Medical Psychology PhD Program (Page 2)

Program Requirements
 
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Teaching activities

classroom facilitiesTeaching is an important part of Ph.D. training. It is necessary to prepare those individuals who go on to faculty positions. It is a valuable experience for all students as they communicate what they know to others. It also is an important service to the medical students and other graduate students at USUHS. All graduate students in the Medical Psychology track must participate as teaching assistants.
 
seminarMinimally, students are required to assist with at least one course per year during their second and third years of training. Students who want to gain more teaching experience may assist in teaching more than one course a year throughout their years at USUHS. Select, advanced graduate students may gain additional teaching experience by conducting sessions within graduate seminars and lecturing in the medical school.

Research activities

Upon entry into the program, students are required to meet with each full-time faculty member to learn about faculty research interests and opportunities. Students then are matched with a primary advisor by mutual agreement of the student and faculty member, and are expected to become involved in ongoing research. These assignments may be changed throughout graduate training. Students typically work with their advisor in research, but students may do research with faculty other than their primary advisor. In such cases, the advisor continues to monitor student progress in consultation with the other faculty. All students are expected to be active in research throughout their graduate career. Specific research or research-related projects must be conducted at certain points in the program (see below).
 
Advancement to Ph.D. candidacy typically occurs at the end of the second year, after students meet three milestones: satisfactory completion of a second-year project (described below); passing of Ph.D. qualifying exams; and passing grades (As or Bs) in 48 credit hours of course work.
 
student activitiesBeginning in the third year, students are expected to begin to function as independent investigators. Collaboration with their advisor and other faculty continues, but emphasis is placed on the transition from student to professional and from research apprentice to independent scientist. Students are expected to take primary responsibility for research studies and to complete them before beginning work on their doctoral dissertation. The bulk of this work is during the third and fourth year of study. The goal of this period is for students to acquire research, data analytic, and writing skills that will equip them for independent professional life.
 
Because most students spend their first year participating in ongoing research and continue to develop independent lines of study within established projects, the availability of ongoing research programs is crucial. The faculty members in Medical and Clinical Psychology have been active in research, and each has several current projects. Opportunities for student involvement in these projects range from planning and formulation of hypotheses and study design to conduct, analysis, and presentation of findings.
 
1)Second-Year Project
During the second year, students must complete a research project that is required for advancement to candidacy and which may form the basis of a Master's thesis. This project has three components. First, students develop a research problem, hypotheses, and design under the guidance of the advisor. Second, the student conducts the study and analyzes the data. Third, the student writes the study up in a form suitable for publication. The study may be on any topic in health and behavior that is agreeable to both student and advisor. The written paper based on this project is reviewed by the faculty member under whose direction the research is conducted.
 
student studying 2) Master's Thesis
The Master's thesis usually is written up at the end of the second year or the beginning of the third year. The write-up of the second year project may be expanded and reformatted to constitute the Master's thesis (according to USUHS guidelines), or a separate project may be conducted that becomes the Master's thesis. The written Master's thesis is reviewed and must be approved by a committee made up of the student's advisor and two other full-time faculty members within the department.
 
3) Third-Year Project
In the third year of study, each student must complete either 1 of the following 2 writing projects:
 
(a) write a review paper in the style of Psychological Bulletin. The topic, scope, and third year paper must be read and approved by two faculty members within the Department other than the student's major advisor. The topic of this paper must differ substantially from any topics studied to date by the student as part of a faculty member's research program. The purpose of this requirement is to have students select a topic, study the relevant literature, integrate the literature, and prepare an original review, as they will need to do to develop an original doctoral dissertation topic and to develop ideas for original research proposals and programs as a professional scientist. Third-year papers typically range from 30 to 50 pages in length. The third-year paper may form the basis of the literature review for the doctoral dissertation.
 
OR
 
(b) develop and write an individual training grant proposal, adhering strictly to the format of an NIH predoctoral training (F31) grant. This grant proposal will include a literature review and detailed research plan for predoctoral and dissertation research, description of a proposed training plan for the student prior to their dissertation, a statement from the student regarding career goals and plans, and a discussion of postdoctoral research plans. This proposal will be read and approved by the student's advisor and two other faculty members. The student is encouraged to submit this proposal upon completion for competitive review and funding by NIH. If the student elects to write this fellowship proposal, work on this should begin immediately upon completion of the second year project. Information about NIH guidelines for NIH predoctoral fellowship guidelines can be found at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-00-125.html.
 
