Skip to main content
Prepare to be a leader for equity, justice, and transformative change. Please note: This program will begin Fall 2023

This interdisciplinary program will elevate your expertise in social justice. You will build on your current knowledge of theory, research, methods, and approaches to its practical and professional applications.

Become a leader who addresses pressing issues of social justice

Dominican’s Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Applied Social Justice program prepares and educates professionals, especially individuals from historically excluded groups, to take on equitable, just, and liberatory frameworks to address society’s most pressing issues. You will learn to assess the roots of inequity, injustice, and disempowerment through an intersectional identity lens that accounts for the diverse social identities within and across racial and ethnic groups. 

A PhD program designed for the busy professional

As a Catholic Hispanic-Serving Institution, Dominican intentionally designed this PhD program to broaden access to the doctoral pathway, especially for working professionals from diverse Hispanic and Latine backgrounds. All classes are offered online, allowing you to significantly advance your professional education without stopping your career and personal goals. You can choose our program without traditional decision-making parameters, such as location. And because it is online, the cost is much lower than in-person programs at larger universities. Uniquely, Dominican’s PhD program can be completed in just four years, enabling graduates to elevate their work and contributions to communities affected most by social inequalities.

There will be a two-day, in-person weekend orientation in August. Details to come.

Jake Bucher, PhD

Founding Dean, College of Applied Social Sciences

"We need more leaders across organizations, companies, and communities who understand the structural contributions to injustice and the individual outcomes of it, and more leaders who are committed to—and equipped with—the ability to reconstruct those contributions and improve those outcomes. For those who want to move up in their career and/or have more autonomy in their work, this degree will help towards that goal—and for those who want to make a difference and maximize their impact, this degree will help with that calling."