2016-2017 University Catalog

Oral Comprehensive Examination: The purpose of the Oral Comprehensive Examination is to evaluate the candidate’s knowledge about the field of educational administration. The candidate will be assessed on his/her interrelated and integrated perspective on facts that have been assimilated from the educational administration major curriculum and his/her critical thinking ability.  The committee will include four (4) tenured or tenure-track faculty members who are members of the Graduate Faculty at Texas A&M International University.  The committee chair, one of the four members, must be from the student's major field and one member must be from a different field. The Oral Comprehensive Examination also consists of the creation of a Portfolio (electronic or traditional). Students may be asked to present the materials from their portfolio. The portfolio offers the opportunity for students to integrate and synthesize what they have learned in the program, providing samples of work which needs to be organized into two examples from each course.

Requirements to qualify for the Comprehensive Examination: Graduate students must have completed or be in their final semester to complete all 30 SCH and scheduled to graduate during the semester that they are presenting the oral comprehensive examination.

Oral Comprehensive Examination Parameters: The oral comprehensive exam covers substantive and integrative knowledge from students’ coursework in the Educational Administration program. The oral comprehensive exam will be offered during each fall and spring semester. The oral comprehensive exam is not offered during the summer.  

Format and grading of the Oral Comprehensive Exam: Each student will have 30 to 60 minutes to answer three to four questions. Specific questions will not be announced prior to the examination. The examination is graded on a pass/fail basis. Based on the examination results, students may be required to provide additional written or oral responses to a particular question. If a student fails one question on the first attempt, the student may be asked to re-take the question. If a student fails two questions on the first attempt, the student will have to re-take the whole oral comprehensive exam during the same semester. A student may take the oral comprehensive exam no more than twice.