DrPH EOH – Comprehensive Examination

Comprehensive Examination & Candidacy Guidelines

Program Requirements
To achieve “Doctoral Candidate” status, ECU Graduate School guidelines requires that a doctoral student must meet the milestones as outlined below.

1. Successful completion of sufficient coursework to sit for candidacy exam (see section 1.2 of this document).
2. Successful completion of candidacy exam (written, oral, or combination of this or other requirements appropriate to the discipline).
3. Successful selection of a dissertation research advisor and a dissertation committee.
4. Successful preparation of a dissertation research plan (e.g., proposal), approved by the dissertation advisor, program director, and/or dissertation committee.
5. Completion and submission of the Advancement to Doctoral Candidacy form and subsequent approval from the Graduate School

In accordance with ECU policy and accrediting body, Council for Education Public Health (CEPH), the Doctor of Public Health (DrPH), Environmental and Occupational Health (EOH) Program Committee has established that DrPH students meet the above requirements prior to course registration for “PUBH 9000 – Dissertation.” Also noted is that doctoral student must achieve candidacy within 5 calendar years, or 72 credit hours attempted, whichever comes first. Furthermore, a doctoral student should complete all requirements of the degree within 10 calendar years.

1.0 Doctor of Public Health Comprehensive Examination

1.1 Policy for Eligibility
The DrPH Program Committee has established this policy. All doctoral students in the DrPH, EOH program will complete their comprehensive examinations in accordance with this policy.

The purpose of the written comprehensive examination is to evaluate the student’s ability to integrate, analyze, and synthesize information acquired from didactic coursework and training in the DrPH Program curriculum. To be eligible for candidacy, the student must have satisfied all program of study coursework as determined by the ECU Graduate School, the student’s Major Professor and the DrPH Program Committee.

Because the DrPH is an applied degree, the Committee has determined that upon successfully taking and passing all of the didactic coursework including the interdisciplinary core and concentration core courses a doctoral student may sit for the comprehensive final exam. The student’s Major Professor and DrPH Program Committee will guide the composition of the comprehensive exam based on content criteria established through accreditation competencies and learning objectives established by Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH).

The comprehensive examination is a major milestone in the DrPH, EOH curricula and is considered a critical part of advancing towards doctoral candidacy status for the DrPH degree. The written comprehensive examination tests the student’s fundamental knowledge and competencies in the major areas of environmental and occupational health. The DrPH is an advanced, applied, practice degree. Therefore, in addition to having foundational knowledge in didactic coursework, it is critical that the student possess aptitude by demonstrating knowledge and analytical skills in leadership, program management and professional communication.

1.2 Examination Content
The written examination will consist of the following:
1) an open-book examination, focusing on coursework related to the interdisciplinary and concentration core courses and the student’s focus track (see Figure 1 below) and, 2) an closed-book integrative case scenario, designed to gauge the student’s ability to integrate core concepts of environmental and occupational health, public health, policy, administration and leadership as applied to their chosen research area and/or project.

EOH courses included in the comprehensive examination
• PUBH 8125: Environmental and Occupational Epidemiology
• PHAR 7680: Essentials of Toxicology of Diseases
• PUBH 7930: Environmental and Occupational Exposure Assessment
• PUBH 8020: Organizational Theory and Leadership
• PUBH 8025: Quantitative Research Methods
• HUMS 7004: Ethics Research, and
• *PUBH (TBD): Focus Track

*The PUBH (TBD) course will be selected by the student’s Major Professor tailored to their intended research focus and/or selected project.

The questions on the exam will ascertain the competency of the student and test the student’s understanding of their specific research area as applied to environmental and public health. Exam questions may be developed by the student’s advisor and/or other instructors that taught the courses related to the student’s research area or focus track and/or project.

The student’s Major Professor will prepare the integrative question that tests the student’s ability to integrate learned public health communication and leadership skills applied to the concepts of an environmental public health case scenario. The question should be phrased to state these expectations explicitly. The question could focus on a theoretical concept related to their research area or the student could be provided with a dataset and provide an analysis of the supplied data. This question will not be standardized across the cohort and will be tailored to the student’s research interests/focus track.

2.0 Examination Format and Procedures
The instructor of record from each of the above courses will prepare 1-2 questions based on the primary thematic components covered in the course content. Questions from concentration core courses may be modified to match curriculum and/or changes in instructors (e.g., different instructors may focus on different competencies). The comprehensive exam will be reflective of the instruction at the time the course was delivered to the student. The comprehensive exam will be in an essay style, written format and will occur over a three-day period as follows below.

