Each new student is assigned an advisor who serves until a three-person committee is formed. The committee oversees the student's academic work and ordinarily is chaired by the faculty member with whom the student plans to work most closely. A core seminar which meets two quarters in the first year and two quarters in the second year is required. Additionally, three basic courses in particular substantive areas of anthropology and sociology are offered each year as core courses. In each of their first two years, students must take two of these three focused seminars.
Students also take additional seminars pertinent to their own research interests.
Course work usually takes two years, during which time students choose an area of concentration. By the end of the third year, students are expected to have selected a faculty committee and to have made plans for their doctoral dissertation research. All students are expected to continue to participate in both the Social Relations Colloquium Series and in less formal aspects of intellectual life in the program. During the second year each student will prepare an original paper, which will be presented by the student at a meeting during the spring quarter. The group will provide the student with a detailed written critique of the paper as part of the second-year evaluation of the student's overall progress.