6 Relations to CUNY Master's Degree and Doctoral Programs

As previously discussed (Section 2), the new Ph.D. program will provide substantial intellectual and human resources to strengthen CUNY's existing master's-degree programs in education and will maintain close ties with the teaching campuses. These master's programs, as well as CUNY's own post-master's advanced certificate programs, offered at five of the CUNY colleges, also represent an important source of prospective students for the proposed Ph.D. program (see Section 3), and many faculty members now teaching in the master's programs have research experience and expertise that will be of great value to the doctoral program. Master's programs at CUNY prepare education professionals in all of the curriculum areas to be addressed by the doctoral program. The CUNY advanced certificate programs in administration and supervision, while they do not have a specific research mission, will clearly benefit. Also, their faculty will participate in many of the research and policy analysis projects initiated in the doctoral program. The proposed doctoral program does not represent in any sense a direct continuation of these predoctoral programs, but instead a new opportunity for highly motivated students and education professionals to attain the research skills and experience needed to contribute at the highest levels to the improvement of urban education in America.

The Ph.D. Program in Urban Education has a core commitment to intellectual and research partnerships with many other doctoral programs at CUNY. Especially in the human sciences the doctoral programs in Sociology, Anthropology, Political Science, Economics, History, Philosophy, Linguistics, and Developmental and Educational Psychology, through their faculties' research projects and course offerings, will provide essential support to the new program in the form of research methods courses, elective topics courses, and participation of affiliated faculty on dissertation committees. Individual members of the doctoral faculty in other fields, such as Computer Science, Mathematics, and the natural sciences, will continue to advise the new program in their areas of expertise. Many individual faculty members will not only welcome our students into their courses, but also serve on Studies Committees to guide students and participate in joint research projects that can form the framework for student dissertation research. Many members of the doctoral faculty with primary appointments in other programs will also have affiliations with this program. (See Section 12 for the names of participating faculty.)

There will be a close collaborative relationship between this program and the existing Ph.D. Program in Educational Psychology. The two programs are distinguished primarily by their complementary conceptual frameworks and disciplinary perspectives (sociocultural versus psychological) and to some degree by dominant research methodologies (qualitative-interpretive and multiple-approach methods versus quantitative analysis). There should be no direct competition for students between the two programs because doctoral candidates in the Urban Education program will not be pursuing careers in educational psychology or seeking credentials in that discipline. Students will elect the program that fits their particular career and research aspirations. In other universities we have contacted (see Noble, 1994), programs in educational psychology and in policy analysis and curriculum studies coexist comfortably with distinct missions, disciplinary foundations, courses of study, and student populations served. There will be careful coordination between the programs in matters of faculty recruitment and course offerings to avoid duplication and to take advantage of one another's resources. Through the Center for Advanced Study in Education (CASE), the two programs will also coordinate efforts to obtain increased external research funding and funding to support doctoral student fellowships.