Academic Programs - PhD

Collaborative PhD Program

The PhD Program for the OU College of Nursing combines efforts with two other well-established institutions with existing PhD programs in nursing. This collaboration benefits all three schools. Each brings a different dimension in experience, cultural resources, and methodological expertise. All three seek to enhance their program’s offerings in nursing that are culturally sensitive and caring. Filling an online course with PhD students from all three campuses offers cross-fertilization of students’ ideas and perspectives, overcomes tuition differences across schools, and exposes students and faculty to stellar scholars from each university.

The University of Minnesota (U of MN) School of Nursing’s doctoral program began in 1983. The University as a whole is ranked among the top three research universities in the country. The U of MN faculty will enhance the OU doctoral program by sharing their well-established strategies for accomplishing research with diverse and vulnerable populations with OUCN faculty. U of MN faculty research foci include child and family health promotion, gerontology, and health trajectories and these offer some similar and some alternative opportunities to OU faculty in collaboration in teaching, dissertation committee work, and research. Collaboration has already taken place with the U of MN and OU during the past three years of partnership with the Bridges to the Doctorate Program for Native American Nurses in the MS in Nursing Program. The U of MN program has excellent expertise in quantitative methods and statistics, a modality that is critical in clinical intervention studies. U of MN faculty recognize the need to reach beyond their regional boundaries to meet the nursing profession's need for more doctorally-prepared nurses. This new collaboration offers them a wider audience as well as avenues for collaboration with OU faculty on research studies.