In the Human Development and Family Science (HDFS) Ph.D. program, we train students to become the next generation of scholars, university faculty, and researchers. Our graduates have successfully obtained positions of their choice in some of the nation's leading academic institutions.<br>The HDFS curriculum addresses relational and family process in contemporary families, such as cohabiting couples, families of divorce and remarriage, military families, and foster families. Faculty are noted for their study of children's friendships, couple dynamics, intimate partner violence, parenting practices, racial socialization, among other topics<br>The Department of Family and Child Sciences is among the top five programs in the country in terms of number of faculty publications and successful competition for federal grants. Research findings are the foundation of an innovative curriculum that focuses on understanding the complexities of daily family life and how children and adults develop across the life span. Graduate training emphasizes translating results from rigorous research into real-world solutions that help children, adults, and families. We believe student learning is most effective when it occurs through active engagement in research and teaching.<br>The Department of Family and Child Sciences' doctoral programs offer a unique curriculum that integrates human development and family science with marriage and family therapy. This purposeful integration is designed to enhance communication and cross-fertilization of ideas between basic human development and family science with the clinical practice. All students in both programs must pass a preliminary examination prior to admission to doctoral candidacy and before they can register for dissertation hours. A minimum of thirty semester hours of graduate courses must be selected from within the department, and students must take at least fifteen semester hours in research methods or statistics courses.