Doctoral students choose a content area (such as communication and aging, medically based speech disorders, or child language development and disorders) as their primary focus of study. However, they are also encouraged to enhance their scholarly preparation by completing course work outside of their primary content area.

In addition to course work within the department, doctoral students may choose courses from graduate programs in other departments of the College of Arts and Sciences, as well as from several professional schools at the university, including the School of Medicine (e.g., neuroscience, genetics), the Case School of Engineering (e.g., biomedical engineering), the School of Dental Medicine, the Weatherhead School of Management, and the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences.

Requirements for the doctoral program include course work, research rotations, a supervised classroom teaching experience, written and oral comprehensive examinations, and a dissertation.