PhD in Anatomical Science Education

2023-2024 Anatomical Sciences Education Student Handbook

Meet the Graduate Students

Scholarly Activities

Overview

The PhD program in human Anatomical Sciences Education is a dissertation-based doctoral program designed to train individuals to become fully qualified educators in all of the anatomical disciplines and conduct educational scholarly research for promotion and tenure. It offers a broad range of courses related to medical human gross and microscopic anatomy, anatomical imaging, cell biology, combined with higher education. This program will cover anatomical knowledge, pedagogical expertise, and assessment skills critical for training students for a career in teaching anatomy at the university level and in conducting scholarship in medical education. Students will be mentored to perform and document medical educational research culminating in a dissertation that will be defended in front of a PhD committee composed of faculty from the Colleges of Medicine and Education. The courses offered jointly by the College of Medicine and the College of Education will prepare individuals for competitive positions at higher education colleges and universities. Rather than conducting biomedical bench-based research, individuals in this program will conduct scholarly research in medical education directed by faculty in the Colleges of Medicine and Education.

This PhD program in Anatomical Sciences Education is a unique program in Florida and the Southeast. The design of the curriculum for the doctoral program includes required courses in all of the anatomical disciplines: gross anatomy, embryology, histology, and neuroanatomy. In addition, students will be expected to complete other biomedical courses such as cell biology, in order to give students a solid foundational knowledge that helps them understand and teach anatomy, embryology, and histology. This is particularly important because medical schools are moving their curricula to be more integrated and expect faculty to combine material from, say, anatomy and physiology or histology and biochemistry. PhD candidates will take educational research courses as well as courses focusing on curriculum development and teaching adult learners in the College of Education.

Doctoral students in our program may take classes with other professional students and later in the curriculum could serve as teaching assistants in anatomy and histology courses to pre-professional and professional students. For their dissertation work, students will be able to pursue a broad array of medical education research topics. This will yield a more versatile educational researcher, thereby, giving our students credibility to the broader community of medical education researchers and opening up more avenues for publishing and presenting their work.

Admission Requirements

Applicants must meet the minimum requirements for the University of Florida Graduate School: Junior/Senior GPA > 3.0. The student will submit a minimum of three letters of reference, a statement of purpose, and a resume, which the admissions committee will use to assess the student’s qualifications for admission to the program. International students must comply with current UF standards for admission to the Graduate School, including requirements for English language competency and financial responsibility.

Graduation Requirements

The student will complete a total of 90+ credit hours for graduation. The degree program will require completion of a dissertation under the direction of the student’s supervisory committee and a qualifying and final examination by the supervisory committee. The student will complete written and verbal qualifying examinations and will present and defend a research proposal before the graduate supervisory committee prior to initiating research for the doctoral dissertation. The graduate supervisory committee will assess the written dissertation and will examine the student’s overall comprehension and knowledge in a final defense of the dissertation.

Note: The pre-requisites for the PhD program will be the same regardless of whether a student completed an online Master’s or has a Bachelor’s degree. Applicants to the doctorate program must have completed a Bachelor’s degree from a nationally accredited institution, or equivalent. This advanced program requires a strong foundation of science courses in Biology, Anatomy & Physiology, Chemistry, and/or Physics.

In the case a PhD student requests early graduation with a master’s degree, the student must be in good academic standing within the PhD program. The Master’s supervisory committee will be composed of the same members who served on the student’s previous PhD supervisory committee. Procedurally, applications to the Master’s program should contain a letter from the student requesting a change of degree program and a letter of recommendation from the student’s PhD mentor stating that previous work conducted while in the PhD program is sufficient to meet all the requirements for the Master’s Program and that all that remains is writing a Master’s thesis and successfully defending it before the supervisory committee.

Curriculum

Required Courses

Elective Courses

Proposed Plan of Study

Financial Support

PhD students will be supported  Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology (ACB) and College of Medicine.

Supervisory Committee

Program Contact:

Kyle Rarey, Ph.D
Anatomical Sciences Education PhD Program Director
(352) 273-5753
rarey@ufl.edu

Mark Zakshvesky
Academic Program Specialist III
(352) 273-8471
zmz30@ufl.edu

We are not accepting applications at this time