Fielding Graduate University

New student orientation to the HOD doctoral program is an in-person session between incoming classes and doctoral program faculty. At the orientation, the faculty works with you to: assess your academic readiness; evaluate your research, personal skills and learning resources; facilitate your understanding of Fielding's learning model and delivery method, set your academic and professional goals; and develop your support group of faculty and peers. While at orientation, students begin work on their Learning Plan, a blueprint which organizes the student's graduate studies in relation to Fielding's requirements and to the student's academic background, personal experience, and interests. The completed Learning Plan should be submitted for approval within 30 days after the conclusion of the in-person orientation event.

Faculty/Instructor(s): 

This area explores theories and research in normal development and the evolution of consciousness across the life span, including prenatal development, birth, infancy, early childhood, middle and late childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, maturity, old age, and death.

Pre-requisites: HOD-700

This study area is designed to aid the student in selecting a methodological and theoretical framework for clarifying and ordering the other knowledge areas. It should also help in developing a language for communicating concepts and issues across disciplinary boundaries. It represents and introduction to the broad theoretical traditions that shape the human and social sciences, and to the process of generating models for understanding, explaining, and acting, with emphasis on major ways of conceptualizing human, social, and organizational systems.

Pre-requisites: HOD-700

Students explore conceptual frameworks for organizational dynamics based on historical perspective and empirical findings, theories and paradigms, problem-solving, and personal engagement.

Pre-requisites: HOD-700

After students have completed at least three of the required Knowledge Area courses, including HOD-753A, they schedule a review with their faculty mentor and one other faculty member to discuss their academic progress. Assessor feedback, the Learning Plan, and the next phase of study are usually covered in this review.

Pre-requisites: HOD-753A, plus 20 additional credits of Knowledge Areas

The comprehensive assessment is intended to provide the doctoral student with an opportunity to review work done in the knowledge areas, and to think in a comprehensive and integrated manner about issues that cut across and/or encompass the knowledge areas.

Pre-requisites: HOD-700, HOD-730, HOD-753A, HOD-753B, and 40 additional credits from HOD Knowledge Areas

Signifies completion of the public defense of the dissertation.

Pre-requisites: Dissertation Proposal Approval

Completion of this course signifies the student has a full dissertation committee and is working on their dissertation proposal.

Completion of this course signifies the full dissertation committee has reviewed the final draft of the dissertation and has indicated it is ready to be proofread and prepared for binding.

Pre-requisites: Dissertation Proposal Approval

Students are introduced to different modes of inquiry and practice that characterize the work of the scholar-practitioner. This course develops doctoral-level research competencies, provides an understanding of different modes of practice in terms of practical skills and scholarly underpinnings, and synthesizes scholarship and practice as students become true scholar-practitioners.

Pre-requisites: HOD-700

A focus on different methods, approaches, and designs for research, including empirical and interpretive methods and action-oriented approaches.

Pre-requisites: HOD-700

Develops advanced competencies in practice-based interventions and practice modalities.

Pre-requisites: HOD-700

Focuses on advanced competencies in the research methods, approaches, designs, analyses, and writing skills needed for the student's dissertation.

Pre-requisites: HOD-700

This area is defined by individual students. It can be used to acquire new knowledge or to deepen existing knowledge in a specific area in which students expect to build or advance professional careers.

Pre-requisites: HOD-700

In this area, students examine major theorists and schools of thought from a social and interactional perspective. Particular attention is given to individual development and the study of selected theories oriented toward personal change and lifespan development. Also of interest are the more traditional perspectives seen in the psychoanalytic, neoanalytic, behavioral, and humanistic theories in the field.

Pre-requisites: HOD-700

This area includes knowledge about social structures and behavior within the group, the family, and the organization. Factors associated with group dynamics and small group theory, attribution theory, attitude development, social influence, helping behavior, feminist and minority issues, negotiation and problem solving, power and leadership, and organizational dynamics are explored from a social-psychological perspective. This area also involves knowledge of the socialization process, role behavior, social interaction, social movements, and collective behavior.

