Doctoral Portfolio Program
in
Interdisciplinary European Studies

I. Rationale for Portfolio Program:

In the humanities and social sciences today, cross- or interdisciplinary studies are of growing interest for research and teaching, as well as for making bridges between Ph.D. studies and non-academic careers. On the national level, however, interdisciplinary Ph.D. programs have proved less than ideal for graduate students, since little or no consensus exists as to what interdisciplinary studies should consist of and what career and professional goals they should serve.

The size and diversity of the departments in the humanities, arts, and social sciences and in the professional schools at the University of Texas at Austin, in contrast, open an option to define interdisciplinary studies on the Ph.D. level while allowing students great flexibility in defining their professional goals, both within and outside of the academy. Given UT's broad graduate offerings in such cutting-edge research and teaching, the "Doctoral Portfolio Program in Interdisciplinary European Studies" enables students to establish strong interdisciplinary profiles based on focused cross-disciplinary coursework and research planning for studies of Europe (defined as current and future likely member states of the European Union). In defining interdisciplinary connections for the PhD programs in which they will enroll, students are able to develop research, teaching, and professional profiles beyond those offered in the context of extant PhDs; these profiles can also qualify them for a larger range of post-PhD careers that require the expertises of disciplinary PhDs plus ancillary skills not offered in more conventional PhD programs.

II. Program Goals

The Doctoral Portfolio Program in Interdisciplinary European Studies will:

• foster dialogue and communication throughout The University among the faculty and graduate students who are engaged in research and teaching on Europe from an interdisciplinary perspective
• offer a venue for exchange and integration of perspectives drawn from various disciplines
• promote dialogue to raise consciousness for research and writing standards in interdisciplinary research, supplementing extant interdisciplinary lecture series on the campus (e.g. Germanic Studies lectures, Modernism Discussion Group, British Studies Seminar)
• facilitate students' definition of appropriate interdisciplinary perspectives and courses of study for their future professional careers (in research, teaching, or otherwise)
• create a formal advising structure on interdisciplinary work and career opportunities to supplement that available in extant degree programs in the humanities, social sciences, and professional schools.
• provide prospective employers with indications of a student's area and disciplinary competencies outside normal degree sequences. The establishment of the IES Portfolio would promote interdisciplinary contact among the many faculty and graduate students currently engaged in research and scholarship that cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries.

III. Portfolio Program Structure

Program Faculty include faculty from extant GSC's in the humanities, social sciences, and professional schools who have records of interdisciplinary research. The current list of program members is available at a website maintained by the Program Director. The director will be elected by a simple majority vote of Program Faculty every two years. The director is in charge of establishing the Admissions and Certification Committee each year, calling meetings of that committee, maintaining student records, and maintaining current Portfolio Program information on a website.

Admissions and Certification Committee: Under the chair of the Program Director, this committee is composed of a selection of the Program Faculty, including when possible at least one member each from the humanities, fine arts, social sciences, and professional schools, for a total membership of 5 or more each year. This committee is also in charge of certifying students' completion of program requirements at its meeting each semester.

Admission to the Program is controlled by the Admissions Committee. Admissions will be considered by this group twice a year (once each long semester).

Admissions Procedure and Program Advising: Students interested in developing a Portfolio must complete and submit an application form to the director (.pdf version attached to this website); this form will be reviewed by the IES Admissions and Certification Committee. The application must include the signatures of the studentıs Graduate Adviser and Dissertation Supervisor(s). In addition, that application must be accompanied by the submission of a 1-2 pp. essay describing the importance of a particular interdisciplinary specialization or area study in European Studies to the studentıs doctoral program and career goals.

The form will identify 6 possible courses and a language competency for their proposed specialization area. Students who are accepted for the portfolio will work with the Director as the Portfolio Adviser in developing the final set of courses for the specialization out of those possibilities.

Students can enter the Portfolio Program at any point in their doctoral work, but it is recommended that they complete the portfolio courses and language requirements before being admitted to candidacy.

Although not required, it is recommended that at least one professor of a course used to satisfy a Portfolio requirement or a member of the IES Committee be asked to serve on the studentıs doctoral dissertation committee.

