The Department of Linguistics at the University of Colorado offers the Master’s (MA) and doctoral (PhD) degrees. There are about 85 students enrolled in graduate degree programs in Linguistics at present. Both MA and PhD students complete a core of required courses that provide a strong foundation in linguistic theory and research methods. MA students elect a program of study whose main component is 30 semester hours of courses, at least 24 of them in Linguistics. MA students receive a grounding in linguistic theory and research methods that provides preparation for a career in applied linguistics (e.g., language teaching) or PhD-level study in linguistics. The MA program offers both thesis and non-thesis tracks. Students in both tracks must pass the MA comprehensive exam at the end of the second year of MA study.
PhD students prepare for a career in academic research and teaching or applied linguistics, completing dissertations in areas of specialization supported by Department faculty: description of Native American and Chadic (Central African) languages, phonetics and phonology (including laboratory phonetics), computational linguistics, sociolinguistics, conversation analysis, psycholinguistics, first language acquisition and functionally oriented syntax. The goal of the PhD program is to prepare graduates who can design and conduct their own empirically based research programs with a keen eye to their theoretical implications. Both MA and PhD degrees can be combined with various graduate certificates.