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Courses, Teaching, Exams, Dissertation There are four basic elements that together comprise our strategies for developing the ability of our students to ask productive questions: 1. Courses. All of our courses are conducted as small seminars in which all students are expected to participate. This introduces students to basic elements of scholarly exchange, the give-and-take that often takes place at scholarly conferences and departmental colloquia, for example. Coursework provides the foundation for the capacity to formulate questions that can lead to original and insightful work in the future. 2. Teaching. Our students begin teaching in the second year of the program, and usually continue to do so until they finish. We believe that teaching provides an indispensable set of experiences informing their future scholarly work. 3. Exams. Our version of the University-mandated "comprehensive examination" prior to embarking on a dissertation explicitly requires students to formulate questions--or "problems"--that will guide their more focused work during this stage of the program. In addition, the capstone of this experience, the oral written and oral examinations, provides examples of their mentors formulating questions (see the document attached to the section below, "Tools and Resources"). 4. Dissertation. The dissertation is the culmination of each student's previous experiences in our program. We ask that the dissertation prospectus pose coherent and focused questions that their research will answer. As with the comprehensive exams, we ask that students hold out the possibility that their research will surprise them so that investigating their questions will invevitably involve discovery.
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