Ph.D. Requirements
Special Committees
The Cornell graduate system requires students to assemble individually-tailored “special committees” to direct their programs of study. Graduate students must select at least two members of their three- (exceptionally four-) member committee from the S&TS field. The Chairperson must be a faculty member of the S&TS graduate field. The remaining members are chosen from Cornell’s graduate faculty as a whole. This system allows students to include faculty members from outside the field of S&TS on their committees, and thus introduces a degree of flexibility in the design of each student’s specific training and research program.
In addition, faculty members in the S&TS graduate field provide ties to other departments and programs through their own wider affiliations. Cemented through joint appointments and graduate field memberships, these include History, Communication, Philosophy, Government, Sociology, Anthropology, Information Science, Environmental Engineering, Peace Studies, Women’s Studies, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Human Development and Family Studies, and other areas of the social and natural sciences. Members of the field thus provide students with a considerable range of disciplinary expertise and perspectives.
The core faculty members of the graduate field are particularly noted for their work in the following areas: history and historiography of science and technology; technology and society; social study of contemporary science and technology; engineering, environmental, and biomedical ethics; women in science; gender and technology; philosophy of science; politics of science and technology; and communication and popularization of science. Much of this work necessarily is historical, sociological, and political in the broadest sense, and it draws on the well-established traditions of expertise in such studies possessed by individual faculty members.
In consultation with their faculty advisers, graduate students in S&TS take active responsibility for the development of their own academic programs within the overall disciplinary context of S&TS. Students are assigned a temporary chairperson, which is chosen by the Director of Graduate Studies (DGS) when they enter the S&TS graduate program. Before the end of the Fall semester of his or her first year, the student must form a temporary committee, consisting of a temporary advisor and two other members of the S&TS Field. The student will meet with this preliminary committee at the end of their first year, in an end-of-year progress meeting. After that meeting the student may reconstitute their committee, but must do so by the end of their third semester.
Course Requirements
Course requirements provide a foundation for students in S&TS, covering key questions and relevant research methods:
1. Each student must successfully complete, prior to their A-exams, a one semester seminar, S&TS 7111, intended as an introduction to the field as a whole. Each student also must complete a one-semester seminar on methods, and at least four additional S&TS courses that broadly cover the field. A total of at least four of the courses taken during a student's first year should be designated as S&TS.
2. All students will be expected to achieve a level of competence in one foreign language sufficient for reading the literature in the student's research area. It will be up to the special committee to decide how this competence should be demonstrated. Additional languages may be required at the discretion of the special committee.
Second Year Project
A central goal of the S&TS graduate curriculum is to prepare students for independent research. To achieve this goal, each student selects a topic related to some field of specialization within S&TS and explores it under the guidance of a faculty committee. This “Second Year Project” creates a context for students to increase their familiarity with research techniques and strategies such as ethnographic fieldwork, or primary source and archival work. Students are expected to present the results of their research in a departmental seminar and/or professional journal or meeting.
Admission to Ph.D. candidacy occurs after the student has 1) passed the A-exam (written and oral examinations in specific subject areas), 2) received committee approval of a dissertation proposal, and 3) completed any additional work required by the committee. The A-exam should be taken, at the latest, by the beginning of the seventh semester of study. Scheduling of A-exams also requires that no incomplete or failed courses appear on the student’s graduate transcript.
Contact Information:
Stacey Stone
Graduate Field Assistant
Graduate Field of Science & Technology Studies
306 Rockefeller Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853 USA
Telephone: (607) 255-3810
E-mail: stsgradfield@cornell.edu
URL: www.gradschool.cornell.edu/