2.1 Open-book Written Examination (Days 1 and 2)
On the first two days of the examination, the student will complete the open-book section. The open-book section will consist of questions taken from the interdisciplinary core, concentration core and focus track/research area. Both on-campus and distance education doctoral students are expected to complete the comprehensive exam on ECU campus.

The exam will be scheduled for 6 hours on each day and will consist of between 8 and 15 questions (1 – 2 questions per core class including their focus track). The date and start time of the exam will be set by the Major Professor in consultation with the student and proctoring center.

The student will be allowed to utilize the Internet, textbooks, and/or library databases to substantiate their response. Since these resources are available to the student, the expectation is for a higher quality answer relative to the open-book portion of the examination. The student should sufficiently and accurately reference their responses while synthesizing the information from multiple disciplines to craft a thoughtful, organized response. Students are expected to work independently and reference all materials used in developing their response.

2.2 Closed-book Written Examination (Day 3)
The second part (Day 3) of the examination will be closed-book, consisting of an integrative, scenario style, environmental public health question(s) tailored to the student’s research area or selected focus track. The student will not be allowed to utilize the Internet, textbooks, and/or library databases to substantiate their response and will have 6 hours to complete the questions. The question(s) for the exam will be developed in coordination with the student’s Major Professor and the DrPH Committee.

2.3 Oral Examination (scheduled within 2 weeks of completion of written examination)
If the student receives an unsatisfactory score (“U”) for any portion of the written comprehensive examination (see section 3.2 for grade expectations), the student must meet with the DrPH Review Committee member(s) to discuss areas of weakness and to schedule a follow-up oral examination. The student must schedule the oral examination within two weeks following the receiving notification of the score for the written examination. The oral examination will consist of a panel of all the Committee members responsible for evaluating the written comprehensive exams. Oral examinations will be formatted similar to a panel interview. The student may be expected to answer questions from all Committee members. The student should expect approximately 2 to 4 hours for the oral examination to allow enough time for all Committee members to ask questions.

3.0 Examination Review, Expectations, and Outcomes

3.1 Examination Review Committee
The Examination Review Committee consists of the instructors of record that prepared questions for the written and/or oral comprehensive examination (the members may be different than the student’s proposed dissertation committee). All Committee members will be able to review answers provided by the student. Committee members will only be responsible for evaluating responses to questions that the Committee member submitted. However, this is not to preclude other Committee members from discussing the student’s responses to other questions. The student’s Major Professor and, if applicable, other instructors that provided questions for the comprehensive exam will evaluate the student’s responses within his/her research area or focus track. The student’s Major Professor will be responsible for retrieving test scores from other instructors reporting grades on the final exam. The final score will be presented to the student, by the Major Professor within 14 business days of the student taking the final exam.

3.2 Expectations
The student is expected to achieve a Satisfactory “S” or “Pass” on all parts of the exam. If the student receives an “Unsatisfactory” on any part of the exam, the student must meet with his/her Major Professor within 14 business days to discuss scheduling a follow up oral examination with the Review Committee (see section 2.3 for more details).

3.3 Examination Outcomes
Upon completion of the comprehensive exam in its entirety, those designated faculty will have up to 14 business days to grade the designated section of the exam. The second part of the exam (closed book: Integrative Learning) will be returned to the student’s Major Professor (or appointee) for review by the Committee and the score returned to the student as mentioned above.

After review by the Examination Review Committee, the outcomes of the exam will be scored as follows; 1) S – Satisfactory progress; 2) U – Unsatisfactory progress with areas of weakness (oral exam required) or; 3) UT – Unsatisfactory progress and termination from the program.

(S): If the student receives an “S” (satisfactory reviews from the reviewing committee), the student will be considered to have “passed” and, if in good academic standing and has successfully defended his/her proposal, will advance towards achieving doctoral candidacy status as outlined by the policies set forth by the ECU Graduate School (see Foreword).

(U) If the student receives an “U” or unsatisfactory reviews on any aspect of the written comprehensive exam, the student must schedule an oral examination (see section 2.3 for more details) with the Review Committee. The follow-up oral examination may result in three outcomes: 1) S – Satisfactory progress, 2) U – Unsatisfactory progress with additional coursework assigned to improve areas of weakness; or 3) UT – Unsatisfactory progress and termination from the program.

(UT) If the student receives Unsatisfactory progress and does not pass the oral examination, the student may be considered by the Review Committee to be terminated from the program.

Results of the comprehensive exam are recorded by the Major Professor and forwarded to the Program Director for submission to the Graduate School.