PhD IT Concentration in Information Systems

IT PhD Concentrations

Course Descriptions

Information Technology

Information Systems

Software Engineering

Information Security and Assurance

Elsewhere

PhD Qualifying Exams

Students may designate a concentration in information systems in their doctoral degree title. In that case the transcript of a graduating student would be "PhD in Information Technology with Concentration in Information Systems." Students may also pursue such doctoral studies without designating a concentration in their degree title.

Requirements

Students seeking this concentration must satisfy all the requirements for the PhD in Information Technology. In addition, the following requirements must be met.

Plan of Study

All decisions concerning the student's course requirements and plan of study must be approved by the advisor or director, with the consent of the Senior Associate Dean.

Doctoral Supervisory Committee

The composition of the doctoral supervisory committee is to be approved by the Volgenau School Senior Associate Dean Permission for the comprehensive examination and the dissertation defense is requested from the Volgenau School Senior Associate Dean on the basis of a written request and plan that has been approved by the supervisory committee.

Note for PhD pre-defense and final defense:

It is the University policy that the final defense can only occur at least two weeks after the pre-defense.

The Volgenau School's policy requires that the final defense for the PhD in IT degree can only occur at least four weeks after the pre-defense. Under very special circumstances, the minimum two-week period determined by the University policy may be approved by the Senior Associate Dean.

Students in the PhD in IT degree program must submit an Approval to Defend Dissertation form [PDF] along with a copy of the written dissertation to Lisa Nolder after successfully passing their pre-defense.

Students should also submit to the Associate Dean (via e-mail): (a) a copy of the title and abstract of the dissertation, (b) a list of publications resulting from the dissertation, and (c) information on future employment after graduation.

Students are responsible for providing an electronic version of the announcement to be posted at various places within the university to the staff person in charge of coordinating their respective PhD degrees. Failure to do so will delay the date of the final defense.

Qualifying Examinations

To satisfy the breadth requirement of the PhD degree, each student must pass a set of qualifying examinations designed to test a student's fundamental knowledge. The general IT PhD requirement is that each student must take four exams from three different master's programs. For the concentration in information systems:

Two exams from the following list:

Two exams from software engineering, computer science, information security and assurance, and statistical science (at most one exam may be taken from each of these four master's programs):

Software Engineering

Computer Science

Language Processing
Artificial Intelligence
Foundations of Computer Science

Information Security and Assurance

Information Security and Assurance

Statistical Science

Applied Probability
Applied Statistics

Advanced Emphasis Requirement

For students specializing in information systems, at least 18 of the 24 credits in the advanced emphasis requirement must be taken as follows:

At least 12 credits from Group A: INFS and ISA courses in Information Systems and Information Security
The remaining 6 credits from Groups B and C: SWE and CS courses in Software Engineering and Computer Science

Proposed lists in these 3 groups are listed below:

Group A: INFS and ISA Courses
- INFS 764 - Object-Oriented Database Systems
- INFS 796 - Directed Readings in Information Technology
- INFS 861 - Distributed Database Management Systems
- INFS 865 - Networks and Distributed Systems Security
- INFS 867 - Intelligent Databases
- ISA 562 - Information Security Theory and Practice
- ISA 656 - Network Security
- ISA 765 - Database and Distributed Systems Security
- ISA 797 - Advanced Topics in Information Security
Group B: SWE Courses
- SWE 720 - Advanced Software Requirements
- SWE 721 - Reusable Software Architectures
- SWE 763 - Software Engineering Experimentation
- SWE 796 - Directed Readings in Software Engineering
- SWE 821 - Software Engineering Seminar
- SWE 823 - Software for Critical Systems
- SWE 824 - Program Analysis for Software Testing
Group C: CS Courses
- CS 583 - Analysis of Algorithms
- CS 688 - Pattern Recognition
- CS 719 - Scaling Technologies for E-business
- CS 750 - Theory and Applications of Data Mining
- CS 782 - Machine Learning
- CS 787 - Decision Guidance Systems
- CS 880 - Research Topics in Artificial Intelligence
- CS 811 - Research Topics in Machine Learning and Inference