Doctorate degree application

September 2, 2023

Timed Writing Evidence After the Zoom Doctorate Application Interview

Several Elimination Steps:

I had applied for my doctorate degree during fall of 2019. By the time the department processed my application, the world was thrust into the COVID pandemic during spring of 2020. The doctorate admission committee invited me to a Zoom interview with other candidates who went through the first weeding process. We were asked questions individually and were given time to respond. After the initial interview, the department broke up the candidates into Zoom rooms with 3-4 faculty members interviewing each of us. At the end of the two online interviews, we were notified to anticipate an e-mail inviting us to a timed follow-up writing sample (even though we had submitted a writing sample as required with our doctoral application).

Instead of scheduling a third interview on another day, the doctorate admission committee decided to invite the candidates who had the most potential to compose a timed essay with a provided prompt. I sat in anxiety watching my email for the message to drop. It dropped! I am in the final running for admission!

The e-mail message was only about four lines long. We had one hour to compose a three-page essay explaining the strengths and weaknesses we are bringing to the program and our motivation for seeking a doctorate degree from the department. Thank God for giving me the speed to type which I gathered from high school typing classes decades ago and for endowing me with the love of writing. I cranked out the post-interview essay and tried to organize my thoughts as decently as I could. I had enough time to read the essay only one time. I knew there were some errors, but I hoped the errors were not egregious enough to cost me the final offer.

I was offered a full ride! The university would pay my tuition for the six years of the program. My excitement was boundless!

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(Even after obtaining three degrees in the United States, there are situations in the American English that my brain fights to comply with. One of them is PhD. These are two words. The British English demands that when two words are abbreviated, each one earns its own period: Ph. D., which makes more sense.)

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Interview Day Writing

Strengths and Challenges (PhD in Curriculum and Instruction):

As a student who has completed degrees through face-to-face and online learning platforms, I find myself gravitating toward online learning. I am an eternal student, a lifelong learner. I will do anything for education (mine and students’ education), go anywhere for education (to learn lifelong and to teach), and keep my options open for any opportunities that will come my way in this profession. Years of teaching and learning exposed me to both ends of the classroom, as a learner and as a teacher/instructor. The numerous strengths I possess will fortify me as I pursue my doctorate degree. In response to this discussion, I will divide the strengths and challenges into human and technology.

All my life, I have been blind to color, race, national origin, and so on. All my life, I have made friends from every country whose citizens want to be friends. I have had friends from Iran, China, Ghana, Cameroun, France, Britain, the United States, Hong Kong, Thailand, the Virgin Islands, and Jamaica, to name a few. I love humanity. Also, years of professional, on-the-job experience have equipped me with the ability to work with other professionals, and the years have made me personable. I relate easily to people. As a decent human being, I believe in the Golden Rule, which is the height of compassion and empathy. Therefore, at any moment, and in any given situation, I place myself in other people’s shoes and see if I can walk a mile in those shoes. Years of being a single parent to my daughter from her birth until she married at age 23 fortified me with survival skills. My personality is an additional strength. I have persevered, thrived, cooperated with others, and achieved common goals with others. I believe in human decency and honor and reciprocate these feelings towards others.

My other skill/strength is technology. I am conversant with technological software programs and other learning management systems. I feel that I can control many aspects of the internet. I completed my second Master of Arts degree entirely online. I bring all these strengths on my journey at the University of Houston. As much as I love humanity, I know there are situations I cannot control when dealing with humans. These will be my challenges, the inability to control what others will do to me and with me as I plunge headlong into accomplishing my goals toward my doctoral degree. Part of that inability is the traffic in Houston that snakes and furls. Coming from Katy, I foresee this as a challenge, hence I plan to be on campus as early as I can. On the same level, as much as I am conversant with technology, there are aspects of technology that will be out of my control, but I will endeavor to overcome with all my faculties and abilities due to my resilience. Giving up is not an option. Other than these, I do not foresee any other challenges.

Motivations (for Applying to the CUIN PhD Program)

The world needs so much that must be righted for our youth. I had planned on going headlong into my doctorate after I completed my first Master’s of Arts degree and accomplishing so much that would help our youth after I taught second grade. However, I fell in love, got married, and started a family. This situation was the fulfillment of Langston Hughes’ “What Happens to a Dream Deferred?” I may have deferred my dream because of family, but my dream had not left me. After years of helping my daughter achieve her educational goals and get married to the man of her dreams, I had to recall that deferred dream and attempt to make it real.

