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During the first year students must take ETST 200: History of Ideas in Ethnic Studies (Fall), ETST 201: Contemporary Theories in Ethnic Studies (Winter), and ETST 203:  Research Methodologies in Ethnic Studies (Spring).  In addition, students are required to enroll in the Ethnic Studies Departmental Colloquium during each quarter of the first two years of graduate work, and a graduate proseminar on professionalization is currently being considered for approval.   

During the second year students will select courses that are relevant to one or more of the following three Areas of Specialization:

1. Theories of Race and Power
   Radical theories of race, gender, power, and violence in a global context.  Includes critical race studies, critical race feminisms, and transnational, counter-hegemonic praxis.
   
   
2. Cultural Politics and Production
   Visual, textual, and expressive cultural forms (i.e.; film, literature, music, dance, performance, visual art) that critically rearticulate and reimagine hegemonic social formations.
   
   
3. The State, Law, and Social Transformation
   Laws, policies, and politics that impede or advance social, economic, political, legal, and educational transformations in the context of local, national, and global state formations.

To help design their own individualized course of study, students are encouraged to supplement regular curricular offerings by initiating individual or small-group reading courses with appropriate Ethnic Studies faculty (ETST 290s, etc.), or with cooperating faculty in other CHASS departments. Students are also encouraged to take an additional course in quantitative or qualitative methodology, in addition to ETST 203.

Graduate students are required to successfully complete a Qualifying Written Examination by the end of the winter quarter of their second year, and a Qualifying Oral Examination by the end of the winter quarter of their third year.  The Ph.D. candidate must also submit, no later than the fall quarter of their fourth year, a written prospectus outlining the topic, thesis, methods, resources, and timeline for completion of the dissertation. Under the direction of a Dissertation Committee, doctoral students who have advanced to candidacy will research and write a dissertation focusing on a specific aspect of their field of study and conforming to the format prescribed by the Graduate Council. After the student's Dissertation Committee approves the completed dissertation, the student must formally present their dissertation as
part of the Departmental Colloquium series. The normative time for completion of the Ph.D. is six years.