The History of the PhD While many students aim to earn their PhDs, few know the philosophical history of the degrees they are pursuing. The Doctor of Philosophy (PhD or DPhil) began as the degree awarded in recognition of advanced scholarship and acknowledging that recipients had expertise needed to teach at a university level. These
Every holiday season, I've struggled to explain to my family of accountants, firefighters, and lawyers why basic science research is important. They never seem to believe that my work on frog-eating bats is anywhere near as important as applied research aimed at curing disease or addressing world hunger. What they don't seem to understand is
I will be the first to admit that, as a science student, the scientific method chapter of each textbook was no more than a list to be memorized for the first exam and forgotten until my next science course. In developing a research experiment, however, I have come to realize that the scientific method resembles
