{"id":32834,"date":"2021-01-21T08:47:38","date_gmt":"2021-01-21T13:47:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/doctor-of-design\/2021\/01\/21\/closing-in-on-a-doctorate\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T01:19:44","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T05:19:44","slug":"closing-in-on-a-doctorate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/doctor-of-design\/2021\/01\/21\/closing-in-on-a-doctorate\/","title":{"rendered":"Closing in on a Doctorate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/departments\/academics\/doctor-of-design\/student-practitioners\/#aj-polanco\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">AJ Polanco<\/a> is the first person in his cohort to successfully complete the academic requirements of his doctorate.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Republished from Educational Testing Services (ETS)<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He was already a pioneer when he chose to join the first cohort to pursue doctorates in North Carolina State University&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/departments\/academics\/doctor-of-design\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Doctor of Design program<\/a>. Now AJ Polanco, acting associate program director for the National Assessment of Educational Programs (NAEP), is one step closer to earning that prestigious degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>AJ recently became the first person in his cohort to reach ABD (All but Dissertation) status, a designation given to doctoral candidates who complete the program&#8217;s academic requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>AJ will now continue to work on his dissertation: &#8220;Developing Best Practices for Designing Digital Assessments for Middle-School Aged Deaf or Hard of Hearing Students in the United States.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>This post was <a href=\"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/blog\/2021\/01\/21\/closing-in-on-a-doctorate\/\">originally published<\/a> in College of Design Blog.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false,"raw":"<!-- wp:ncst\/dynamic-header -->\n<!-- wp:ncst\/default-post-header \/-->\n<!-- \/wp:ncst\/dynamic-header -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/departments\/academics\/doctor-of-design\/student-practitioners\/#aj-polanco\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">AJ Polanco<\/a> is the first person in his cohort to successfully complete the academic requirements of his doctorate.<\/strong><\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p><em>Republished from Educational Testing Services (ETS)<\/em>:<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>He was already a pioneer when he chose to join the first cohort to pursue doctorates in North Carolina State University's <a href=\"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/departments\/academics\/doctor-of-design\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Doctor of Design program<\/a>. Now AJ Polanco, acting associate program director for the National Assessment of Educational Programs (NAEP), is one step closer to earning that prestigious degree.<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>AJ recently became the first person in his cohort to reach ABD (All but Dissertation) status, a designation given to doctoral candidates who complete the program's academic requirements.<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>AJ will now continue to work on his dissertation: \"Developing Best Practices for Designing Digital Assessments for Middle-School Aged Deaf or Hard of Hearing Students in the United States.\"<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->"},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AJ Polanco is the first person in his cohort to successfully complete the academic requirements of the Doctor of Design (DDes) program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":32836,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"source":"ncstate_wire","ncst_custom_author":"","ncst_show_custom_author":false,"ncst_dynamicHeaderBlockName":"","ncst_dynamicHeaderData":"","ncst_content_audit_freq":"","ncst_content_audit_date":"","ncst_content_audit_display":false,"ncst_backToTopFlag":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[45],"class_list":["post-32834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newswire","tag-_from-newswire-collection-406"],"displayCategory":null,"acf":{"ncst_posts_meta_modified_date":null},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/doctor-of-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/doctor-of-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/doctor-of-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/doctor-of-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/doctor-of-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32834"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/doctor-of-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33290,"href":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/doctor-of-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32834\/revisions\/33290"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/doctor-of-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/doctor-of-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/doctor-of-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/doctor-of-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}