South Dakota State University’s College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences is set to expand its academic offerings with a Ph.D. in social sciences after receiving approval from the Board of Regents.
The S.D. Board of Regents (BOR) approved the Ph.D. social sciences program at their meeting on April 2, 2025.
Looking for ways to contribute to the R1 aspirations of the university, the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences took a deep dive into looking for how they could contribute.
“In order to achieve R1 status, there must be research expenditures, which SDSU is knocking out of the park,” Dr. Paul Markel, professor of Psychology and Director of the School of Psychology, Sociology, and Rural Studies, said. “Another area is producing research Ph.D.s, which is where the campus needs help.”
To expand the university’s academic offerings, the academic college is excited to offer an interdisciplinary social science Ph.D. collaboration and research across the different colleges will contribute to the degree’s offerings.
“We’re designing this program in such a way that we can draw in faculty across SDSU to make this as sustainable of a program as it can possibly be,” said Dr. Jason Zimmerman, associate dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. “We have lots of social science expertise across the SDSU campus.”
Program coordinators are not looking to hire any additional faculty at the launch of the degree. Utilizing the knowledge of fellow professors on campus will contribute to the background of the Ph.D. program.
Social science is a wide range of disciplines and is practiced in almost all of the academic colleges at SDSU. In many different areas the coursework will determine the plan of study a student may take. Hiring no additional faculty is necessary at this time due to the adaption of the degree program.
“What we need is a Ph.D. program that allows students to design their coursework around their eventual career goals,” Zimmerman said.
The plans for the program are just that. Students will be able to design their coursework of study through their own interests in research. The program was created to be adaptable and interdisciplinary allowing students to create their path of study and future careers.
The program is accepting of many different majors. Students coming in with an accredited master’s will be reviewed by the advisory committee, and 30 credits may be accepted into this 90-credit Ph.D. program. With the program accepting numerous different majors, they all seem to have one thing that ties them all together; some level of statistics.
After a meeting with Zimmerman and Markel, they are excited to launch the program and provide such a diverse doctorate to students, where students can formulate their course of study through the school of psychology, sociology, and rural studies.
The initial launch of the program is expected to have roughly 10 students, with more to come as the program continues to grow.
“It’s the right degree for this time in terms of the complex problems where people are at the center, giving our students the best opportunity to design that interdisciplinary Ph.D. where people are at the center of complex systems,” Zimmerman said. “And so for that reason, I think it’s the best Ph.D. program that our college can pursue at this time.”
The program will be in the graduate catalog in the Fall of 2025, with the recruitment of the first students in the fall of 2026.