Doctoral Program
It's about Relationships and Ideas, as well as Knowledge
The interdisciplinary nature of ILIR provided me with an invaluable depth of knowledge to begin an academic career in employment relations. Faculty-student mentoring allowed for a constant exchange of ideas to facilitate the learning process. These relationships will provide me with lasting collaborations and the necessary foundation for future success.
-Michelle Arthur, Ph.D. '00, Assistant Professor, University of New Mexico
Do you enjoy independent research and working in small groups to discover and communicate new ideas? Do you possess intellectual curiosity about relationships involving:
- Employee ability, skill, motivation, functional and dysfunctional behaviors, and job performance and satisfaction
- Work practices and organizational performance (based on financial and market indicators, social responsibility)
- Human resource practices and their connections with performance
- Government regulation of employment practices
- Labor markets, both inside and outside the firm, and their impacts on careers
- Union-management relations?
If so, then you should excel in the Ph.D. program at the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, because these are just a few of the relationships that our most successful doctoral students have researched in the past few years.
The study of human resources (HR) and industrial relations (IR) explores ideas about employment relationships from a number of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives. Employment relations encompasses the background and interests of HR and IR scholars, labor economists, organizational psychologists, organizational sociologists, legal scholars, and labor educators. As a student pursuing a Ph.D. in HR/IR at the Institute, you will develop relationships with ILIR faculty in all of these disciplines, other doctoral and master's degree students, and alumni colleagues at other universities.
A doctoral degree in HR/IR from the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations will prepare you for a career as a first-rate researcher and teacher in a leading research university on topics pertaining to employment relations. Most of these academic positions are either in business or industrial relations schools. You will produce cutting-edge information in the field by learning the craft of research from a tight-knit community of dedicated ILIR faculty who will support and challenge your ideas from multidisciplinary perspectives.
Typically, it takes four years beyond your bachelor's degree to complete the program requirements and receive your Ph.D. At any one time, 12-15 students are enrolled in the doctoral program and all students pursuing a Ph.D. are given a generous financial aid package, including financial support for travel to professional conferences. ILIR has its own top-rated library, a very strong information technology infrastructure, and office space for all funded doctoral students.
Click About the Institute to read more about the Institute's distinguished history, and learn more about the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Once you have decided that ILIR has what you are looking for, you can apply on-line. Applications are accepted for fall semester enrollment only.
We welcome your questions, and hope you will come visit. Please email Professor Joe Martocchio, Chair of the Ph.D. Advisory Committee, martocch@uiuc.edu or Director of Student Services Becky Barker at ebarker@uiuc.edu to have more information mailed to you.