Intellectual Breadth The diversified study requirements are designed to encourage and enable students to make connections across conventionally defined periods, national literatures, methodologies, and subfields. Another aim of building this range intellectual exposure into the early stages of the program is to provide students with expertise that make them comfortable and proficient teachers in topic outside their primary fields. At the same time, course work is intended as an integral part of intellectual formation rather than a series of obstacles to be cleared.

Reconsidering Overspecialization A frequent concern voiced about the job market is the putative overspecialization of students. One of the department's traditional strengths had been allowing students to follow their interests and tailor their courses of study without any stipulated distribution requirements. Thus, the diversification requirements were implemented to encourage students to make breadth a primary concern while maintaining the institutional flexibility that attracted individualistic students to the department.

Emphasizing Student Responsibility This retooled diversified study requirement balances the otherwise modular and independent curriculum. By defining subject areas along several conceptual lines, this approach structures the graduate experience without overstandardizing the avenues of knowledge acquisition. Graduate students remain in control of their own work while gaining valuable experience in tailoring a balanced course of study.

Organic Pedagogy In light of the various facets of the Ph.D. program -- coursework, teaching apprenticeships, self-directed reading -- we decided that distributing the breadth requirements across these elements would make the process more organic and mitigate the "hoop-jumping" effect of rigid classification. To this end a "hit" list was designed to provide a distribution framework for students to organize their course work. The link below leads to the section of the graduate student handbook outlining the specific requirements. Outline of Diversified Study Requirements

Intended effect The main goal of the diversifying requirements was to add breadth to the academic program without compromising the flexibility that had previously distinguished it. Also, by moderating the drive toward immediate specialization, we hoped to foster a base of common pedagogical experiences from which an intellectual community of graduate students could draw reference.

Data & Assessment Shortly after the breadth requirements were implemented, a retrospective study was done on the academic records of students who had recently completed the program and those who were finished with course work. We found that some students had in fact already put together programs that would have satisfied the new breadth requirements. Following up on the implementation, we plan to track the range of research and teaching fields of Ph.D. candidates and to survey students on the relation between their fulfillment of requirements and their sense of preparation for their first job. By keeping these records we hope to draw conclusions about the satisfaction of requirements, satisfaction with requirements, and their translation to later professional activities.