Pre-requisites: HOD-700

Various theoretical approaches to viewing organizations are studied. These include the open systems model, principals of organizational behavior, community planning, constituency development, organizational change concepts, and the renewal process.

Pre-requisites: HOD-700

This area surveys the field of human behavior with emphasis on needs, expectations, learning, motivation, and communication. The focus is upon common human experience in the cognitive and affective realms, and on the nature of factors that influence physical, sexual, social, esthetic, and moral actions and interactions. Adult learning theory is of major importance to this area.

Pre-requisites: HOD-700

This area includes a review and comparison of historical and contemporary literature on management and leadership. In addition to contemporary theories, many of the concepts found in the practice of organization development are dealt with in this course.

Pre-requisites: HOD-700

This area reflects the growing importance of the ecological paradigm in the social sciences and in our culture. This paradigm situates individuals, organizations, and whole societies in their ecological and natural context and looks at the ecological constraints upon and implications of human activity. Students are encouraged to study both global and local dimensions of human and social problems ranging from overpopulation and environmental destruction to issues in community and work environments.

Pre-requisites: HOD-700

This area focuses on the nature and functioning of information systems and technology, and on the increasing "information" of society. It assumes that human and organization development will increasingly intersect with computerized information systems and that competence in understanding and designing such systems as well as in responding to their human, organizational, and social implications is a growing part of the role of HOD professional. Both organizational and technical aspects of information systems are included in this area.

Pre-requisites: HOD-700

Faculty/Instructor(s): 

Many midcareer professionals want and need a disciplined understanding of contemporary public life, collective decision- making, and social and public action. Through this knowledge area, students become familiar with the chief themes in current political debate, learn how public policy is made and how to influence that process, and gain an understanding of the impact of laws, government actions, and other relevant issues on their professions and organizations. Students are also encouraged to examine their own political convictions and to envision an expanded public role.

Pre-requisites: HOD-700

Human and organization development occur within the context of social changes that in previous times were often slow, and that are usually rapid today. In this area students examine theories of social change, and investigate historic and contemporary changes. The purpose is to understand their meaning, to understand how and why such changes occur - not with the aim of adjusting to them, but rather of intervening proactively in the process.

Pre-requisites: HOD-700

Major components of various human services provided in the community for family, schools, marriage, work institutions, and spiritual development are surveyed in this study area. The delivery of human services as carried out through these institutions is discussed, and various systems needed to provide supportive and facilitating functions are reviewed. A central objective of the study area is to provide knowledge and skills around the design, creation, and management of such requisite systems.

Pre-requisites: HOD-700

The study of diversity involves understanding and respecting differences in race, ethnicity, culture, class, gender, sexual orientation, etc.; skill in interacting with such varying groups is a key dimension of human and organization development. This knowledge area also explores structural inequality, since honoring differences is not the same as understanding how inequality is produced in society, built into the structure and functioning of our social institutions.

Pre-requisites: HOD-700

As organizations become increasingly international in scope, individuals find their work projects, their clientele, and their career paths pushed in a global direction: human resources personnel deal with multicultural and international labor forces; organizations and consultants have clients across the globe; activists deal with cultural/national oppression; specialists assist in poor rural areas around the globe; information networks carry data across borders; and ecologists attempt to preserve ecosystems damaged by internationally generated pollution. These are a few examples of possible domains to explore in this new knowledge area.

Pre-requisites: HOD-700

All the modules in HOD 719 are designed to enable students to learn a particular research method in depth. HOD 753A and HOD 753B are pre-requisites; in general, these modules will be taken before HOD 753D. This module provides an action research model known as action inquiry that engages 1st (subjective), 2nd (inter-subjective) and 3rd person frameworks in helping the researcher look at oneself in relation to the research and its impact on the participants and the system of study.

