Putting Your Ph.D. to Work
Over the past 50 years, the Department of Special Education at the University of Kansas has built an international reputation for excellence in teaching, research, and service. The productivity, creativity, and field leadership characterized by the department's faculty and graduates is evidenced in the national and international recognition received for their exemplary, teaching, research and service to the field. The department takes great pride in the achievements of its students throughout their careers as educators, researchers, policy makers, and leaders in the profession.
Doctoral graduates hold faculty positions in comprehensive and research universities and leadership positions in state and national agencies. Accordingly, the doctoral program educates you to become a researcher and scholar who will then prepare prospective teachers and administrators to work in the profession.The career paths of recent graduates reflect the program's emphasis on reciprocal research to practice, civic professionalism and stewardship of the field and discipline.
Graduates are scholars who steward the profession, working across disciplinary boundaries to address the educational and social challenges of the 21st century. Moreover, as civic professionals, they also engage in stewardship with their communities. Our graduates are scholars who recognize that resolving the great social and education challenges we face requires a sense of collective social purpose among the professions, and that the professions' greatest responsibility is to the people most affected.
While the aim of the program is to prepare such scholars for tenure-line faculty positions in top tier research universities, program graduates’ knowledge and skill attainment prepare them for positions throughout the education enterprise and beyond. Graduates hold leadership positions around the country and the globe at top research universities, teacher preparation institutions, private and university affiliated research centers, foundations, research and development companies, and in various state and federal education agencies and legislative bodies.
Let us know you are interested.