RICHARDSON, Texas (July 19, 2004) – The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) will expand its curriculum this fall by adding four Ph.D. degree programs – one, in public affairs in the School of Social Sciences, and three, in communication sciences and disorders, in psychological sciences and in cognition and neuroscience in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. A Master of Science degree in psychological sciences also will be added.
Four of the new degree programs were approved last Thursday by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board; the fifth, the Ph.D. in communication sciences and disorders, was approved earlier.
Dr. James Murdoch, dean of UTD’s School of Social Sciences, said the doctoral program in public affairs was designed to prepare graduates to teach public affairs at the university level or to assume top administrative positions in public, quasi-public and non-profit organizations. He said the degree would be targeted at students who already have a Master of Public Affairs/Administration, a Master of Business Administration or some other graduate administrative degree. Students will take six hours per semester for two years.
“It will be interdisciplinary in nature, like our school, and it will have an applied problem-solving focus, also like the school,” Murdoch said, adding that a dissertation will be required, one that is based on each student’s “real-world” experiences with a particular organization, such as a city, state agency or school district.
“We have established dual goals for the program in that we want both scholarly practitioners and scholars with practical experience,” Murdoch said. “We envision graduates of the program being attractive as scholars of public affairs or as leaders of public, quasi-public and non-profit organizations.”
For more information on UTD’s public affairs program, please contact Dr. Doug Kiel, program director, at 972-883-4936 or dkiel@utdallas.edu.
Dr. Bert Moore, dean of UTD’s School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, which includes both the nationally acclaimed Callier Center for Communication Disorders and the Center for BrainHealth, said that his school’s four new degree offerings were an “extension of what we have been doing but with a more distinctive, and recognizable, degree profile.
“The Ph.D. in communication sciences and disorders, for example, will build upon our highly rated master’s program in that field and will draw on the unique resources of the Callier Center. Our cognition and neuroscience Ph.D. will take advantage of some of our school’s greatest strengths while being one of the first doctorates of its kind in the United States. And our research-focused program in psychological sciences will draw upon our extensive experience in human development and learning and biopsychology,” Moore said. “Importantly, we already have excellent faculty in all three areas.”
UTD currently has more than 100 degree programs.
About UTD
The University of Texas at Dallas, located at the convergence of Richardson, Plano and Dallas in the heart of the complex of major multinational technology corporations known as the Telecom Corridor, enrolls more than 13,700 students. The school’s freshman class traditionally stands at the forefront of Texas state universities in terms of average SAT scores. The university offers a broad assortment of bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs. For additional information about UTD, please visit the university’s web site at www.utdallas.edu.