Exceptions and Certification: All exceptions to program requirements must be approved by the Program Director; further appeals may be made to the Admissions and Certification Committee.

To received Certification of the completion of the Portfolio Program in Interdisciplinary European Studies, the student must fill out and submit to the Director a final version of the Application Form, indicating when and how each of the requirements were filled. This must be completed at the very latest when the student files a "Request for Final Orals"; earlier filing is encouraged.

Student Records: It is the requirement of the student to keep the Program Director up to date on his/her current addresses and other pertinent personal and professional data.

IV: Program Requirements

Course Requirements: Certification requirements are independent of the requirements for graduate degrees, but they may be included on the doctoral Program of Work.

For the Portfolio Certification, students will be required to complete a contract of 12 hours of graduate-level courses.

• 12 credit hours of graduate-level courses (four courses), chosen from extant graduate coursework, with an overall GPA of 3.5 or better in these courses. These four courses must be chosen outside the offerings of the student's official degree program, in one of two recommended distributions, as specified on the Application Form.
  NOTE: No more than one course may be taken as an independent study/conference course, except under unusual circumstances. Taking more than one conference course requires permission of the IES Steering Committee. These courses may, however, include practical internships.
• proof of the student's ability to function in English and in at least one European language at a level appropriate to professional research and other activities:
  • completion of at least one graduate course taught in the student's non-native language
    OR
  • completion of at least two graduate courses that require substantial research papers drawing on materials from the student's non-native language(s), and submitting those papers to the IES Committee as part of the certification process
    OR
  • completion of an internship abroad that requires substantial use of the second language (if an internship, a letter attesting its completion should be submitted to the IES Committee)
• In addition to the course requirements, student must present the dissertation in progress to a colloquium consisting of: (1) the dissertation committee, (2) IES faculty, and (3) other IES students. This Dissertation Presentation will be scheduled through the IES Director; it must be held, at the latest, within one (1) calendar year of the date of the student's admission to candidacy.

Details on Dissertation Presentation

Working closely with his or her dissertation committee, the student will complete an extended Dissertation Presentation of between 5 and 10 pp. in length. The Presentation should represent a detailed working outline for the dissertation. It ordinarily consists of a detailed introduction (indicating the student's methodology or approach, an explanation of why this project is significant, and a descriptions of the materials and problems to be discussed and the kind of conclusions expected), as well as short descriptions of each chapter. The Presentation is thus intended to represent the candidate's abilities to undertake work on a topic in depth, within the context of existing scholarship and appropriate interdisciplinary methodologies. At the same time, the Presentation demonstrates a student's ability to apply a breadth of knowledge to a project leading to future scholarly and teaching specializations.

The written Dissertation Presentation will be circulated to the entire membership of the IES Portfolio Committee, and to the students in the program. After that, the Dissertation Presentation will be presented orally in a work-in-progress seminar, intended to be diagnostic and constructive. All present should be encouraged to question and comment in that vein. The presentation has several goals:

• to give the student practice in presenting work orally, well in advance of needing to do so at job interviews
• to solicit questions and ideas from all members of the audience, to help the student gauge the feasibility of the project, to gain information about sources and resources, to find problems in the intellectual strategy or the means of presentation of the topic early in the writing process
• to aid the student in formulating a plan of work and project model (which, to be sure, may be modified later) that will enable a timely completion of the project
• to aid the student in identifying the relation of the dissertation project to career goals
• to allow all faculty on a dissertation committee, not just the director, to have input on the project's formulation
• to create a pool of possible replacement committee members, should a committee member be unable to serve.

The Dissertation Presentation will be an open event to which all IES students and faculty and guests are invited. Usually one hour in length, the seminar will start with the student's oral presentation of the dissertation outline (15-20 minutes), followed by a question-and-answer session. The IES Program Director will aid the student in reserving a room and advertising the event.

The Dissertation Presentation will be considered successful if the student can offer a coherent project focus and strategy for writing, and can respond to possible fundamental questions about or objections to that strategy or focus: to explain, for example, why certain materials were chosen for the project and not others, and to suggest how and why the data will be analyzed. This format does NOT mean that the student will be expected to have all the answers, but rather that s/he will be able to explain the approach to the project being taken, in terms of existing scholarship and methodology.

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