EMIS doctoral students should work directly with their assigned advisors to develop a custom Program of Study that meets the degree requirements, makes use of previous graduate coursework, and achieves the student’s educational objectives. Details on each doctoral program are as follows:

• Doctor of Philosophy (Major Operations Research)
• Doctor of Philosophy (Major Systems Engineering)
• Doctor of Engineering (Major Engineering Management)

While the EMIS doctoral programs have different requirements, they all follow the same sequence of steps:

1. Plan out coursework with your advisor and begin taking classes, including those covered by the degree’s Preliminary Counseling Exam.
    
2. A year into the program, take and pass the Preliminary Counseling Exam.
    
3. Develop final Program of Study, appoint a supervisory committee, complete your coursework.
    
4. Pass the qualifying exam (written and oral) and be admitted to Doctoral Candidacy by the supervisory committee. Committee members may give individual exams, and the full committee will consider the student’s written and oral proposal of the dissertation/praxis research.
    
5. Under the advisor’s direction, complete the research, write and defend dissertation/praxis. Many students do not realize that this is typically more time-consuming and challenging than all previous steps combined. Sufficient time should be allocated for its successful completion.

Dissertation Versus Praxis

To illustrate the differences between a dissertation and a praxis, the Dissertations and Praxes page lists example abstracts of each for EMIS doctoral program graduates.

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