Qualifying Examination

All doctoral students must pass a qualifying examination (QE) before they can write and defend their dissertation proposal, and be granted formal admission to candidacy for the Ph.D. degree. 

Process:

1. The student must have completed all required coursework in the semester previous to the one in which they begin the exam. Exceptions may be granted if there is only one course remaining and it is not a STEM Ed core course.
2. Under advisement of their faculty QE chair, the student decides on one of 3 format options for their QE:  

a)  Small-scale empirical research study {using data the student collects or data to which they have access from a prior project, from faculty mentor, national data, etc.} written in the general format of an article for an academic research journal;

b)  Conceptual/theoretical paper written in the format of an article for an academic research journal; 

c)  Either a) or b) above, written in the format of a piece for a practitioner journal – the intended audience is educational practitioners (e.g. pre- or in-service teachers, instructional coaches, teacher educators, etc.).

3. The QE process is expected to take one semester (either Fall, Spring, or Summer; see the anticipated timeline as discussed in #5 for details). In rare cases, if needed (and approved by the faculty QE chair), the QE may extend into a second semester.

4. The student assembles a QE committee that is comprised of a total of 3 STEM Ed GSC members At least one of these members must be a STEM Ed program area faculty.

5. The student, with approval from the QE chair and the other 2 committee members, decides on the semester to start the exam. The committee and student must agree on the start semester no later than the end of the second week of the semester.

A) During the semester that a student is engaged in their QE, the student will send a draft of work in progress on the exam to their QE chair who advises them halfway through the semester; the QE chair will respond with either oral or written feedback.

B) Students are allowed and encouraged to get feedback from their peers throughout their QE process. 

6.  The due date for the submission of the QE is determined by the committee in consultation with the student, but keeping in mind the following process. After submission, the committee will read the draft, provide comments for revision to the mentor/chair, who then synthesizes comments (with approval and sign-off of all members) and shares this in written form with the student within 2 weeks of the student’s submission. 

a.    To pass the exam, at least 2 members must vote to accept, one of which must be the QE chair.

b.  If the committee votes to  request revisions that extend into a second semester, additional due dates will be negotiated between the QE chair and the student but must meet the requirement of occurring before the end of the second semester of the total allowed exam period.  After receiving revision 1/submission 2, the committee has 2 weeks to read the document; they will confer as a group and vote to:  accept, or reject. As above, to pass the revised exam, at least 2 members must vote to accept, one of which must be the QE chair.

c. If the committee votes to reject, the student's program will be terminated from the PhD program.

Other Logistics: 

Word limit: The text of the QE is limited to between 4000-6000 words (excluding references, figures, and tables). APA format should be followed.

Format: Students are encouraged to look at conference proceedings as examples/templates for the QE in terms of length and component parts. Example conference proceedings include (but are not limited to):

• Conference for Research on Equitable and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology (RESPECT): https://www.respect2024.starscomputingcorps.org/call-for-proposals/ 
• International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) Repository: https://repository.isls.org/ 
• Mathematics Education and Society (MES) Conference: https://www.kennesaw.edu/mes13/submissions.php 
• PME-NA: https://www.pmena.org/proceedings/ 
• National Association of Research in Science Teaching (NARST): https://narst.org/conferences/2025-annual-conference 

If students are interested in their QE written in the format of a practitioner journal, we encourage students to look for mentor pieces in the following journals:

• Mathematics Teacher: Learning and Teaching PK-12 (https://pubs.nctm.org/configurable/content/journals$002fmtlt$002fmtlt-overview.xml?t:ac=journals%24002fmtlt%24002fmtlt-overview.xml)
• Science and Children (https://www.nsta.org/science-and-children)
• Science Scope (https://www.nsta.org/science-scope)
• Kappa Delta Record (https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ukdr20/current)
• Phi Delta Kappa (https://journals.sagepub.com/overview-metric/PDK)
• Mathematics Teacher Educator (https://pubs.nctm.org/view/journals/mte/mte-overview.xml)

Building upon prior work: The QE may build upon and extend work done for a class project or a GRA assignment. However, the QE should substantially expand upon or diverge from this earlier work. The student must disclose any prior work with the QE chair, and subsequent approval of using earlier work as a foundation for the QE must be approved by the QE chair prior to the student beginning the QE, and must be communicated to the entire committee.

Dissertation: The QE paper may serve as a foundation for subsequent dissertation chapters or dissertation articles, but it should be substantially transformed or extended in the process. Approval to do this must be given by the Dissertation Chair (who may be the same or different from the QE chair), and this must be communicated to the entire dissertation committee.

View the STEM Doctoral Plan of Study  form