The doctoral degree requirements include 72 credits for students entering the graduate program with a bachelor's degree or 48 credits for students entering with a master's degree. In addition to residence and dissertation credits requirements, students must successfully complete 36 course credits if entering with a bachelor's degree or 12 course credits if entering with a master's degree. The graduate students's Ph.D. adviser will guide the student in all aspects of his/her academic and research programs. This adviser is usually a faculty member from the MANE department but can occasionally be from a different department. If a student chooses to do a thesis with an adviser from another department, then a doctoral committee co-chair from within the MANE department is required. Major milestones for the Ph.D. program in MANE include passing a doctoral qualifying exam, a doctoral candidacy exam, and successfully defending the dissertation in an open presentation to his or her committee. The Ph.D. degree is awarded for research making an original contribution to fundamental knowledge in a particular field or in an interdisciplinary field or for research into the relation of a discipline to educational problems and objecties within the field. The Ph.D. dissertation must be scholarly, creative, original, and publishable.