4) Doctoral dissertation
The doctoral dissertation, begun during the fourth or fifth year, typically is a study that is initiated, designed, conducted, analyzed, written, and presented by the student. Dissertations are written in a standard format according the USUHS guidelines. Students must critically review relevant literature, formulate a problem, derive testable hypotheses, design a study that would stand up to methodologic evaluation, analyze and explain results, and place the study in a broader context. The doctoral dissertation first must be proposed in a written document and then defended orally and approved by the doctoral dissertation committee. The dissertation is supervised and evaluated by a committee of at least four, full-time faculty members, including the student's advisor, two other full-time faculty members from the Department, and one full-time faculty member from outside the Department but on the USUHS faculty. The committee can include additional faculty members or relevant scientists or professionals who are not faculty members. The student's advisor cannot serve as the chair of this committee. The chair of the committee should be a tenured faculty member.

Summary of Requirements for the Ph.D. Degree in Medical Psychology

(1) Completion of at least 144 course credit hours (of which, at least 48 must be graded), including:

(2) Ph.D. qualifying examination (end of 2nd year)
 
(3) Second year research project
 
(4) Master's Thesis
 
(5) Third year review paper
 
(6) Teaching requirements
 
(7) Dissertation proposal defense and specialty exam
 
(8) Doctoral dissertation, including the written dissertation, oral defense, and public presentation

Dissertation Process

The dissertation process involves the following steps:
 
(1) The student selects a doctoral dissertation topic in consultation with a faculty advisor who agrees to supervise the research.
 
(2) A doctoral dissertation committee is formed that includes a chair (a tenured faculty member at USUHS other than the advisor), the advisor, at least two full-time faculty members from the Department other than the advisor (the chair can count), and at least one USUHS faculty member from outside the Department.
 
(3) The student writes a dissertation proposal that includes a statement and justification of the question under study, a review of the relevant literature, hypotheses to be tested, study design and methods, any preliminary or pilot data, data analytic strategy, and bibliography.
 
(4) This written proposal is reviewed for format and inclusion of all sections by the major advisor and by one other member of the doctoral dissertation committee before it is forwarded to all committee members for detailed review of its substance.
 
(5) The entire doctoral dissertation committee reviews the written proposal. Committee members have 2 - 6 weeks to do this work.
 
(6) A meeting of the committee and the student is held that consists of three parts:

(7) The committee decides whether the student passes the specialty examination, whether the proposed doctoral dissertation research may begin with or without changes, and whether an additional meeting needs to be held regarding the specialty examination or research proposal.
 
(8) The student is expected to consult with and update members of the committee periodically during the conduct, analysis, and write-up of the doctoral dissertation research.
 
(9) When data collection is complete, the student analyzes the data and writes up the work, including the results and a discussion of the results.
 
(10) The written dissertation is reviewed by two members of the committee to insure that all parts of the write-up have been completed and that the work is consistent with the proposal.
 
(11) The written dissertation is distributed to all committee members for detailed review.
 
(12) The dissertation committee reconvenes, administers a final oral examination on the dissertation conduct, results, and discussion, and decides whether the work is approved as submitted or with changes. This meeting constitutes the private dissertation defense.
 
(13) The student presents a public lecture on the dissertation research. This required lecture constitutes the public dissertation defense.
 
(14) The student completes all required paperwork and deposits the dissertation with the university.
 
Note: The Department and University allow an alternative doctoral dissertation format that includes a statement and justification of the topic, relevant background literature, a compendium of a series of studies already conducted, a discussion and synthesis of the findings of the studies, and a bibliography. The student must have played the lead role or a major role in all of the studies that are included in this type of dissertation. The student must follow all of the steps for a doctoral dissertation listed above, except that the collection of data already has occurred. This format is rare, but can be proposed.

Continue to page 3 of program requirements

Contact Information

Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences
4301 Jones Bridge Road
Bethesda, Maryland 20814-4799


Center for Deployment Psychology
Center for Health Disparities