Jake Saxton
Staff Writer
This past summer Dr. Brian Rutledge, completed his doctorate degree at the University of West Florida. This process took six years to complete and consisted of 16 courses, which also included a comprehensive exam on everything he had learned. After the exam Dr. Rutledge, than had to begin his dissertation titled: Integrating technology in a middle school classroom.
The one challenge for him throughout his experience completing his doctorate was being a cyber student for the first time. This was difficult because he couldn’t have any face to face contact with his editors or professors, it was all online feedback given back to him, which can be difficult to interpret his editors or professors feedback. However, during this process Dr. Rutledge had responsibilities that he had to keep up to speed with as well. When interviewing Dr. Rutledge he stated that he had never done more reading or writing in his life. After all his courses and competing his exam this is when he began writing his dissertation: He wrote the first 3 chapters of it which were around 80-90 pages the topics were: What, Why and How. After writing these he than had to defend that verbally. Once he got the approval, he then began Chapter 4 (Report of Findings) and Chapter 5 (Conclusions) after these two chapters he had to defend that verbally again. The dissertation took 2 years to write and consisted of 208 pages.
Dr. Rutledge wanted to complete his Doctorates Degree is because he eventually wants to teach at a college level. He wishes to be a professor at a college and teach at the highest level.
