About

About

About the PhD in Creativity

The Program's Philosophy

All PhD programs require a dissertation that makes “an original contribution to knowledge.” Yet after steeping the candidate in the existing literature and methods, they offer no guidance on how to move beyond them. At Rowan, our PhD is about fundamentally changing the way our students think. We seek students who have already achieved a professional mastery in some discipline, and we prepare them to go to another level. We show them how to be open to finding that moment when ideas that didn’t seem to have anything to do with one another suddenly come together to ask or answer a question, create a solution to a problem, produce a new invention. This immersion in the arts can teach a practitioner in any field, from science, medicine, business and engineering to the humanities and even the arts, to think more creatively.

A Three-Year PhD

The PhD in Creativity is a three-year, dissertation-only program.

Most PhD programs require six or seven years to complete. Such programs begin with a thorough training in a field’s methods and base knowledge and administer a qualifying examination after this training is complete. The PhD in Creativity’s application serves as a qualifying examination; we examine an applicant’s MA or other training, professional experience and dissertation proposal to determine their readiness to enter our PhD and begin their dissertation.

The Two-Week Creativity Immersion

All transformative work—even in technology, science and any other field—depends upon intuition and nonlinear thought. Yes, we need the rigors of the scientific method and the data base of knowledge. Yet to take innovation to another level, we also need to transcend the hierarchies of conventional training. And the arts offer the most consciously developed disciplines of nonlinear and integrative thinking.

The PhD in Creativity begins with creativity itself: Creative thinking is in the DNA of our faculty, and no university is better equipped to teach it. The PhD commences in early June with the Creativity Immersion. During this two-week residency, students are immersed in a curated sequence of arts experiences for an intense course in creativity. Each cohort presents their proposal for a group critique by their fellow students and faculty. They then reframe that proposal every day, through a wide variety of creative lenses. Since each cohort draws from a range of disciplines, candidates are forced to jettison disciplinary jargon and hone in on their ideas. Another critical lesson that emerges from this process is that each student brings into sharper focus what within themselves drives them to pursue their particular project.

Informed by daily experiences in different creative practices, students revise their proposals into working drafts. After the Creativity Immersion, students use these revised proposals to build their dissertation committees, in consultation with the program director.