My motivations for applying for my doctorate degree in Curriculum and Instruction are numerous. The first one is that I have seen firsthand what needs to be done for our youth. I have been in the “trenches” for over 25 years. I have written grants, shifted teaching into a paradigm, and helped struggling students. Still, I know I have not contributed all that I must. I need the mental enrichment, the titular awards, and the confidence that a doctorate degree will confer on me to tackle what must be done in reading, literacy, technology, English for Second Learners, and Special Education. Fortunately, I have taught and have experience in all four. However, there is a whole lot more that I can do. I would like to use my degree to work with school systems in any capacity that will enable me to design curricula. I would like to equip future teachers/leaders and give them alternative and far-reaching means of helping our youth. I would like to work with other non-profit organizations that mentor or teach the youth. Putting it simply, our youth is the reason I am applying to begin and finish my doctoral so that we can improve literacy rates and student success rates.    

Are there faculty member(s) you would want to work with on their research? 

I have scrolled through the University of Houston website for weeks after I submitted my application to acquaint myself with the faculty should I be honored enough to be accepted into the program. I sent an e-mail to Dr. Hale, Dr. Hutchison, Dr. Wong, and a few more with questions about the program and expressing my interest in working with them. I am open to working with any faculty who will take me under his or her wing and help me to achieve my lifelong goal of obtaining a doctorate degree.

I thank you for the interview today and for the opportunity to meet about 14 faculty members during the Zoom session. Thank you.

October 29, 2022

Doctorate Degree Application 1: Letter of Intention

I apologize for my absence from this creative place that gives me joy. Over the last few months, I have been in a whirl of rejecting some doctorate degree programs and being rejected by one doctorate degree program.

As anyone who has applied for admission into a college or university can attest, the ordeal is protracted and harrowing. I have settled into what I surmise is “the place” or “the one:” My doctorate at Saint Leo University.

From this post and moving forward, I will share the writing pieces I composed as required by graduate admissions offices. Each university uses a different name for the requirement: Letter of intention, plan of study, writing sample, philosophy of study, and so on. I will dig them out and will share them here. After that, I will move on to the required writing for potential employers.

Happy reading!

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My Plan of Study: A Doctor of Philosophy Degree in English

Frances Eucharia Ohanenye

            My production of texts began at age eight when I wrote my first story largely because of my fascination with the words my father regaled us with as captivating tales at night. Thus began my infatuation with words, and it has not slowed itself down. In my teaching career and through my education, I have explored many of the areas listed among Old Dominion University’s English fields (left as ODU capitalized them): I teach Composition and Rhetoric for Houston Community College and Lone Star College simultaneously. I obtained my second Master of Arts in Creative Writing. I obtained my first Master of Arts in Journalism. I have invested in teaching Literature, Technical Writing, and the Teaching of English at the K-12 level. My motivations for applying for my doctorate degree in English at ODU are numerous. In the succeeding paragraphs, I share my academic and professional journeys and my hopes that the Doctor of Philosophy degree in English from ODU will be instrumental in the achievement of my multi-faceted goals.

            My previous areas of study (advertising and public relations for my undergraduate degree and journalism and creative writing for my two graduate degrees) have equipped me with strategies on how I plan to succeed in the program ODU designed for its doctoral students. I will be in my element at ODU because technology has been another strength since high school when I took a formal course in typing, and the skills and speed from that typing course multiply and continue to serve me well. I am conversant with technological software programs (Web 2.0 and Web 3.0) and several learning management systems. I completed my second Master of Arts degree entirely online. These strengths equip me as I journey through ODU. Because I am always learning, I get better at teaching and at giving students what they need. In 2020, during the first nationwide COVID-19 quarantine, I completed over 70 self-imposed professional development and self-actualization course hours online within three months. The intensity and the rapidity of my engagement pivoted the trajectory of my ability to digest and process information at a breakneck speed.

            My rate of information assimilation and re-creation of data forced me to change my role from a passive receiver (as was my position through my undergraduate and graduate courses) to one of automaticity. Instinctively and swiftly, and as new materials came at me, I guided them into different compartments in my brain for use at different future times, for different diverse purposes, and to create outlets/outputs. My brain began the refreshing system of categorizing new information into different literature genres so that now I find myself interested in writing children’s picture books, middle grades fiction, poetry, young adult fiction, “textbooks,” test preparation manuals, women’s/chick lit fiction, general realistic fiction, mystery/crime fiction, essays, and so on. For the post-graduate program ODU has designed for its prospective doctoral students, my previous areas of study (advertising and public relations for my undergraduate degree and journalism and creative writing for my two graduate degrees) prepared me with a deeper sense of word-knowledge strategies on how to excel in educational programs, so I am equipped to hold my place in competition with my previous self.

