Graduate Opportunities
The University of North Texas’ Information Science Ph.D. program responds to the varied and ever-changing needs of the information age.
We have one of the nation’s largest Ph.D. programs in the Information Science discipline, and it is fully interdisciplinary. This collaboration allows you to develop a degree plan tailored to your individual interests with a variety of courses in different academic units, such as:
- Computer science and engineering
- Geography
- Information technology and decision sciences
- Learning technologies
- Linguistics
- Merchandising and hospitality management
Students can choose from two doctoral program options: 60 credit hours for students with a master’s degree in any discipline, and 72 credit hours for students without a master’s degree. The program offers a general program of study option or a concentration option. Available concentrations include:
- Consumer behavior and experience management
- Cybersecurity
- Data science
- Geospatial information systems
- Health informatics
- Journalism
- Linguistics
Outstanding student support
You can meet other students and professionals in our student organizations or through online networking opportunities. The UNT student chapter of the Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) provides collaborative opportunities that allow for students’ professional and academic growth.
The college is designated as an iSchool, a consortium of internationally recognized information schools.
Research opportunities
Research support services are provided mainly by the Department of Information Science in collaboration with other affiliated departments through summer research grants, travel grants and access to research labs and research centers.
The Information Research and Analysis Lab facilitates the interdisciplinary research endeavors of faculty, staff and students, and manages a web-based repository of best practices and techniques in research and analysis methods.
The Intelligent Information Access Lab explores effective and efficient methods for access, interaction and analysis of large, distributed, heterogeneous, multimedia and sometimes multilingual information.
The Visual Thinking Laboratory explores the ways humans interact with the territory at the juncture of image and meaning.
The Center for Information and Computer Security is an interdisciplinary center, bringing together individuals and organizations with an interest in information security, computer security, information assurance and cybercrime.
Attending UNT
Admission requirements
Applicants will need to meet admission requirements for the graduate school along with the following Ph.D. program admissions:
- 300- to 500-word personal statement that specifies your research interests
- Academic writing sample (sole authorship paper/chapter)
- Competitive GRE scores
- Curriculum vitae
- Master’s or bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution with a GPA of 3.5 or higher
- Three letters of recommendation
For international students, evidence of English language proficiency — a satisfactory TOEFL score or successful completion of the UNT Intensive English Language Institute — is required.
More information about admission requirements is available at our website.
Degree requirements for a general program of study
- 21 credit hours in core areas (information science core and research core)
- 18 credit hours in two areas of emphasis
- 9 credit hours of electives for students with a master’s degree; 21 credit hours of electives for students without a master’s degree
- Minimum of 12 credit hours of dissertation research
Degree requirements for a concentration program of study
- 21 credit hours in core areas (information science core and research core)
- 27 credit hours in a concentration core and electives for students with a master’s degree; 39 credit hours in a concentration core and electives for students without a master’s degree
- Minimum of 12 credit hours of dissertation research
You must pass a comprehensive qualifying exam with written and oral components before you begin your dissertation research.
Financial assistance
The department offers several financial awards to help you pursue your graduate degree. These include competitive scholarships, grants and teaching and research assistantships. The graduate school and UNT Libraries also provide graduate fellowships, assistantships and scholarships.
Faculty
Jeff Allen, Regents Professor; Ph.D., Penn State University. Knowledge acquisition; knowledge management; workforce development and innovation.
Yvonne Chandler, Associate Professor; Ph.D., University of Michigan. Legal information services and research; internet resources and services; law librarianship; LIS education.
Hsia-Ching Chang, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., University at Albany. Adoption/diffusion of social media; business analytics; cloud computing security; knowledge/science mapping; information architecture.
Jiangping Chen, Professor; Ph.D., Syracuse University. Intelligent information access; digital libraries; natural language processing; information systems design and analysis.
Ana Cleveland, Regents Professor; Ph.D., Case Western Reserve University. Medical informatics; information storage and retrieval; indexing and abstracting.
Yunfei Du, Professor and Interim Department Chair; Ph.D., University of North Texas. Academic libraries; international librarianship; learning styles; e-learning.
Suliman Hawamdeh, Professor; Ph.D., University of Sheffield. Digital information management; knowledge management; information organization and retrieval; organizational learning and learning organization.
Jeonghyun Kim, Associate Professor; Ph.D., Rutgers University. Digital curation and data management; information behavior and interaction; LIS education.
John Marino, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., University of Washington. Information behavior context; the Big6 information problem-solving process; digital learning environments.
Shawne Miksa, Associate Professor; Ph.D., Florida State University. Organization, control and access to information entities; classification research and theory; information retrieval; bibliometrics; scholarly communication.
Brian O’Connor, Professor; Ph.D., University of California Berkeley. Image document access; information seeking behavior; browsing studies; representation of questions and documents.
Guillermo Oyarce, Associate Professor; Ph.D., University of North Texas. Information retrieval systems; feature selection; human-computer interaction: direct, manipulation in IR and visualization.
Barbara Schultz-Jones, Associate Professor; Ph.D., University of North Texas. Collaboration networks; social networks; school library automation; information literacy in K-12 schools.
Daniella Smith, Associate Professor; Ph.D., Florida State University. Leadership development; diversity; technology in schools; school libraries; online learning.
Maurice Wheeler, Associate Professor; Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh. Management; leadership; organizational culture; diversity; public libraries.
Oksana Zavalina, Associate Professor; Ph.D., University of Illinois. Information organization, access and retrieval; metadata, cataloging and classification; digital repositories; use of information systems.
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