Students wishing to enter the doctoral program should have a reasonably clear idea of dissertation plans to facilitate construction of a doctoral program of study. All applicants are encouraged to correspond with individual faculty regarding their special interest in any aspect of the Syracuse program in geography.

Steps toward Completing the Doctorate
Step 1:  Completing General and Specific Course Requirements

• The Ph.D. degree requires a minimum of 72 credit hours of approved graduate work in geography and related fields.  The 72 hours may include credits accepted from the Master’s degree.  Doctoral students must obtain a minimum of 60 hours of approved course work and a minimum of 12 dissertation hours.  Students with an approved Master’s degree from another university must take at least 30 hours of course work in residence at Syracuse (not including the dissertation). 
   
• It is expected that students who enter the Ph.D. program with a Master’s degree from another university will have, or will acquire, qualifications equivalent to those normally achieved by a Syracuse M.A. in geography.
   
• Geography 602 (Research Design in Geography) is required of all entering students, unless equivalency can be shown.
   
• Geography 805 (The Development of Geographic Thought) is required of all doctoral students, unless equivalency can be shown.

Step 2:  Getting Dissertation Proposal Approval

• Each student must prepare a formal dissertation proposal, which must be approved at a meeting with the student’s advisory committee prior to the scheduling of the qualifying examination. 

Step 3:  Passing the Ph.D. Qualifying Examination/Becoming ABD!

• Before taking the Qualifying Exam a student must complete all University and departmental requirements except the dissertation. 
   

• The purpose of the Qualifying Examination is to evaluate whether or not a student is prepared to teach and conduct research at the collegiate level.  In general terms, questions are asked in relationship to three fields of competence.  Fields of competence may be defined by AAG specialty group categories, common upper division courses, emerging areas of study, regions, or major methodologies, including theoretical perspectives.  The questions are intended to test knowledge of (a) the scope, historical development, and current debates in the student’s fields of interest (including how they fit into the history of geography); (b) the main theoretical and methodological approaches to the fields of interest; and (c) as appropriate, the specific techniques (e.g. specific statistical, qualitative, GIS, cartographic, language, or other skills) necessary to undertake and evaluate research in the fields of interest. 
   

• The examination has both written and oral parts.  For the written portion of the exam, a full day will typically be devoted to each field of competence; however, at the discretion of the Advisory Committee and student, one field of competence may be examined in an un-timed manner.  The written portion of the examination must be completed within two weeks.  The oral portion of the examination should be held in the second week after the written portion is completed and normally lasts two hours.  The Qualifying exam is a departmental exam entirely and does not require representation from the Graduate School.  The Student’s advisor serves as chair of the examination in all of its parts. 
   

• Upon successful completion of the Qualifying Exam, the student becomes a Doctoral Candidate.

Step 4:  Defending the Ph.D. Dissertation

• The dissertation should be an original scholarly contribution to the field of geography.  It has no prescribed length and may be highly varied in methodology, topic, and style of presentation.
   

• When the final draft of the dissertation has been approved by the advisor and its format has been approved by the Graduate School, a Dissertation Examination Committee is appointed and a two-hour public oral defense scheduled. 
   

• The defense is successful if the candidate obtains a simple majority of six voting committee members.  Acceptance of the dissertation may be conditional upon the student adding to or modifying some of its parts. 
   

• Upon successful defense of the dissertation, the examining committee recommends to the University that the student be awarded the Ph.D. degree.

Admission Requirements
The deadline for applicants not applying for Syracuse University Fellowships is February 1st. However, all applicants are encouraged to contact the department to obtain an information packet during the early Fall and send application materials (including GRE and TOEFL scores whenever possible) by mid-December of the year prior to entry. The deadline for students who wish to apply for a University Fellowship is January 9th, though early applications are recommended.

Minimum levels normally acceptable for the undergraduate grade point average are about 3.0 (on a 4.0 basis) and for the GRE examinations a combined level of 1650 or above on the three tests.

Samples of written work may be submitted on a voluntary basis (these cannot be returned) to help the department evaluate applications on an individual basis.

For students whose primary language is not English, a minimum TOEFL score of 550 is required.

