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I . Session 2260

A Doctoral Program offered by the University of Wales and Penn State Great Valley : An essay in International Collaborations.

David W. Russell The Pennsylvania State University

ABSTRACT

This essay details the establishment and progress of an innovative part-time doctoral program that is available to engineering students at Penn State Great Valley, which is the graduate center for Penn State in the Philadelphia suburbs. The degree is offered under the auspices of the University of Wales at Swansea in the UK. Entrance to the program is highly competitive, based on a dossier that includes post- Masters coursework and other scholastic and professional achievements. Once admitted to the program, the student performs three to five years of directed research, culminating in the successful defense of a thesis that is directed by an anonymous external examiner. The paper asserts the synergistic value of a combination of the US and European models for doctoral programs and its intrinsic benefit to international research collaborations.

INTRODUCTION and BACKGROUND

In 1992, two professors, one an ex-patriate of the ~ now resident in the US, and the other an- expatriate of South Mica, now resident in Wales, began a discussion of how their institutions could forma research alliance in the application of artificial intelligence to real-time systems. Both professors were actively engaged in similar research work in this field, however, the major difference in their research programs was the role and demography of participating students.

In Wales, Professor M.G. Rodd heads up a team of Ml-time, mainly doctora~ students. These persons typically make application to Swansea and seek to obtain three year contracts of employment fimded from either Government or private sector grants and join a research team that is working on a specific project. Most doctoral students secure such research assistantships in the Fall directly afier baccalaureate graduation. (A commonly used term for this in the UK is “staying on”.) It is fairly uncommon for a Ph.D. candidate to have obtained a Master’s degree before embarking on doctoral studies, unless coming from a non-UK institution. The University of Wales at Swansea is part of a multi-campus, but very traditiona~ British institution and is active in sponsored research.

On the other hand, Professor D. W. Russell, a professor in Electrical Engineering at Penn State Great Valley, has access only to a part-time evening, adult student body seeking professional Master’s degrees. The majority of this student body is gainfidly employed and already weighted with family responsibilities and obligations, and constitutes what is known in the US, as Generation-X. Penn State Great Valley has offered Master’s degrees in Engineering in the Delaware Valley for over thirty years and moved to a new campus located in the midst of a corporate park in 1988. The original graduate center was created to meet the needs -.. . -

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Russell, D. W. (1996, June), A Doctoral Program Offered By The University Of Wales And Penn State Great Valley : An Essay In International Collaborations. Paper presented at 1996 Annual Conference, Washington, District of Columbia. 10.18260/1-2--5996