DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEGREE REQUIREMENTS

The doctoral program in Intercultural and Rhetorical Communication in the Department of Communication and Culture requires the completion of 60 credit hours above the Master’s degree (excluding prerequisites). It has the five components.

• Component 1: Doctoral Core Curriculum (15 Credits)
• Component 2: Continent Cluster Courses (21 Credits)
• Component 3: Cognate Courses: (6 Credits)
• Component 4: Methodology Courses (6 credits)
• Component 5: Dissertation Credits (12 Credits)

Following is a list of the specifics of each Component:

COMPONENT 1:
Doctoral Core Curriculum (15 credit hours):
Uniform Curriculum for All First Year Ph.D. Students

COMC 700 Pro-seminar in Communication Theory
COMC 701 Quantitative Research Methods
COMC 702 Qualitative Research Methods
COMC 705 African American Issues in Communication
COMC 710 Seminar in Communication Theory

COMPONENT 2:
Individualized Content Cluster Courses (21 credit hours), which include

(A) Departmental offerings,

(B) Non-departmental offerings in MCMS as well as offerings available through others departments at Howard University, and

(C) Consortium courses, for designing the individualized Doctoral Program of Study.

Each set of offerings from A-C is presented below:

A. Departmental (COMC) Offerings

COMC 713 Seminar in Rhetorical Criticism
COMC 715 Seminar in Nonverbal Communication
COMC 718 Seminar in Health Communication
COMC 719 Qualitative-Interpretive Analysis
COMC 720 Seminar in Diversity Issues in Organizational Communication
COMC 723 Seminar in Intercultural Communication
COMC 726 Issues in Intercultural Theory & Research
COMC 730 Critical Discourse Analysis
COMC 733 Issues in Afrocentric Theory & Research
COMC 742 Language and Socio-Cultural Dynamics
COMC 787 Special Topics in Communication Studies

B. Non-departmental Course Offerings Within the Department of Mass Communication and Media (MCMS)

MCMS 722 Seminar in Political Communication and Public Opinion
MSMC 755 Seminar in Mass Communication and Popular Culture
MCMS 756 Seminar in Mass Communication and Development
MCMS 757 Seminar in International Communication

Additionally, offerings are available through others departments at Howard University.

C. Course Offerings through the Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area.

As noted in Section 1. Consortium Courses on page 8 of this Handbook, Howard University is a participating member of the Consortium of Universities of the Metropolitan Washington Area. As such, students are able to select graduate courses offered through area institutions, and include those courses as content courses in their official Program of Study.

COMPONENT 3:
Cognate Courses (6 credits)

Cognate courses consist of two courses in a related content area, usually taken outside of the department, which support and supplement the primary research interest as outlined in the program focus section of the Program of Study. In principal, these courses should focus academic work within a particular body of knowledge so that both the content and contribution of the cognate courses selected can be justified when the student submits the Program of Study to the Graduate Affairs Committee for review and approval.

COMPONENT 4:
Methodology Core (6 credits)

The student selects a minimum of two courses (six hours), in consultation with the adviser, in advanced quantitative and/or qualitative research methods. The methodology core has as its primary objective to provide additional and focused research tools that will be essential to students in the data collection and analysis component of their dissertation research. When developing the Program of Study, the student and the adviser will include a “Statement of Justification” for the specific option selected in the methodology core. Presented below are the courses identified by the faculty for quantitative and qualitative methods respectively. Should the student, given the particularities of the research focus, choose to select courses other than the ones presented below, the specific courses as well as the motivation for the courses selected must be presented in the statement of justification.

Two courses in Quantitative Research Methods from the following:

SOCI 510 Experimental Research
SOCI 511 Survey Research Methods
POLS 257 Multivariate Data Analysis
SOCI 910 or 911 Readings in Research Methodology (Quantitative)

OR

Two courses in Qualitative Research Methods from the following:

ANTG 322 Ethnography
HIST 200 Historiography
SOCI 910 or 911 Readings in Research Methodology (Qualitative)

Please Note: The methodology core component of the student’s Program of Study fulfills the Graduate School Foreign Language Requirement. Traditionally, doctoral programs required knowledge of a modern European language as a research tool since much relevant research literature was only available in those languages. Today, English dominates research literature. The department, therefore, requires that students fulfill a Methodology Core in lieu of the Foreign Language Requirement in order to deepen the student's quantitative or qualitative skills. As noted above, when developing the Program of Study, the student must include a statement of justification explaining how the chosen option or set of courses will be used in the dissertation research. Additionally, a language studied in depth, other than the student’s mother tongue or English, and justified in terms of research needs, may be used to satisfy the requirement.

COMPONENT 5:
Dissertation Credits (12 )

COMC 795 (3 credits)
COMC 796 (3 credits)
COMC 797 (3 credits)
COMC 798 (3 credits)