5 credits
This course will serve as a platform for the ongoing collaborative learning communication between students and their doctoral study chairs and as a repository for drafts and documentation materials related to their doctoral study. In particular, students will focus on developing all sections of their prospectuses. By the end of the doctoral study lab, students will have completed their prospectuses. Behavioral Health Leadership (BHL) students will have completed the consulting skills intensive and the virtual residency prior to this doctoral study lab. In the Virtual Residency, students will have reviewed prospectus requirements, come up with hypothetical interview questions, and delineated the leadership team of their organizations with a preliminary idea of who they would be contacting. In the residency, they will also formulate prospectus outlines for a mock behavioral health practice problem. In this lab, students will be ready to begin fully developing their prospectuses and preparing for their doctoral studies. Specifically, they will focus on developing practice problems, purpose statements, the significance of their studies, backgrounds, conceptual frameworks, and sources of evidence- and data-collection strategies. The doctoral study is a demonstration of students’ scholarly ability to examine, critique, and synthesize knowledge, theory, and experience so that new ideas can be tested; best practices identified, established, and verified; and theoretical, practice, or policy constructs evaluated and advanced. In all cases, students engage in rigorous inquiry that results in new knowledge, insight, or practice, demonstrating efficacy in the world of behavioral health leadership