            When it comes to “form, purpose, technology, audience, cultural location, and communities,” I will be in my element at ODU. All my life, I have been enamored with words: Their multidimensional and intricate forms and purposes, their ease in being embedded and coded in technology programs, their fluidity in being tailored to different audiences, and their chameleon-like infiltration of diverse cultures/locations and in different communities of the world. I love word origin and molding words in myriad ways no matter how they are packaged and rebranded. I study words and take advantage of invaluable courses that allow me opportunities to expand my repertoire of etymology. I am most interested in completing my English courses at ODU as a part-time online student. I will attend the two Summer Doctoral Institutes at the main campus if I am granted admission. My outlook on education is to always be at both ends of it: A lifelong learner and an eternal teacher. I fully commit myself to giving and obtaining the best out of my ODU professors. I will continue to create innovative activities and seek extraordinary opportunities for my success regardless of the challenges I encounter with my fellow humans or through technology.

            One challenge I encountered with my fellow human beings was that I began a doctorate degree elsewhere during the fall semester of 2020. After two semesters, and as I endeavored to take reading courses in the program called Reading, Language Arts, and Literacy Education, I was steered away from courses in reading, language arts, and literacy. I was asked to drop the reading courses for which I had registered. I knew I had to find a doctoral program with an emphasis on English. The doctorate degree in English at ODU will afford me a broader base through which to enter careers within and outside the academic arena since the English curriculum at ODU “integrates writing, rhetoric, discourse, technology, and textual studies. The course work and research opportunities appeal to those pursuing an academic career as well as professionals with careers outside the classroom.” I could not have found a more appropriate program because I yearn for the duality of a doctorate in English: Teaching and working with English in as uncountable ways as possible. 

            In my professional endeavors, I wrote and won grants, shifted teaching into a paradigm, and helped struggling students at different grade levels to ace difficult courses and exams using methods and programs I designed and piloted. I motivated and challenged students to give more than they thought/knew they could give. I wrote grants to purchase technology hardware, software, peripherals, books, and other instructional materials students needed to help them ascend to the next rung in achievement. Teaching English necessitates the exploration of a variety of texts and media. In working with struggling learners through the years, I realized that the world needs to right many wrongs done to our youth due to our failure to allow them to create text. We have trained them well in consuming text. We need to rescue our youth and equip them with proper and formal communication skills. Tomorrow brings a new page for students to write a new narrative of who they would like to be. Life is a struggle for the marginalized. I burn with unshakeable dispositions rooted in my resolution to educate students better each day with the essential skills and technological tools they need to compete in a global communication market.

            Because my dissertation will focus on the effects of culture (among other variables) on the lack of access to digital literacy for the marginalized, I will capitalize on the opportunities at ODU that will allow me to explore courses in Literary and Cultural studies, in Technology and Media Studies, and will allow me a self-designed emphasis to chart a path in my endeavor to uplift the marginalized. My doctorate in English from ODU will elevate my expertise and equip me with new methodologies on how to empower our youths more than I have been doing in the last two to three decades. I have seen firsthand what needs to be done for our youth. Engaging in rigorous, intellectual, and creative inquiries at ODU will energize me with inventive avenues of impacting humanity in ways I had not done. After obtaining my doctorate degree from ODU, my paramount goal will be to explore ingenious and resourceful ways to make literacy accessible for the marginalized of our world through for-profit or not-for-profit avenues and through digital resources.

            As my new-found knowledge is guided, and as it expands, I hope to create programs for the marginalized, and I need to conduct robust and extensive research that will break new grounds in English, English education, literacy, reading, and literature. I need fresh preparation, mental enrichment, the titular recognition (Ph. D.), a new voice, a new narrative, and the confidence that a doctorate degree will confer on me to tackle what future students must know and do while using technology in reading, English, literacy, literature, in programs for English for Second Language Learners, and Special Education. My professional experience in the aforementioned areas will help me to equip future teachers/leaders with alternative and far-reaching means of helping our marginalized youth, mostly females. I would like to work with non-profit organizations that mentor or reach our youth. Putting it simply, our youth is the reason I am applying to finish my doctoral degree so that I/we can improve global literacy rates and student success rates. I have arrived at the most perfect time at ODU, what with ODU being awarded a Research 1 classification just a couple of days ago (as announced on December 21, 2021).