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Doctoral programs traditionally have “residency”
requirements. These requirements are intended
to ensure students spend a period of concentrated, uninterrupted
work on their academic
preparation which leads to activities and experiences which
are more or less unique to doctoral
study. Residency is to be a period marked by intense attention
to course work, projects, research,
and active participation in academic life. Residency is a
time of socialization into the values and
norms of professional life. It provides an opportunity for
you, the doctoral student, to acquire
knowledge and to practice needed skills within a protected
environment of personal supervision
and support. Residency is essential to prepare students for
full professional participation; it
supports the development of increasing levels of professional
independence and responsibility; it
provides a means to complete the necessary transition from
student to colleague. Doctoral
students in the Department of Educational Psychology may subsequently
select from a varied
array of career paths including applied or theoretical work;
a mix of attention to research,
teaching, development, administration, and service; affiliation,
with any number of disparate
professional groups; and employment in such diverse settings
as academia, government, business
and industry, military, and public service. Regardless of
your career path, a common core of all
doctoral education is intellectual and professional preparation
within the academic setting. Our
residency requirement is designed to promote and ensure quality
and intensity of that academic
preparation. Its purpose is to foster academic and professional
growth, not to insure minimum
competency in a skill area.
The purpose of the doctoral residency is therefore to facilitate
such outcomes as the following:
• an extended concentration in a few areas of professional
and intellectual development
• an increased variety of professional and intellectual
activities
• the expansion of professional involvement generally
• the development, extension, and use of professional
resources; including personal communication networks
To accomplish these outcomes requires:
• considerable out-of-class interaction with faculty,
especially on substantive issues
• considerable out-of-class interaction with fellow
students on substantive issues
• considerable involvement in professional activities
of various kinds, such as giving presentations, attending
professional conferences, helping to organize departmental
events (brown bags, consortia, orientation programs) and so
forth
• considerable familiarity with what professional resources
exist and knowledge of how to access and use them
It is difficult to accomplish these outcomes while physically
distant from faculty, fellow students,
and resources from the academic program - hence the notion
that it is necessary to be “in
residence” in order to accomplish these outcomes.
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