City, Culture, and Community

Program Structure | Program Advantages | Why Tulane? 

Program Structure

Organization and Management

The CCC Ph.D. Program will establish a "supra-departmental" Graduate Studies Committee (GSC) to ensure the academic and financial integrity of the doctoral program and manage the resources to support doctoral students' education and scholarly activities. The CCC GSC will be in charge of reviewing and approving all applications for graduate study, a process that will include discussion of each applicant in a face-to-face meeting with the explicit input of the prospective student's faculty mentor (who plays a role in recruiting the student).  The CCC GSC will be coordinated by a Doctoral Program Director (DPD) who will also serve as the GSC Director.  The DPD will serve a three- year term and be elected by members of the CCC GSC. 

Participating Faculty

See the Faculty menu on the left for a list of faculty involved in the CCC Ph.D. Program, their titles, department affiliations, areas of expertise, and contact information.

Program of Study (PoS) and Selection of Research Advisors

To ensure that students both meet the requirements of the program and take advantage of all of the educational opportunities available in a systematic and planned way, each student will develop a Program of Study (PoS).  The PoS will emerge within the student's first year of study through discussions with her or his mentor and the CCC Doctoral Program Director (DPD).  The PoS must be approved by the DPD and the student's Program Supervising Committee (Program Committee) chaired by the student's mentor.  The Program Committee is composed of Program Faculty from at least two different units (i.e., schools, departments, programs) and serves to oversee the student's education up to and through the preliminary examination (Prelim) to achieve ABD.  Another committee, the Dissertation Supervising Committee, often the same or very similar to the first Committee, provides supervision over the student's dissertation as a dissertator, after successfully passing her or his Prelim. The final act of the Prelim Committee is to evaluate the student's dissertation. 

Degree Requirements

CCC Ph.D. Program awards degrees in three disciplines:

• Ph.D. in Social Work–City, Culture, and Community
• Ph.D. in Sociology–City, Culture, and Community
• Ph.D. in Urban Studies-City, Culture, and Community

Despite the uniqueness of this approach to doctoral education, the program will be structured like a traditional doctoral program in terms of hours and course work. In summary, coursework will comprise the first four semesters, with a year following for the capstone to prepare for dissertation research and prelims. The total numbers of hours to complete all degree requirements is 48.

Skill Set of CCC Graduates

Below is a list of the several broad skill areas, divided into more specific skills, that CCC students will obtain through coursework, seminars, internships, mentoring, research experiences, and other CCC activities. 

Organizational, Management, and Leadership Skills:

• Strong oral and written communication skills.
• Ability to identify problems, formulate alternatives, and promote change
• Knowledge of effective ways to supervise, direct, and guide, individuals in completion of tasks and fulfillment of goals
• Strong conflict management and resolution skills

Research Skills:

• Ability to cultivate research goals and objectives; select research topics; develop research questions; and design research projects to advance knowledge and promote learning
• Understanding of how to search, select, and evaluate primary and secondary data sources
• Ability to generate theories and hypotheses; develop instruments and methods for measurement; manipulate and control variables; collect, model, and analyze empirical data; evaluate results
• Knowledge of how to identify research funding sources; write and develop grant proposals; and review and evaluate grant proposals

Methodological Skills:

• Archival and historical methods
• Quantitative methods: graphing and tabulating data; describing data sets: central tendency, variability and skew; normal curve and standard scores; correlation; sampling; descriptive and inferential statistics, advanced statistical methods, etc.
• Qualitative methods: ethnography, interviewing, document content analysis, focus groups, etc.
• Data analysis techniques: statistical analysis (e.g., STATA, SAS, SPSS, etc.) and qualitative analysis (e.g., AtlasTi, NVivo, etc.), social network analysis
• Urban Geographical Information Systems (GIS)

Pedagogical Skills:

• In-depth knowledge and understanding of contemporary learning theories and practices
• Ability to use communication and information technologies to create learning environments
• Ability to teach and instruct based upon synthesis and evaluation of knowledge
• Understanding of the uses of different instructional strategies and technologies to encourage critical thinking skills and information literacy

Policy Evaluation Skills:

• Ability to understand to the role, purpose, and nature of policy
• Expertise in analyzing the process of policy formulation and implementation
• Proficiency in identifying key policy actors and organized interests in policy actions
• Strong skills at troubleshooting problems and assessing policy options; developing an implementation strategy; linking project management and research results to policy actions; building support for polices; and developing policy evaluation criteria

Financial Support

The CCC Ph.D. Program expects students to complete their doctoral studies in five years, a reasonable request given the multiple sources of financial support and professional mentoring CCC faculty will provide.  Students are expected to be actively involved in data collection, analysis, and other research activities during the summer months as well as the nine-month academic year.  CCC faculty will make these expectations clear to students when they enter the program and communicate regularly and frequently that time to degree should be five years.

Student funding will be on an annual basis.  First-year funding will consist of a fellowship.  Thereafter, continued student funding will be multi-tiered and contingent on performance and adequate progress through the graduate program.  Funding for those qualifying students in years 2-4 will take the form of research and teaching assistantships and qualifying students will receive dissertation fellowships in their final year of study.

Participation in funded research should provide additional graduate support as well as offering critical research and training opportunities during at least part of the anticipated second through fourth years of funding.  The CCC Ph.D. Program will actively encourage and train students to pursue external funding.