Transitioning Programs

At the end of 2022 I began to investigate Doctoral programs to determine my options for knocking out this bucket list item on my life list. After some research I found Northwest University in Bellevue Washington and went through the application process and was accepted into their PhD program! After reviewing the financial information before finalizing my enrollment and taking note of the required residency periods throughout the program I came to the conclusion that as much as I would like to do their program it wasn’t the right fit for me given my season in life.

I took a few weeks to process this decision and during that time watched the documentary Borrowed Future which shares about the student loan crisis in America. One of the key things that stuck out to me from the video was that the number one mistake that people make financially with college is school choice. After scouring the internet for the best fit in terms of quality of education, price, and practicality with working full time Liberty University kept jumping out to the top of the list. In January 2023 I took the leap and started a PhD program at Liberty University in Organization & Management with a focus in Leadership.

The journey at Liberty has been a very positive experience over the last few years that included fourteen core classes that pushed me to grow in my research, writing and ability to meet consistent deadlines with large research papers within the academic arena. There were some classes that I enjoyed more than others but overall, I would rate the program as a worthwhile experience.

The fifteenth class was where everything changed and the catalyst for me writing this blog post… The BUSI886 course is the PhD concept class where you have seven weeks to work through the first four tasks of the dissertation. This involves outlining the problem statement your proposed methodology, your sample questions and your strategy for the dissertation process. I spent the first few weeks reading all the material in the class, researching potential topics and fine tuning what I was going to focus on. After submitting Task 1 I felt like it was a decent first attempt at focusing on a problem and waited for either approval or some clarification on what to fix before moving forward. Within a few days I received some feedback that recommended to review the PhD Research Concepts Guide and PhD Effective Problem Statements Guide and update the problem to one that is aligned with the School of Business discipline and cognate.

I fine-tuned my two-page problem statement and resubmitted and again received a similar response with some items to correct. At this point I realized I was very far off from what the standard that the instructor was looking for and my ability to figure out what that was. I reached out to as many friends that had PhD’s as possible to help me troubleshoot a path forward, I set up a call with the instructor and in the email, I asked the Professor if there were any tutoring or support services at Liberty University that could help me troubleshoot my Task 1 assignment. Unfortunately, there are no campus resources to help us as we are at the dissertation phase and no longer students but researchers. After a pleasant conversation with the Professor and half a dozen conversations with my overly educated friends, I felt hopeful that my next attempt would be more aligned with what they were looking for. After submitting my third attempt I waited a few days and received a very similar response with themes of things to correct and referring to the guideline documents for the class. 

This is where I reached out to a professional Grad Coach which I really connected with and we spent the next three weeks working on three additional submissions to Task 1, all of which were denied. The last few weeks of class I took the time to write up the Task 2-4 just so that I would know that I had completed the material for the class and at the end of the seven weeks I had not met the expectations of the instructor for any of the 4 tasks. Through the weekly discussion posts I could see that out of the thirteen students in the class one had completed the class, five were in Tasks 2 and 3 and seven of us were stuck in Task 1.

I reached out to a professor that I had connected with early in the Doctoral process and sent her information on my experience in the course. She sent an email to the chair of the Doctoral program and thankfully he sent me a message wanting to set up a call. I was excited and hopeful that I could share about my experience in the PhD Concept class to the chair and that he would be able to direct myself and the other students that hadn’t completed this class and give us a clear path forward. Unfortunately during the conversation with the chair the conversation revolved around the details of what I could do differently when I retake the course in the fall and narrowing my focus. The fact that only one person out of thirteen passed the class didn’t seem to be on his radar or alert him at all but was highly disturbing to me.

I left the call distraught and determined to find a path forward and even more clear that that journey did not include Liberty University. Later that day the student who had completed the class finally reached back out to me and when I asked him how he was able to navigate the material he said that it was his third time taking the class… That was enough for me to lock in my decision that I was ready to change courses and look at other options. I feel like the 2.5 years of coursework that I began in January 2023 were not aligned to the rigor of the dissertation process of this particular program and instructors going forward as revealed by my performance and the other students in the PhD concept class. I began to see the downside of the equitable grading practice of grading on “meeting the expectations of the professor”. If the expectations are vague, or highly rigorous then students may not be able to meet these effectively and without the accompanying rubrics or standard grading practices the students don’t seem to have any recourse. After a few weeks of research into multiple universities that have dissertation completion programs the two that rose to the top were Walden University which has a PhD route which would allow me to transfer in directly at the step that I was at without missing a beat in the process and Trident University which after a review of the programs had a fit in the EdD program with a focus in Leadership. Thanks to a very cheerful and encouraging enrollment advisor Rita I submitted all of my documents and within a week of that conversation with the chair of the PhD program at Liberty I was accepted and enrolled into the Trident University Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership degree completion program  and I began my six class program that will allow me to complete my doctorate program at the end of 2026. I am looking forward to moving onto utilizing the education learned through this experience to continue to engage in my community.