GISD Program Guidelines and Requirements

Students must be currently enrolled in a graduate or professional program at Ohio State.

Students must successfully complete at least 10 but no more than 20 hours of graduate-level coursework.

The specialization consists of the following components:

1. A required three-credit (3) hour core seminar course (SOCIOL/PUBHLTH 8802). The seminar will meet twice a week and focus on the broad field of demographic research structured around four learning goals:
   1. Introduce students to the seminal literature in the fields of demography and population health
   2. Expose students to cutting-edge demographic research via participation in the weekly seminar series held by the Institute for Population Research (Tuesdays from 12:30pm-1:30pm)
   3. Provide professionalization for students as they prepare for demographic and population health research careers
   4. Teach students to critically assess the major literature in a sub-area of demography or population health in which they are interested and develop their own research proposal/paper on a topic of their own choosing.
2. A required three-credit (3) hour course in Demographic Analysis (SOCIOL 7753). A core component of demographic training is its methodological toolkit. This course will cover the materials and methods of fundamental demographic analysis.
3. Electives (minimum 4 hours) will be drawn from existing courses offered across the University which contain significant demographic content and/or provide technical training that will advance research on demographic topics. The list is available here: https://ipr.osu.edu/gisd-courses
4. Over the full set of courses intended to count towards the student’s GISD curriculum, the following GIS guidelines, determined by the Graduate School, must be met:
   1. A GIS involves TWO OR MORE graduate programs OUTSIDE of the student’s major graduate program
   2. A GIS requires a minimum of TEN hours of graduate-level course work in at least THREE courses.
   3. TWENTY hours of graduate-level course work is the maximum allowance for a GIS.
   4. NINE hours taken for the GIS must be completed OUTSIDE of the student’s home department in at least THREE courses
   5. The student must receive a grade of “B” or better or “S” in each course comprising the GIS.

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