry, federal government, international opportunities, post-docs. Every two years the S&T prosem could be organized as a forum for guest speakers from different career areas of science, to ensure that each cohort has the opportunity to experience forum.

9. Recommendations • Recommend eliminating the arbitrary designation of “Discipline specific” versus “Cognate” course. • All courses would be called “Discipline Specific”. Essentially removing a label…No change in total number of hours. • Simplifies advising and acknowledges that all courses are directly related to degree content. • Recommend continuation and expand use of “certificate” programs. • CCTS; College Teaching & Learning; DD Certificate; Autism Certificate • Will need to determine if certificate hours can be dually counted toward degree.

10. Recommendations • Recommend major change to conceptualization of committee role and its work • Committee recognizes that this recommendation will take time to evolve and require open and frank discussion from faculty. • Guidelines and a concrete set of outcomes and competencies will need to be developed for committees to ensure that basic and core RHB Doc program competencies are achieved for every student regardless of committee membership. • Examples: • Student committees will be responsible for more direct guidance of a student, with less reliance on prescriptive programmatic requirements. • Student committees would be responsible for determining which prosems a student would take. • Committees would be responsible for determining the number and content of transfer hours (up to 18) that are accepted toward current degree requirements.