Specialized Course Work

Students must include in the plan of study a well-defined advanced concentration area. Successful completion of this requirement should enable the student to do applied research in a significant contemporary area in information technology.

The supervisory committee and the Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research of the School of IT & Engineering must approve a plan of study. These approvals must occur before a student completes the courses in the area of concentration. There is no guarantee that a course taken before this approval will be accepted.

Students must take 30 credit hours of graduate-level course work. A GPA of 3.5 is required in these credit hours. Students may waive up to 6 credit hours of course work by passing two of the qualifying examinations from any of the Ph.D. programs offered by the School of Information Technology & Engineering (i.e., 3 credit hours per qualifying examination).

The plan of study may include at most 3 credit hours of directed reading course work. At least 12 of the credit hours must be in courses numbered 700 or higher, and these 12 credit hours cannot include directed-reading, project, or thesis courses.

Courses that cannot be included in any plan of study are any INFS 500-level courses; IT 500 and 599; OR 540; STAT 510, 512, and 530; and SYST 500. The Associate Dean must approve exceptions to any of these rules in advance.