early childhood education<\/a>, special education, bilingual education, multidisciplinary approaches and district-level leadership with the option to earn a superintendent certification.<\/p>\n\u201cWe wanted to be very specific in approaching the needs that were identified by our local superintendents and these are growing areas that are often underserved,\u201d\u00a0 said Elisabeth Krimbill, a TAMUSA associate professor who was part of the task force.<\/p>\n
The doctoral students will be expected to develop research that can be implemented in the districts they currently work at or those they\u2019ll go on to serve to improve programming and opportunity for students, Savage-Davis said.<\/p>\n
A third of the classes will focus on research, Krimbill and Savage-Davis said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ll be analyzing their data and and learning how to do something with it to make impact on the community,\u201d Krimbill said. <\/p>\n
A doctorate in education<\/p>\n
Because some, if not most, of those entering the doctoral program are expected to be working professionals, the courses will be offered fully online and synchronously, meaning the course will be taught by a professor online and not as a learn-at-your-own-pace module course.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This synchronous online approach has had success in other graduate programs, so it was the ideal way to start something dedicated to working professionals, Savage-Davis said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For now, the plan is to start with a 15-student cohort and assess the new program\u2019s success at different stages with surveys that start at the three-week mark and continue throughout the program.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will allow us to deliver that kind of instruction with high quality, not with quality, with high quality,\u201d Savage-Davis said.<\/p>\n
According to TAMUSA\u2019s fall 2023 enrollment \u2014 which at the time included 7,593 total students \u2014 70% of all students, including undergraduate and graduate students, identify as Hispanic or Latino, and nearly 71% of them were first-generation students, meaning they were the first to attend college.<\/p>\n
For those students, earning a doctoral degree can have an impact not only in their own professional careers and socioeconomic status, but that of their entire family, Krimbill said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a population that is being provided opportunities that in the past they didn\u2019t really have equal access to,\u201d she said. \u201cThink about this: Our students will be able to say, \u2018I\u2019m the first person in my family to have a doctoral degree.’\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas A&M University-San Antonio is on the verge of offering its first-ever doctoral degree, with the state\u2019s approval…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":117990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5133],"tags":[5229,73803,73804,73805,73806,7202,7203,33863,73807,358,33867,73808,7453,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,7819],"class_list":{"0":"post-117989","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-aspire","10":"tag-doctor-of-education","11":"tag-educational-leadership","12":"tag-graduate-degrees","13":"tag-san-antonio","14":"tag-sanantonio","15":"tag-south-side-sprint-2025","16":"tag-tamusa-college-of-education","17":"tag-texas","18":"tag-texas-am-san-antonio","19":"tag-texas-higher-education-coordinating-board","20":"tag-top-story","21":"tag-tx","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-united-states-of-america","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","26":"tag-us","27":"tag-usa","28":"tag-wc-500-750"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Brenda-Bazan-TAMUSA-campus-architecture-university-higher-ed-21.jpg\")
TAMUSA\u2019s Public Health and Education Building under construction. Credit: Brenda Baz\u00e1n \/ San Antonio Report<\/p>\n