Leadership for Educational Equity

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How to Get through LEEP in Three Years

THE MILESTONE SEQUENCE

The milestone sequence is designed to help busy professional students to get through LEEP within the three years of "normal time to degree" for this program. There is no guarantee for this three year period, of course. Much will depend on students’ continuous effort to stay on top of work assignments. But we believe that if students move through the milestone sequence as planned and, parallel to that, fulfill their other course and residency obligations, they will be in an excellent position to graduate on time. 

Linchpin for graduating, and becoming a doctor, is the dissertation. The dissertation is so central because through it students demonstrate their competence for rigorous and independent intellectual work. Students design a study based on pertinent literature and appropriate methods of empirical research; they carry out the study and write about it extensively. For most students, the dissertation is a unique challenge, but one that can be mastered with the right kind of preparation. It would make little sense for students to jump right into the dissertation project without having gained necessary theoretical and methodological knowledge beforehand. Students demonstrate readiness for their dis-sertation project by passing the milestones, some of them unique to LEEP, but most of them university-wide requirements for all doctoral students at Berkeley.   

Broadly speaking, each of the three years in the program focuses on distinct tasks that will finally culminate in the dissertation.

Year 1	Finding topic or central problem and mapping the knowledge base in students’ field of interest
Year 2	Designing study; preparing for oral exams; writing dissertation proposal
Year 3	Conducting the study; writing up the dissertation

 

Sequence of Milestone Courses

Time Period	Instruction	Product
1st Fall Two-hour colloquium on teaching weekends (Mile 1 Course)	Practitioner wisdom, problem solving, and systematic research Types of dissertation in LEEP Identifying a field of interest for dissertation research	A short paper outlining students’ ideas for research; due at the end of semester
1st Spring Full three unit course (Mile 2 Course)	Understanding strengths and weaknesses of knowledge sources in a specific field Mapping the knowledge base in the student’s field of interest	Course paper: Mapping the knowledge base in the student’s field of interest;  due at the end of semester To be developed further into the First Milestone Paper: Mapping the knowledge base in [student’s field of dissertation research]
2nd Summer (June/July)	Milestone: First-Year Review	See criteria for oral exams
2nd Fall Two-hour colloquium on teaching weekends (Mile 3 Course)	From “Field of Interest” to “Knowledge Base” for a problem addressed by diss. Framing the problem Distilling relevant  concepts	A short paper framing the problem and distilling relevant concepts from the knowledge base
2nd Spring Full three unit course (Mile 4 Course)	Understanding the relationship between research question, conceptual framework, study design and methodology Developing a design for students’ dissertation	Course paper: Research question, design, methodology; due at the end of semester To be developed further into Second Milestone Paper
3rd Summer	Milestone: Qualifying Exam; preliminary requirement for dissertation work	Students submit to the exam committee: * 1st Milestone Paper: Mapping the knowledge base for dissertation * 2nd Milestone Paper Research question, design, methodology of the dissertation * 3rd Milestone Paper: Dissertation Proposal Prospectus
3rd  Fall (early)	Milestone: Proposal Approval Work with dissertation chair	Full Dissertation Proposal To be approved by committee via e-mail or face-to-face
3rd Year Late Fall, Winter, early Spring	Work with dissertation chair Dissertation colloquium once a month	Carrying out the dissertation project; data collection
3rd Year Late Spring, [early Summer]	Work with dissertation chair Dissertation colloquium once a month	Dissertation write-up
	Milestone: Dissertation
3rd Year End of spring semester	Graduation ceremony	Special conditions for participation apply

 

The Substance of the Qualifying or Position Papers

• Students submit three papers to the oral exam:
• 1st Milestone paper: Exploring the knowledge base in a field of interest for dissertation research
• 2nd  Milestone Paper: Conceptual framework or model, research design, and methods for the dissertation study
• 3rd Milestone Paper: Dissertation proposal prospectus

• The 1st Milestone Paper will be written in two stages. In a first stage, students survey material in their field (at least 20 cites), aiming at conceptual clarity and assessing the robustness of their sources. They turn in the first draft of the Paper at the end of the 1st spring. During the 2nd fall, students revise the Paper, aiming at framing and conceptualizing the central problem to be addressed in the dissertation. They turn in the second draft of the Paper at the end of the 2nd fall.

• The 2nd Milestone Paper contains the statement of the problem to be addressed in the dissertation study, research questions, a brief summary of the literature derived from the 1st Milestone Paper, conceptual framework or model, research design including identifying type of LEEP dissertation, methodologies. First draft is turned in at the end of 2nd spring. Second draft, if necessary, is turned in during the subsequent 3rd summer.

• The 3rd Milestone Paper is the prospectus of the dissertation proposal. It brings together elements from Papers 1 and 2 and adds more specifics of how the study is going to be carried out. It is turned in at the end of the summer, at least 30 days prior to the scheduled date for the oral exam. The prospectus is a short paper, no more than 10 pages. It contains the following components:

• Statement of the problem to be addressed in the dissertation study
• Research questions
• A brief summary of the most salient ideas from the knowledge base  (excerpted from Paper 1)
• Conceptual model or framework (excerpted from Paper 2)
• Research design (from Paper 2)
• Methodologies
• Description of the planned study
• Sample or case selection
• Data and data collection strategies
• Instruments
• Data analysis
• Expected findings

The 3rd Milestone Paper goes beyond the first two papers by adding specificity and including how students intend to deal with issues of practical feasibility. 

 

The Oral Exam

• The oral exam can be scheduled 30 days after the third paper is signed off.  The oral exam has 2 parts:
• In Part I, students demonstrate their knowledge in areas of specialization that serve as the backdrop for their dissertation. The goal is to assess the degree to which students have an in-depth understanding of the knowledge base of the fields that inform their study. In consultation with their advisors, students select two or three areas of specialization and select a  number of articles (no more than 8 per area) that are representative of that field. Students review these articles in advance and provide a brief document to the committee that synthesizes articles and frames questions for discussion.  During Part I of the orals, students must demonstrate the ability to: 1) critically analyze the quality of the articles and holes in the research base, and 2) apply concepts to the problem of practice that they are focused on in their dissertation.
• In Part 2 of the orals, the committee discusses the students’ research prospectus, with a focus on design decisions and ways to move the research prospectus to a full dissertation proposal.

Courses in the Milestone Sequence

Mile 1 (2 hour colloquium): Analytic approaches to problem solving; the contribution of research; exploring key problems in students’ work environment for dissertation study; beginning to explore a “model” knowledge base around a central problem.

Mile 2 (full course 1st spring): Continuing to explore “model” knowledge base; beginning to explore knowledge base in the students’ field of interest; summarizing, discussing different perspectives, analyzing robustness of evidence, synthesizing, discerning main ideas relevant for dissertation study. Carving a bounded problem out of the broader knowledge base and analyzing it with conceptual clarity.

Mile 3 (2 hour colloquium 2nd fall): Expanding knowledge base in the student’s field of interest; refining bounded problem and sharpening conceptual clarity.

Mile 4 (full course 2nd spring):  Research design and methods