Doctor of Philosophy in History

Qualifying Examination

Students with a master’s degree in history from NIU who enter the Ph.D. program may be required to pass an oral qualifying examination on the recommendation of their master’s comprehensive examination committee. All Ph.D. students with a master’s degree from another university, as well as NIU students who received their master’s degree in a discipline other than history, are ordinarily required to pass an oral qualifying examination before the end of their first semester in the Ph.D. program. However, the qualifying examination requirement may be waived by the director of graduate studies after taking into consideration the student’s previous academic record, their performance in the first semester of doctoral work, and the recommendation of their advisor.

Candidacy Examination

Ph.D. students must pass written and oral candidacy examinations. The exact character of each field will be determined on an individual basis, but a provisional list of fields and examiners must be submitted to the Graduate Committee for its review no later than the beginning of the student’s second year of full-time Ph.D. study; any subsequent change in examiners or fields must also be reviewed by the committee.

Students may write each of the three field essays whenever they and the field advisor agree that the student is adequately prepared. In addition to the field essays, the student will write a teaching portfolio that includes the design of and supporting materials for a survey-level course in the student’s major field of expertise and an upper-division course. When all three field essays have been completed and the teaching portfolio submitted, there will be an oral examination, which should normally be taken no later than the fifth semester after a full-time student has entered the doctoral program. At the conclusion of the oral examination the examination committee will decide whether the student has passed the candidacy examination as a whole.

A student who fails a Ph.D. candidacy field essay will normally be permitted to revise and resubmit the essay. A second failure will ordinarily be final and result in termination of the student from the Ph.D. program in history. There are a limited number of circumstances in which a student who has failed a field essay twice may substitute a different field. Under no circumstances, however, will any student who has failed two different field essays be allowed to continue in the doctoral program.

Doctoral Dissertation

In order for the department to recommend students to the Graduate School for doctoral candidacy in history they must have completed a minimum of 54 semester hours of graduate course work, including any course work from the master’s degree counted towards the doctoral requirements. These 54 semester hours should also include the required 6 semester hours of doctoral research. In addition, students admitted to candidacy must have passed their candidacy oral examination and fulfilled the language/ research skills requirement. An acceptable dissertation proposal must also be submitted to a three-person dissertation-approval committee no later than the end of the semester following the one in which the oral candidacy examination was successfully completed.

The Department of History cannot guarantee a doctoral student a director and cannot necessarily supply the expertise for any topic a student may choose, even a viable one. Rather, it is the responsibility of the student to find a topic that is workable within the resources available in the department and to demonstrate that he or she has the talents to complete it.

Not more than three years after a doctoral candidate’s dissertation topic has been approved, he or she must present a public colloquium on the dissertation-in-progress. This colloquium will be evaluated by a faculty committee and must be found satisfactory before the candidate may continue their progress towards completion of the doctoral degree requirements. Any student who fails to meet this colloquium requirement will be put on written notice of the deficiency and, if after an additional year the requirement remains unmet, admission to the doctoral program will be terminated. Candidates who are terminated because of this provision may petition the departmental Graduate Committee for reinstatement by submitting an acceptable plan for meeting the colloquium requirement.

When a Ph.D. candidate’s dissertation topic and dissertation director have been approved, the candidate and the dissertation director will identify the appropriate faculty to serve on the candidate’s dissertation committee. The oral defense of the dissertation will be scheduled when the dissertation has been substantially approved by the director and at least two other members of the committee. Prior to the defense, the dissertation should have been read in a defensible version by all members of the committee and one copy of this version of the dissertation must have been submitted to the Graduate School. The committee to conduct the defense will consist of four or five voting faculty members and will be chaired by the dissertation director. One member must be from an academic department outside the Department of History.

All doctoral students in history must complete and successfully defend their dissertations within six years of admission to candidacy. Failure to meet this requirement will result in the candidate’s admission to the doctoral program being terminated. Candidates whose admission to the program is terminated for this reason may petition the departmental Graduate Committee for reinstatement by submitting an acceptable plan for completing the dissertation and by identifying an appropriate dissertation committee, which need not be identical to the original committee but which must meet the same conditions.