PhD Degree

This page contains an overview description of the PhD in English program at OSU, information about admission to the program. Course requirement information is available on the PhD Requirements page.

Overview

The English Department grants one doctoral degree, the PhD in English. However, PhD students can choose a specialization in Rhetoric and Professional Writing. This specialization prepares students for teaching and research positions at academic institutions, or for work in professional settings as technical communication consultants, analysts, and researchers. Our cross-disciplinary degree program incorporates coursework and methodologies from technical communication, rhetoric and composition, and linguistics to prepare PhD candidates for research projects on variety of topics in rhetoric and professional writing. This includes textual studies in rhetoric, the rhetoric of science, all areas of technical communication, composition theory and pedagogy, and rhetorical and discourse analysis of writing in professional contexts.

The PhD degree consists of 60 credit hours beyond the Master's degree. Fifteen to twenty of these hours are devoted to the dissertation. In addition to these hours, students must:

• Take a First-Year PhD exam in their second semester
• Demonstrate reading knowledge of two foreign languages or mastery of one language
• Pass the PhD qualifying examination in two areas
• Pass an oral defense of the dissertation

Students may also choose an interdisciplinary emphasis in a variety of areas: technical writing, composition and rhetoric, linguistics, teaching English as a second language, and all periods of British and American literature, creative writing, literary theory and criticism, and screen studies. In consultation with their Advisory Committees, students devise an individualized curriculum, known as a plan of study, that reflects their own intellectual interests and career goals.

Admission

Admission to the PhD program in English requires a Master's degree from an accredited institution. Students with baccalaureate degrees who wish to pursue a PhD must submit evidence of an MA degree, or be admitted first to the MA program. Other qualifications appear below. Applicants should be mindful that meeting the minimum standards for admission does not guarantee admission.

Students are admitted in particular areas of specialization (composition and rhetoric, creative writing, film, literature, TESL, linguistics, rhetoric and professional writing). If a student wishes to move from one area of specialization which has different program requirements from the one into which he or she was admitted (such as, for example, from literature into creative writing or from creative writing into composition and rhetoric); or, if a student wishes to move from one degree program into another degree program, the student must submit an application to and receive approval for that change from the Admissions Committee. The application must include a new statement of purpose and a new writing sample, which will be considered along with the rest of the student’s graduate file. Since this application will be an internal English Department matter, students will not pay an application fee. If the Admissions Committee does not grant the request, the student will have the option of continuing in the program or area of specialization into which he or she was admitted.

Provisional Admission. PhD students are admitted provisionally and must take the First-Year PhD Exam during the second semester following their initial enrollment. Students who do not take the First-Year PhD Exam during the second semester following their initial enrollment become ineligible for a doctoral degree from the OSU English Department.

Applicants with an English MA from OSU. Students who have either a general MA in English or an MA in English with an option in TESL from OSU and who wish to pursue a PhD in English at OSU must request that the English Graduate Office submit an admissions dossier to the Admissions Committee. The dossier will include copies of the MA Qualifying Exam or the MA/TESL exam (the questions, student responses, and readers’ reports), and all end-of-semester evaluations by faculty who have taught the applicants in graduate courses. If the Admissions Committee decides to admit such students to the PhD program, they are admitted fully and do not have to take the First-Year PhD Exam. However, OSU students who complete the MA degree with an option in Technical Writing and who wish to pursue the PhD in English at OSU must, for admission purposes, follow the procedures for students with MA degrees from other institutions. Admission to the MA program at OSU does not guarantee subsequent admission to the PhD program.