All applicants (except international students) must submit transcripts, three letters of recommendation, and GRE scores on the Verbal, Quantitative, and Analytic Tests. The earliest taking of GRE and submissions are strongly recommended.

The department does not subscribe to specific numerical criteria for the evaluations of applications; but rather examines the entire range of students' academic qualifications.

Financial Aid
Graduate Assistantships; University, McNair, and Watson Fellowships; the DellPlain Assistantship in Latin American Geography; and various awards are available on a competitive basis.  Applications should be completed by early January and early November for Fall and Spring admissions respectively.  Stipends for 8.5 months vary from about $12,000 to $15,000.  Tuition scholarships for 24 hours of credit are awarded annually with Assistantship appointments.  Graduate Scholarships that pay tuition for 9 to 12 credit hours per semester are also awarded.  Summer awards for enrolled students ranging between $700 and $3,000 are available as well. 

For Catalog and further information write to:
Chair of Admissions Committee. Department of Geography, 144 Eggers Hall, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York 13244-1090.

Telephone (315) 443-2605. Fax (315) 443-4227.

Teaching Assistants
The department seeks to prepare graduate students to be skilled teachers and researchers.  For many graduate students, much of this preparation occurs while serving as a graduate assistant—either as a Teaching Assistant (TA) or a Research Assistant (RA).  TAs serve a primary function of providing support for faculty undergraduate teaching while RAs serve a primary function of supporting faculty research.  In both cases, the role of the TA/RA is to alleviate some of the workload of their faculty supervisor.  It should be recognized, however, that this is also a professional and academic learning experience for TAs /RAs to develop skills of their own.  

University regulations require that students holding assistantships work an average of 20 hours per week during the period of their appointment. (The 20-hour average pertains to the payroll schedule.  The exact dates that the pay period begins and ends each academic year will be indicated in each TA/ RA contract letter.)  For the Department of Geography, workloads should not exceed 20 hours a week on average over the course of the semester work period, although the exact number of hours worked will vary from week to week. 

A departmental orientation for new TAs is held near the end of the of the University TA Orientation Program, during the week prior to the start of each Fall semester. The purpose of this orientation is to introduce new TAs to departmental audio/visual and duplication equipment, other teaching aids such as the map collection, as well as specific departmental teaching procedures. This orientation is organized by the Graduate Director and faculty.

Future Professoriate Project (FPP)
The Future Professoriate Project (FPP) is a university-wide program vested in Syracuse University's Graduate School, in which the Geography Department plays a particularly active role.  Briefly, the project prepares graduate students for their teaching responsibilities as future members of the professoriate via two initiatives.  The first is the Teaching Associateship, whereby departmental teaching assistants receive guidance from a faculty mentor of their choice.  The second is the Certificate in University Teaching, awarded to those teaching associates who, under the guidance of their mentor, engage in an independent teaching experience and document their teaching credentials through the preparation of a substantial teaching portfolio.

During the academic year Geography’s teaching associates get together and choose topics for discussion meetings, usually two per semester.  Recent discussions have addressed the balancing of academic and familial life (and its intersection with gender), the nuts and bolts of publishing as a grad student, how to do job interviews, and the pros and cons of interdisciplinary work.  Faculty are invited to make contributions to these meetings.

We also do site visits to three neighboring ‘sister institutions’ -- Colgate University, SUNY Cortland, and SUNY Geneseo -- in order to get a firsthand sense of what it's like to be in an undergraduate teaching institution.  In turn, each fall we host our “Geofest” for senior undergrads from those three institutions, whereby we (grads and faculty) give them a sense of what geography grad school and geography research are like.

Each academic year there are about 10 to 15 teaching associates, which makes us one of the larger and livelier FPP groups on campus.  Each teaching associate receives a stipend as part of their membership each semester.

Further details on the FPP may be found at http://gradschpdprograms.syr.edu/programs/fpp.php. 

In the Department of Geography it is Dr. John Western who is the ongoing “Primary Faculty Liaison.”  This title implies that the organization of FPP departmental-level activities is viewed as something of a partnership between the grads (whose “FPP Leader” for 2006-2007 will be Glenn Gentry) and those faculty who choose to participate.