Culminating Project

Professional doctoral students will complete a culminating project in partial fulfillment of degree requirements.

After passing the comprehensive examination and identifying a culminating project topic, a project committee is appointed. The project committee will take the place of the advisory committee and the faculty adviser is superseded by the project adviser.

The culminating project committee must consist of three to five members. The chair must be a PSU tenure track or non-tenure track faculty member. Potentially all of the regular committee members can be off-campus members. At least two committee members (the chair and a regular member) must have doctoral degrees.  At the discretion of the program, the designation of co-chair can be used for one regular member of the committee. The designation of co-chair recognizes the significant academic advising role of the committee member, but oversight of the process and procedures and all administrative responsibilities remains with the chair.  

A proposal is not required for a culminating project, but some programs may develop their own internal proposal process. Professional doctoral students are not advanced to candidacy, but they are required to obtain Human Research Protection Program (HRPP) approval if appropriate (see below).  

With guidance from the culminating project committee, the student prepares a project designed to address a problem of practice. Until the degree is granted, the student enrolls for the number of graduate credits appropriate to the amount of University services utilized, as determined by the project chair, with a minimum of 1 graduate credit each term. Professional doctoral students must register for 18 credits of 606 Project before graduation. 

For professional doctoral students, a maximum of five years will be allowed from the completion of comprehensive examinations to graduation. Individual programs may have stricter limits. Failure to meet this time limit will result in cancellation of admission to the doctoral program.