Usually your first contact is with someone whose interests are close to yours.  You also want to check how broadly a department can cover the topic, both for diversity in your program and alternative specialties if you decide to expand beyond what you thought was your priority in the first place.  For instance, several students have come to UNL to study AAC  and gradually added interests and become more closely involved with faculty in other related areas on top of the AAC focus. These areas (and their faculty specialist)  include:  

All of the above faculty have worked with Ph.D. students who have an AAC focus, but combine this with other specialty areas to broaden their employability and research/teaching skills.  All of these faculty have active research programs in their specialty areas as well as serving on committees in related areas.  If you're interested, contact can be made with other faculty in Teacher's College or in other departments like Psychology in areas such as cognition, learning, or infant social/emotional development.  It helps to know people with breadth and depth of knowledge that you could recruit for resources, research experience, class work and involvement on your committees.

There are some University programs where a student is directly recruited by one and only one faculty member, and solely dependent upon that faculty member for all their input and support.  In some places, there can be rather fierce competition to keep one's own doctoral student. Obviously, if you are interested in more than one area or not sure of your absolute specialty before you start your program, this would make your choice of advisor also your "do or die" choice of topic.  Here at UNL, we have a history of sharing advisors among doctoral students, and welcome co-advising.  Several UNL students in Ph.D. programs have co-advisors or active participation of several faculty in their doctoral research and activities.  As long as we communicate effectively and don't present conflicting goals, this can be a great opportunity for students.

How closely does a Ph.D. student's dissertation tend to mirror their advisor's area of specialty (a sideways question to find out how much the program encourages individuality in students).

There are some programs where once you choose your advisor, your dissertation topic becomes automatically constrained to whatever that advisor is working on at the time.  For instance, several programs have Ph.D. students whose dissertations all reflect the same larger research grant, and the Ph.D. students carve out little pieces for their dissertations.  While this can be a comforting way to get a Ph.D. degree without having to choose an original topic, the difficulty comes when the students have to leave to start their own career but haven't made tough decisions about how to start a research line of their own.  One of the hardest aspects of research is finding a topic area to which you can commit, and developing researchable questions from a broad idea. Colleagues around the country can be struggling with that still, and I think one of the best services we can give our Ph.D. students is lots of experience developing your own research questions, and carrying out a few of them.  For instance, with one of my new Ph.D. students this semester, we are using a directed reading that explores various topics of his interest to also pose potentially researchable questions as practice in developing research topics in his area of interest.  Here at UNL, a Ph.D. student completes three smaller research projects before starting a dissertation, all of which hopefully lead to publications.  The first project is often linked to  an advisor's specialty area, to get your feet wet in performing research, but the rest of the projects are intended to be more student initiated with gradually decreasing activity of the advisor.  Students in the past 10 years have conducted a wide range of dissertation topics, and while some may overlap somewhat with their advisor's broad specialty area, all of the dissertations are the student's independent idea and execution.  For myself, I welcome opportunities to work outside of my particular expertise, as long as the content is something I can commit to supporting.  For instance, one of my present Ph.D. students is rapidly developing an interest in early communication and autism, which isn't a topic I'd read much about previously.  Our potential range of topics are expanded greatly by having a blended Department of Communication Disorders and Special Education, and I really appreciate having the opportunity to work with colleagues in related fields.

To what extent is the Ph.D. program a curriculum approach (pre-established course sequence) vs. Individualized program approach?

Some Ph.D. programs have a preset list of courses that you must take to graduate, and anything you add for your specific interests adds to the length of your program.  For instance, in my own Ph.D. experience, we had to take advanced seminars in speech, language, and audiology to demonstrate breadth, whether or not those programs specifically fit our program interests.  Some programs have an even more structured set of course requirements.  At UNL, there is a fairly standard sequence of statistics and design courses that most students take, since few have had much detailed coursework in this area already and it's something that all doc students need to know.  Even so, there is plenty of room to customize that sequence in particular areas (e.g. choosing among survey research or single subject design or qualitative research as specialty courses), and if students have already had some of the courses that sequence is free to be adjusted.  Otherwise, the courses that Ph.D. students take are individually customized to their needs and topics of interests. Beyond needing to take some courses directly in your chosen specialty and some courses you choose to give yourself breadth, there are few restrictions in what can be included in your program.  Many students find a common interest in courses like an advanced AAC seminar or instrumentation courses, and we provide a seminar during your first semester to give you practical strategies in managing being a Ph.D. student (like how to use available computer and graphic tools, how to write and review academic papers, etc.) Basically, your sequence of courses and topics is entirely negotiable with your advisor(s).

How many students have graduated in various specialty areas, and what is the employment rate in leadership positions (e.g. at universities, directors of clinic/hospital programs, research centers)?

Around 8-10 graduate each year in Special Education and Communication Disorders at UNL.  Many of these students were part of leadership grants in AAC that Dr. Beukelman coordinated, and he continues to receive additional grants in this area because of the excellent record in seeing students take leadership roles after they graduate.  We still have a majority of our doctoral students who have an interest in AAC, but we've seen some gradual broadening of our Ph.D. students who are recruited for a wide variety of specialties in addition (e.g. early intervention, autism, TBI, fluency, speech perception, ALS, language or reading disorders).  The job market of persons receiving a Ph.D. in speech-language pathology is excellent, and likely to get better.  ASHA is exploring what it perceives as a growing problem that there are many more positions open than there are candidates to fill, and as more people retire, there will be increasing opportunities. A recent ASHA telephone seminar offered participants guidance on how to navigate the path toward a doctoral degree.  "The Council of Academic Programs in Communication Sciences and Disorders 1998-1999 National Survey of Ungergraduate and Graduate Programs noted that, during the 1999-2000 academic year, the number of open doctoral faculty positions was projected to be 124 in speech-language pathology, 31 in audiology, and four in speech, language, and hearing sciences.  The projected number of students who will graduate with doctorates is insufficient to meet the anticipated number of faculty vacancies." (The ASHA Leader, May 1, 2001) None of our students who applied for positions when they left the Ph.D. program failed to find a suitable position.  Occasionally, new Ph.D.s will take an early position, and move after a few years to a new location or position as their interests change, but that is expected with any life transition. These transfer applicants have found ample opportunities, particularly since few programs have faculty who are skilled at incorporating AAC into other topic areas of specialty (these skills are typical of our UNL Ph.D. graduates).