Faculty/Instructor(s): 

All the course modules of HOD-719 are designed to enable students to learn a particular research method in-depth. This module focuses on using the theory of the coordinated management of meaning ("CMM") in research. Students learn to frame research projects within the conceptualizations provided by the theory, to collect and analyze data based on those concepts, and to interpret, evaluate and act on the basis of the findings. The module moves from a third-person position in which students read and critique other people's research, through a supervised group project, to a first-person position in which students design and conduct their own small research project.

Pre-requisites: HOD-700, HOD-753A, and HOD-753B

All the modules in HOD 719 are designed to enable students to learn a particular research method in depth. HOD 753A and HOD 753B are pre-requisites; in general, these modules will be taken before HOD 753D. This module helps build an understanding of the epistemological and ontological issues involved in contemporary ethnography. Students will experience ethnography as a methodology, as a way of seeing, and as a way of engaging with social reality. Students will understand the skills that will need to be developed in order to successfully complete ethnography. Students will know if ethnography suits their intellectual projects and personal styles of engagement.

Pre-requisites: HOD-700, HOD-753A, and HOD-753B

All the modules in HOD 719 are designed to enable students to learn a particular research method in depth. HOD 753A and HOD 753B are pre-requisites; in general, these modules will be taken before HOD 753D. This module introduces the domains of phenomenology and hermeneutics through experientially grounded activities that display the foundations and orientation of interpretive ways of knowing. Through understanding the epistemological promise of interpretive phenomenology, we aim to reveal the research potentialities and personal challenges of working within this culture of inquiry. By drawing upon insights from applied studies in the human, social, organizational and educational sciences, we hope to show the efficacy of approaching any phenomenon from a phenomenological perspective.

Pre-requisites: HOD-700, HOD-753A, and HOD-753B

All the modules in HOD 719 are designed to enable students to learn a particular research method in depth. HOD 753A and HOD 753B are pre-requisites; in general, these modules will be taken before HOD 753D. This module is designed to provide skill development for students using QDA at the dissertation level. It requires intensive training using conventional and innovative qualitative techniques as well as training in related software tools.

Pre-requisites: HOD-700, HOD-753A, and HOD-753B

All the modules in HOD 719 are designed to enable students to learn a particular research method in depth. HOD 753A and HOD 753B are pre-requisites; in general, these modules will be taken before HOD 753D. This module includes an overview of quantitative research techniques, emphasizing experimental, quasi-experimental, descriptive, analytical and mix-methods designs. The concepts of sampling, normal distributions, and tests of significance will be dealt with in depth and will be introduced in November. Special emphasis will be placed on connecting research designs and statistical tests appropriate for each design. Included in the course is an overview of the planning, executing, and writing up of quantitative research studies. Students will also develop an ability to critically evaluate the generalizability of research studies for decision-making.

Pre-requisites: HOD-700, HOD-753A, and HOD-753B

Provides a flexible opportunity for students to complete 1 to 10 units of academic credit in specialized studies. Students in all phases of their doctoral studies can assess in HOD-721, to build doctoral competencies, deepen scholarly knowledge, extend the breadth of their scholar-practitioner expertise, and explore diverse epistemologies, ways of knowing, and world views. Students are limited to 20 units of HOD-721. HOD-721 offers opportunities for both structured and individualized studies. Students contract individually with faculty for HOD-721. The assessment contract needs to specify the associated credit as well as the detailed expectations for the assessment. Allocation of credit is determined by the assessor, following the HOD-721 designation of credit guidelines.

Students may earn up to 4 credits of training. Hours, once approved, are awarded as 40 clock hours of training earn 1 unit of credit. This course is entirely optional and does not count towards any graduation requirements.

Pre-requisites: HOD-700

Students may earn up to 10 credits of internship. Hours, once approved, are awarded as 40 clock hours of internship equals 1 units of credit. This course is entirely optional and does not count towards any graduation requirements.

Pre-requisites: HOD-700