CSUN will offer doctorate degrees in education as early as Fall 2008, as a result of State Senate Bill 724, which was approved in September 2005 by the California State Senate.

The program will be aimed at students interested in educational administration, said Philip Rusche, dean of the College of Education. It will be designed for K-12, community college and four-year college administration.

“I think it’s long overdue,” Rusche said. “We ought to be offering doctorates, not just in education, in other fields as well.”

At CSUN, an advisement committee was put together to help identify how to design the process and procedures, as well as the program format. The committee had their first meeting to discuss the doctoral program on, April 13, Rusche said.

The committee is made up of teachers, administrators and superintendents from K-12 schools, as well as officials from community colleges, CSUN and other universities.

All aspects of the program have to be developed.

The Education Department committee will write specifics of how the program will operate. It will be responsible for writing the vision statement, goals, curriculums, procedures for admission, and graduation requirements.

Other CSU campuses will offer doctorates in education as well.

The CSU has split the implementation of the doctorate for campuses into three phases, each beginning their doctoral programs at different times, said Claudia Keith, CSU assistant vice chancellor of Public Affairs.

The first group will begin their programs in the Fall semester of 2007. It will consist of seven CSU, campuses which include the campuses of Fresno, Fullerton, Sacramento, Long Beach, San Francisco, San Diego and San Bernandino.

The second group, which CSUN is a part of, will begin offering doctoral programs in Fall 2008. In this group are the Bakersfield, East bay, Los Angeles and San Jose CSU campuses.

Keith said the date is unknown when the third group of campuses will begin offering the doctoral program. All CSU campuses could eventually offer doctoral degrees in education, he said.

The groupings were made based on the feasibility of staff available, Keith said. Fall 2007 and 08 are currently the dates that the CSU system is working for.

The overall cost of creating these programs is not yet known, Keith said.

It will be determined once a framework is developed. The funding for these programs will come from the CSU budget and will pay for the faculty, buildings and designing of the programs.

The tuition for these doctoral programs will be similar to the price costs available at UC campuses with the same programs, Keith said.

Several CSU campuses currently have task forces helping to establish the programs, Keith said.

The Education Department still does not have the specifics from the Chancellor’s office but a meeting scheduled for May 8 will give them a better idea of the faculty load that will be needed and the cost of creating the program, Rusche said.

“We really started from scratch from beginning to end,” Rusche said.

The department will probably hire one or two more professors, Rusche said.

Students are optimistic about the program. “I think it will be a good idea depending on the quality of the program,” Carter Tran, education graduate student said.

Senate Bill 724, which was originally proposed by Sen. Jack Scott, was passed by the State Senate Sept. 6, 2005 and was signed by the Schwarzenegger Sept. 22, 2005. Three senators opposed the passing of the Bill while 33 senators voted in support of it.

Victor Flores can be reached at city@csun.edu.