Things have been a little quite on my blog recently due to being busy in coursework for my doctorate at Dakota State University.

The Fall 2007 semester is in full swing and I’ve found myself working harder in this program than I can remember doing in my MBA program.

This semester finds me in 2 courses: Intro to Research course and Systems Analysis.

Upon first glance, I wasn’t too excited about the Systems Analysis course, but I’ve come to realize that this topic is much more interesting than I had originally thought. This course has kept me really busy with writing and group work. The group work is something that I thought I wouldn’t like, but it seems to be working well with the group that I’m in.

The Intro to Research course has been a ton of work. The course is setup to be, as the name suggests, an introduction to research methodologies and processes and requires a considerable amount of reading. Part of this course’s mandate is to get first year students started along the path of research and thinking of dissertation topics. The major deliverables for this course are a literature review and research proposal (along with a few other assignments) and going through the process of deciding what topic to cover in a lit review is very similar to the process of trying to determine a dissertation topic. The research proposal builds upon the lit review and provides students with a ‘practice run’ of creating a research proposal for their dissertation.

So far, I have to say that I’m very happy with the program and impressed with the school and professors. The program seems well thought out and well run many of the students in the program are extremely bright and ambitious.

I’ll keep everyone updated on how things are going.

[tags] doctorate, systems analysis, research, Dakota State University[/tags]