The School of Education at the University of California, Davis, is joining with leading schools and academic departments across the country in a project to improve doctoral education.

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has invited UC Davis to participate with 53 schools and departments at 33 other universities in a research project evaluating doctoral education in several disciplines, including education. The school will work with the campus's Graduate Group in Education to redesign its own Doctor of Philosophy program in education and offer it as a model for other institutions.

The school is among 15 education departments and schools re-tooling doctoral programs as participants in the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate. The initiative also is considering doctoral education in chemistry, English and mathematics, and later will call for proposals in history and the neurosciences. The University of Southern California is the only other California institution chosen for the project.

"We're very pleased and honored by Carnegie's selection," said Harold Levine, dean of the UC Davis school. "This will allow us to exchange our ideas about best practices in graduate education with some of the strongest doctoral-granting programs in the country. And our participation is consistent with our focus on research, engagement and partnership to improve the practice of education -- in this case, right here at home."

George Walker is a Carnegie senior scholar and head of the Carnegie initiative. "We embarked on this project because we felt that this is a propitious time to study new opportunities and responsibilities resulting from evolution of the disciplines as well as general changes in education and society," he said.

The schools and departments involved in the Carnegie initiative will consider what doctoral education should look like and analyze all aspects of their selected doctoral programs to create experiments in design and demonstrate best practices. "For UC Davis, that includes how to prepare students to contribute to the scholarly community and beyond," he added.

Levine said UC Davis' participation comes at an opportune time when the school is setting out to re-examine its Ph.D. program. The program currently enrolls about eight to 10 new students a year, and the dean wants to quadruple its numbers by 2007-08 as part of the new school's expansion. (With California State University-Fresno, the school also offers a doctoral program in educational leadership leading to a Doctor of Education degree, but it is not part of the Carnegie project.)

The school will work closely with representatives from the campus's Graduate Group in Education, which oversees the Ph.D. program.

"Everything is on the table," said Tom Sallee, a professor of mathematics and chair of the group. "We're trying to decide what our graduates should look like: What are the skills, knowledge and attitudes we want a graduate to have?"

Levine and Sallee said some of the questions to be considered include:

• Is there a core curriculum that should be taught? How broad or how deep should it be?
• What kind of mentoring experience should doctoral students receive, and how best can it be provided?
• How can the program help its students understand the policy implications of their research and train them to communicate their research in a political environment?

To stimulate thinking and discussion about the doctoral program, Levine proposes to hold regular meetings and retreats, present guest lectures by scholars in the field, and review best practices at other institutions.

By this spring, Sallee said, he is planning to present program options to the Graduate Group for further discussion; Levine said he hopes to implement the revamped program with faculty approval by fall of 2004.

It was announced earlier this week that the school, transformed from a division into a full school last July, has become a partner with UC Berkeley and Stanford University in the Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), and one of its leading faculty members, Patricia Gándara, will serve as co-director of the policy research center.

The education school currently teaches students minoring in education and offers fifth-year credential programs, master's degrees, and the two doctoral degrees. It is moving to triple the size of the faculty and almost double its student numbers by 2007-08, launch new graduate programs, broaden its interdisciplinary work, and further collaborations with K-12 schools and teachers.