PhDs may still remember the tough days during their general exams, also called qualifying exams, preliminary exams, or comprehensive exams. The Qualifying Exam is an excellent name to start this discussion, which is clear about the goal of these exams – to qualify students’ competency in the PhD program. We can find some Core Competency in both “foundational knowledge” and “Soft-skills”.
Our graduate programs are Pharmacy and Healthcare related, such as Pharmaceutical Sciences, Outcome Research & Populational Science, Biomedical Sciences, Translational and Clinical Sciences… These are very interdisciplinary and not easy to make a cookie cutter for all Pharmacy Graduate Programs. But the “soft -skill” part is easier to work out and timely needed. It is often yet tested in traditional qualifying exams, so we can share some wisdom, and teamwork for innovative practices of Qualifying Exams among schools and programs.
During AAPS AM 2017, GradEd-SIG hosted a forum on Pharmacy Graduate Educations, and the AAPS Graduate Education and Research Committee shared their committee report as below, which is a good starting point — Core Competency, Programming, and Emerging Innovation in Graduate Education within Schools of Pharmacy.
We can keep moving on… In general, I think project-based and oral assessments have been successful traditions we should keep for Pharmacy Graduate Education… Thank you for sharing!
HaiAn Zheng responded on a AACP discussion (1/29/2020)
Am J Pharm Educ. 2017 Oct; 81(8): S11.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29200459
ZhenGroup 