What kind of publication/presentation record do students typically have when they leave the program?  What activities are they expected to complete to reach this goal, and how is support provided to help students learn the necessary researching and writing skills involved?

Students are encouraged to complete three different guided research projects before they begin their dissertation activities.  These projects increase in student independence (both in planning and execution).  These tend to take a semester to execute, and are intended to be quality research that leads toward a publication (which would result in at least 3 publications in process before graduation).  Many students also publish reviews or other clinical papers during their program, and they are encouraged to "double-dip" to make a class term paper also relevant to their program and worthy of working toward publication.  A student's first research project might be guided by a current faculty project and published jointly with that faculty member; later projects are more independent and may often be pilot work towards the dissertation.  Initially, students spend time getting a feel for research methods and experience in writing academically before they are expected to conduct all of this independently.  We also provide group seminar instruction in writing academically, literature search, research strategies, as well as grant writing and web publication strategies.  All student receive individual support in writing and other research tasks from their primary advisors as well as any other faculty they work with, to gain as much experience as possible in independently managing this critical professional skill.  When I was a new faculty member, in my first position,  I realized belatedly how helpful this kind of guided practice in professional writing would have been as I tried to develop procedures and discipline for professional writing myself.

What expectations or obligations are required in return for the funding for the Ph.D. program?  Is funding associated with work requirements, as in research assistantships for a grant, or is it provided as a fellowship?

Most of the funding we provide for Ph.D. students comes through grants: either federal, internal foundation, or university-based funding.  None of these have explicit research assistant requirements, and all of them emphasize the need for a student's activities to support their Ph.D. program.  Some of the funding sources will have an expectation for providing some class support, such as conducting laboratory demonstrations and teaching in the AAC class, which is directly appropriate for the kinds of teaching student will often do in their future positions.  There may be some expected research activities associated with the student's three research projects, but these are carefully chosen to provide specific experience that the student needs for their program, not what the faculty member needs done as an "assistant" this semester.  Most of us who are on grants already have Masters level students or professional staff working as assistants on these projects, and any research activities the Ph.D. students do are chosen jointly to provide needed expertise, and only to the extent that the student is learning the skills they need to acquire.  We try to tailor any teaching, research, and/or  clinical experiences to only emphasize those skills that you need to acquire.  If you already come in with ample teaching or clinical skills, we assume that you need to spend most of your time doing other learning activities, not providing us with a ready-made skilled teacher or clinician.  If students do elect to participate in teaching specific courses, providing clinic supervision in AAC, or working on a specific research grant, there may be additional funding and expectations involved, but these are entirely chosen at the discretion of the student and advisor.  If you intend to graduate within the targeted three year timeline, we may suggest that you limit these kids of additional teaching or clinical activities if they emphasize skills you may already have.

How many Ph.D. students are typically in the department/program at any given time, and in what ways do students network or collaborate on projects, classes, or other social activities?

We tend to have around 10-12 Ph.D. students in Communication Disorders and about as many in the Special Education division.  Many of the Ph.D. students also interact with Educational Psychology or other Teacher's college Ph.D. students (probably 30 or more) during the stats and design courses that we share.  That tends to make a nice community of students to share ideas, study groups, and collaborate on projects, as well as social opportunities. Several students have collaborated on readings, class projects, writing review articles, developing teaching or clinical materials, and some joint research.  Since each student's research plan is customized, they tend to collaborate with other Ph.D. students on major research projects only when their research interests overlap.  We do encourage direct collaboration with other working professionals whenever appropriate, particularly people who are working with clinical populations of interest ot the student, to build a habit of mutual respect and problem-solving with other clinical professionals.

All of the faculty listed under the first question are involved in grant writing or other external funding sources to some extent.  Many of the faculty have external research and/or personnel preparation grants, and there are frequent opportunities for observing or contributing to the grant writing process.  Students can both learn how to write grants by contributing to the faculty process and possibly also conduct portions of grant-funded research as part of their projects.   Grant writing is included as a series of topics in the Ph.D. first year seminar. Students are encouraged to participate in biweekly research presentations within the department that highlight student and faculty research planning, grant writing, progress, and results.  There is also a grant writing seminar offered by the special education department that specifically guides students toward drafting a grant document suitable for submission to federal sources, useful for supporting student independent grant writing in their first position.

How long does it take the average student to finish their Ph.D., and what is the shortest and longest time (and why)?

The exact level of funding is something that usually gets discussed as you are becoming serious about a Ph.D. decision, since funding levels may fluctuate somewhat depending on grants or other opportunities.  We make a commitment to provide educational grants to all Ph.D. students accepted into our programs at a funding level that we believe is livable as a student.  It is less income than would be expected for a working professional in our field, but competitive or ahead of direct grant/fellowship support at most other universities, and comes with no explicit ties for research assistantships or teaching duties.  We find that living costs in the Midwest are consistent with this funding for basic living expenses, although families are likely to consider additional sources of income to support more than one person.  As this becomes a critical factor in your decision, ask for more information about funding options.