Four Concentrations
Special Committee
Core Courses
Moving from MS to PhD

Four Concentrations
The graduate program in Development Sociology is noted for its ability to provide training that is tailored to the research interests of each individual student while simultaneously ensuring a sound grounding in sociology. Graduate students, in conjunction with their Special Committee (described below), craft a program of study that draws from all across the university. The designated Core Courses (also described below) provide a sociological foundation from which to pursue this course of inquiry. Overall, the graduate program is organized into four concentrations:

• Community and Regional Sociology: concerns the relationship between social, economic, political and demographic change and the quality of life, and in particular, spatial variations in well-being and opportunity; community as the nexus of social action, and community as a force shaping alternative social outcomes.
• Population and Development: focuses on theoretical, methodological and applied aspects of population and development in both developing countries and the United States from a social demography perspective; emphasis on links between population, food and environmental sustainability, fertility, and population movements.
• Rural and Environmental Sociology: emphasis on environmental equity and rural sustainability, social carrying capacity and the nexus between poverty and resource allocation, access and use, and devolution of power and responsibility.
• State, Economy, and Society: combines themes of political and economic sociology, within macro- and micro-comparative and historical approaches; emphasizes general training in the social change and development area to enhance students' credentials for general sociology programs; views development as less the analysis of the Third World, and more the analysis of global and local processes with broad variation.

Special Committee
A unique aspect of the Cornell University Graduate School is its "special committee" system. A special committee consists of two or more faculty whom a graduate student chooses to guide his or her work in specific subject matter areas. The special committee assists in course selection, thesis and PhD preparation, and examines the student in "A" and "B" exams.

The focal member of the special committee is the committee chairperson. This person must be a faculty member of the Field of Development Sociology and must represent one of the four major concentrations currently offered by the Field. Other members of a graduate student's special committee guide the student's training in minor subject areas.

Students at the MS level will normally have two members on their special committees: the chairperson, representing one of the four major concentrations in the Field of Development Sociology, and a minor member, representing a concentration other than that chosen as the major. MS candidates may elect a minor offered by the Field of Development Sociology or by another field. Choosing an "internal minor" tends to be most advantageous for students with little advanced preparation in Development Sociology.

Upon completing the MS degree, students pursuing a PhD in Development Sociology must select an additional committee member. At least one of the minor members of the committee must represent a concentration in a field other than Development Sociology. Frequent choices for external minors for Development Sociology graduate students include City & Regional Planning; Natural Resources; Sociology; Policy Analysis & Management; International Agriculture and Rural Development; or one of Cornell's area studies programs. Sometimes, PhD candidates have a fourth "optional" member on their committees. This optional member may be chosen from any of the graduate faculty at Cornell University, and sometimes represents another institution. Members of special committees serve on a mutually agreed upon basis. Students may elect to change members of their special committee, and faculty may also resign from a special committee.

Within Development Sociology, some graduate students are "internationally oriented" while others focus on the United States or Canada. Still others pursue a domestic/international orientation and select their courses and committee members accordingly. 

Core Courses
Graduate fields at Cornell, including Development Sociology, have no mandatory course work requirements nor credit hours to be earned. However, the Field of Development Sociology has a set of five core courses which are highly recommended to all students. They should be completed within the first year for all MS/PhD students, regardless of when the MS is completed.

These course recommendations exist for several reasons. First, in a rapidly changing and interdisciplinary field such as Development Sociology, there still remains a need for graduate degree holders to have some common core of training. Second, students with this basic theoretical and methodological background are at a competitive advantage in the current job market, both academic and non-academic. Third, given that the Field sometimes admits graduate students without sociological theory and methodology training, such students will particularly benefit from taking this core before going on for a PhD. Equivalent core courses may be substituted from Cornell or elsewhere, with permission of your special committee chair. The five Core Courses are:

• Classical Sociological Theory.
• Sociological Theories of Development.
• Foundations in Social Research: Comparative Epistemologies.
• Quantitative Methods.
• Qualitative Methods.

It is important that all students entering Development Sociology take these courses in a similar sequence in order to maximize the cohort effect of learning similar subjects within a similar group of people. This may not always be possible, but is strongly encouraged by the Field. Preferably, the course sequencing would be as follows:

1st year Fall:

• Comparative Epistemologies
• Classical Sociological Theory
• Elective or Statistics (if needed)

1st year Spring:

• Quantitative Methods
• Qualitative Methods Sociological
• Theories of Development

Note the appearance of a statistics course in the first year. We feel that all graduate students should enter the program with or otherwise take at least one entry-level statistical method such as the Social Statistics course offered through Cornell's Industrial and Labor Relations School (ILRST 510) or Statistical Methods offered through Biometry (BTRY 601) (other equivalents exist). The former is offered both Fall and Spring semesters; the latter in Fall and Summer. We are aware that this prescription, both in content and timing, is challenging, especially for students with little previous theory and methods in sociology. The advantage of this demanding first-year plan is that you will have considerable freedom in your second year to tackle your masters thesis and be well prepared from a course-standpoint to accomplish it. 

Moving from MS to PhD
In order to get a PhD in this Field one must complete the following steps: complete an acceptable Master's degree, be granted change of status to the PhD program, pass the Admission to Candidacy Examination, and write and defend a doctoral dissertation. Additionally, the student must complete six "residence units." Practically speaking, this means six semesters of satisfactory work, two of which may be done at the Master's level and some of which may be accrued during fieldwork. In practice, few students have difficulty accumulating these six units.

Following the examination of the Master's thesis, there is a faculty review of where the student has been academically and where he or she is going. On the basis of this review, the student's chairperson must decide whether to support the student for entry into the doctoral program. If the student shows strong potential, the Master's work meets one of the Field models for an acceptable thesis, and steady progress has been made in completing recommended course work, a special committee chairperson should have no hesitation in recommending a status change. In turn, the Field usually accepts the student into the PhD program through a majority vote.

Upon change to PhD status, the student must add the second minor member to the special committee if he or she has not already done so. Course work at the PhD level may last another year or two (depending upon the number of semesters in the MS program), after which the student must pass the "A" exam (Admission to Candidacy Examination) which covers all of his or her program up to that point. This exam usually consists of written answers to take-home questions from each of the committee members, followed by an oral examination of several hours. Students majoring in the Population and Development concentration are required to sit for a formal/standardized "A" exam that is administered by members of the concentration. Students minoring in Population and Development are not required to take this exam.

By the time of the "A" exam, the student should be advancing on a doctoral dissertation topic. If the student plans to do overseas fieldwork, a great deal of planning and preparation is necessary. For example, almost all foreign countries require graduate students to be attached to an institute or agency, so all such arrangements must be completed in addition to ensuring human subjects protocols are approved. Similarly, applications for travel and research funds are typically made eight to twelve months prior to the initiation of fieldwork. Then there are the usual problems of visas, last minute changes in one's research design, background reading, etc. Students working on "domestic" research topics usually have fewer obstacles, but they may find it necessary to apprentice themselves to an ongoing project before deciding to work on a particular aspect of what is usually a complex program. Preparation for doctoral research, data collection, data analysis, and the writing of a dissertation usually require two years, although this has been done in less time.