The Daily Aztec - New joint doctoral programs

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The Daily Aztec - New joint doctoral programs

New joint doctoral programs

By Janel Bruan, Contributor

Published: Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Updated: Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Glenn Connelly / Photo Editor

San Diego State will soon offer two new joint doctoral programs, evolutionary biology and geophysics. Both programs are accepting students for next semester.

San Diego State is classified as a doctoral research university, and for a good reason.
Evolutionary biology and geophysics have joined the ranks as two new joint doctoral programs after being approved late last month.

It’s been 50 years since the creation of the Master Plan for Higher Education in California, which reserved the granting of doctoral degrees for the UC system and assigned the CSU system to train students at the master’s level. The caveat, which SDSU has taken advantage of, is that the plan allows CSUs to partner with doctoral-granting universities to create joint doctoral programs.

The first joint doctoral program was established in 1964 between chemists at SDSU and UCSD. The two universities created a partnership that allowed others that weren’t permitted to issue a doctoral degree the opportunity to join with them. The Ph.D.’s issued would be given through both universities simultaneously.

Sixteen joint doctoral programs have been established between CSU and UC schools, 14 of which are at SDSU. The last full program to be approved was computational sciences with Claremont Graduate University in 2002.

“The Ph.D. programs are a defining feature of SDSU,” Vice President for Research and Dean of Graduate Affairs Thomas Scott, Ph.D., said.

Whereas the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching classifies the other 22 CSUs as masters institutions, it classifies SDSU as a doctoral research university with high research activity, according to Scott.

Evolutionary biology is offered as a joint program with UC Riverside.

“Southern California is internationally recognized as an area with one of the world’s greatest biodiversity,” Annalisa Berta, program coordinator for the SDSU / UC Riverside joint doctoral program, said.  “We have a very strong Masters of Science program in evolutionary biology and we wanted to build on that to offer talented doctoral students the opportunity of coming to SDSU to study molecular evolution, genomics, paleontology, population biology and systematic.”

Each program has its own curriculum. Students who will take evolutionary biology will spend their first year at SDSU and the next year at UC Riverside taking classes as well as working in the lab. The remaining years will be spent back at SDSU working on their research.

“Evolutionary biology is a very broad, diverse field,” Berta said.  “It is especially relevant in society today. We know we are losing biodiversity due to human activities. In order to know what we’re losing we have to know what we have that is how to generate and maintain biodiversity.”

Berta said the program will also offer training in comparative genomics, which is the study of gene structures of different species and allows the study of the evolution of infectious diseases.

Students in the geophysics program will be collaborating with the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

Both programs took about 10 years to develop and proceed through all the levels of academic administrative review.

“The Ph.D. programs drive the designation of being a doctoral research university,” Scott said. “The faculty members from the Ph.D. programs are the ones that bring the disproportionate amount of our external funding that allows research to thrive. They really are the driving force behind what has become a major research university. It’s critically important for us to keep these healthy and continue to develop them as much as we can.”

Evolutionary biology and geophysics are both accepting students for next fall.

SDSU is currently in the process of developing more joint doctoral programs, according to Scott.