Doctor of Arts

In keeping with Harrison Middleton University's commitment to promoting excellence in education and its desire to create highly trained scholars and professionals who have a broad, intellectual perspective in the humanities, the university offers a Doctor of Arts program.

About the Doctor of Arts Program

This program requires students to complete 60 hours of graduate credit beyond the master’s degree level. The Doctor of Arts program of study is designed by the student in consultation with the student’s Instructional Team. The student submits a proposal for the Doctor of Arts program to the university, and it is approved by the student’s Instructional Team and the Dean. All doctoral students may earn a Master of Arts upon successfully completing the first concentration comprehensive examination and 36 graduate credits from Harrison Middleton University.

The Doctor of Arts at Harrison Middleton University is delivered entirely at a distance and uses a flexible and individualized, student-created program of study. In this way, the manner in which the student fulfills the degree requirements can be tailored to each student’s educational and career goals.

*View our admission criteria for Harrison Middleton University programs.

Program Objectives

Upon successful completion of the Doctor of Arts program, students will have met the following objectives:

Design, implement and complete a self-directed doctoral program of study of the major works in the liberal arts.

Demonstrate facility with the methods of the inquiry-based discussion by formulating interpretive questions and taking part in course discussions.

Think critically about essential ideas in the humanities and Western thought and engage in rigorous discussion about fundamental questions of human existence.

Demonstrate an interdisciplinary knowledge of Western cultural history in their fields of choice.

Evaluate, synthesize, and articulate the major literature, theories, practices, problems, and ethical issues discussed in their coursework.

Communicate effectively with clarity and sophistication in written and oral form in a variety of settings; utilize logical coherence and consistency, and the proper use of evidence and citations, in order to explore their fields of choice.

Present evidence of significant intellectual inquiry, original thought, and interdisciplinary knowledge in the form of a Capstone and its defense.

We at Harrison Middleton University believe that the study of the humanities is both timeless and timely because it focuses on the central questions of human existence, lasting debates that bear directly on the problems we face today. And in a time when information of all kinds is increasingly fragmented, the study of ancient and modern classics provides a rich source of fundamental knowledge and unifying ideas.

Harrison Middleton University is a great ideas, great works, great conversations, distance learning university that offers graduate education in the humanities with concentrations in imaginative literature, natural science, philosophy and religion, and social science. Harrison Middleton University promotes student-faculty scholarship through research, discussion, and the development of collaborative publications.