Program Priorities
- Promote a culture of professional development (enhanced co-curricular expectations)
- Make professional development opportunities available and encourage students to undergo professional development through university, college, or program-sponsored events
- Identify and promote professional development activities that align with students’ goals
- Prepare the future professoriate through professional development in teaching and learning for students
- Provide financial and logistical support for student travel and conference presentations
- Develop standard policies and procedures for student success
- Assure the completion of annual updated individual development plans
- Develop procedures to allow doctoral supervisory committees to create an individualized program for each student based on their specific areas of interest and need
- Develop guidelines and best practices for dissertation mentors
- Develop standard procedures for committee review of dissertation proposals and dissertations prior to public defenses
- Develop standardized procedures for qualifying exams, including the assignment of pass, conditional pass, no pass
- Encourage students to submit an external graduate fellowship application prior to advancing to candidacy
- Encourage doctoral students to present their research in public seminars and workshops
- Provide and support the development of dissertation mentors
- Promote interdisciplinary research and collaboration
- Expand student and faculty mentor recruiting efforts to attract candidates from a wide variety of disciplines across the university
- Host social and professional activities to promote collaborative relationships across departments and colleges
- Require each student to complete at least one elective course from outside of the College of Health Sciences
- Optimize the curriculum with a focus on interdisciplinary education related to human health
- The curriculum committee will determine required courses within the College of Health Sciences
- Align curriculum with students’ professional goals
- Develop list of recommended electives from across the university while allowing for the discretion of the doctoral supervisory committee chair to individualize the program of study to the student’s research topic and career trajectory
- Create incentives for students to acquire knowledge of the political, psychological and socio-structural aspects relative to health of underserved populations
- Promote community engagement as a core value and component of the program
- Identify and create opportunities for community engagement to enhance awareness and understanding of the population served and studied
- Reward mentors and students that are providing and/or participating in community-engaged scholarship and service learning
- Provide support for students to complete service learning hours through the curriculum or through external supported activities
- Attract top students through enhanced efforts to raise the program’s profile and market the program regionally, nationally and internationally
- Explore possible program accrediting bodies and seek program accreditation
- Highlight program accomplishments on social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter), UTEP News, and local and regional media
- Continuously feature students’ and mentors’ work (publications, awarded grants, awards/honors, job placements) on social media platforms and across the university
- Require that all publications and presentations that include students as authors/co-authors include the IHS PhD Program among their list of institutional affiliations.
