Yesterday we announced that Professor G. William Rebeck has assumed the position of interim dean of the Graduate School.
Bill is Professor of Neuroscience in the Medical Center, as the interim dean of the Graduate School. Bill is an accomplished researcher whose work focuses on understanding the genetic risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease. In addition, for the last four years, Bill has served as director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience (IPN). The IPN includes over 50 faculty from departments across the medical and main campuses involved in training approximately 50 PhD students.
Bill has lived the interdisciplinary life and will be an excellent transition leader as we build the new Graduate School focused on interdisciplinary programs across the full University. The search for the permanent dean is now being launched and will likely take several months.
In the meantime, we don’t want to wait on implementing innovations that found broad support among faculty and students.
As soon as feasible we will launch a faculty committee to finalize a set of performance metrics for Master’s and PhD programs at Georgetown. These metrics will, no doubt, vary across the fields, reflecting different missions of programs. For example, professional Master’s degree programs have key goals of occupational advancement for their graduates, but other programs are designed as feeders to PhD programs. Some metrics are commonly used. On the input side, the number of applicants, selectivity of acceptance, average GRE (or equivalent exam) scores, the percentage of accepted students who choose to enroll, competitive fellowships garnered by students in the program, etc. are ubiquitous indicators. On the outcome side, attrition rates, mean time to completion of the degree, percentages employed in program-relevant jobs within 6 months of completion, etc. are common indicators.
We will launch the first round of program reviews for graduate programs this fall, a process that will improve over time with the availability of better metrics.
We will also begin an assessment of the allocation of graduate fellowships with an eye toward finding ways to increase support for students.
We are now searching for a director of research services, who will lead the reorganization of the research administration capabilities of the main campus. When that search is completed, we will move the research administration functions to report to Vice-Provost for Research, Janet Mann.
Finally, we will begin a new financial model for the Graduate School, which will link flows of graduate tuition to the funding of support of graduate activities. This, over time, will enhance our ability to right-size the various functions supporting graduate education.
Thus, Dean Rebeck and the wonderful career staff of the Graduate School will be plenty busy over the coming year!
It is great that Provost Groves has sought and taken into account the views of faculty members and students in proposing a new structure for new Graduate School. The following comments may prove useful.
1. The proposal to give greater attention to student services is welcome. Under the present economic conditions, attention to placement of graduates from both Master’s degree programs and from the Ph.D. programs is essential. Furthermore, graduate programs are often judged inter alia by their success in the placement of their graduates (one of the metrics suggested).
2. Improving the fellowship support structure for graduate students is also important in order to attract the best students and minimize their indebtedness. At some leading universities almost all Ph.D. students receive financial aid, often in the form of full fellowships. Competition among GU graduate programs for available fellowships has some merit, but new programs may have more difficulty attracting top students than well-known, established ones. This should be taken into account in allocating fellowships and scholarships. Specific departments and programs should be evaluated over time to see how much progress they make according to the suggested metrics.
3. The role of the Graduate School in the nurturance and support of new interdisciplinary programs is also a sound idea. However, two remarks are in order. First, no graduate school has ever become great solely or principally with interdisciplinary programs. If you think of great graduate schools, you will notice that they have distinguished Ph.D. programs (and faculties) in such fields as Economics, History, Physics, Mathematics, Political Science, Biology, Chemistry, etc. Second, in view of the campus enrollment cap first priority should be given to making provisions for developing existing programs (including interdisciplinary ones) to their optimum capacity before embarking on many new interdisciplinary programs. Interdisciplinary programs would best need to be located on the present campus near the concerned functional departments in order to avoid too many logistical problems.
4. As mentioned in a previous blog, even if student services are significantly improved, this would not be sufficient to attract the best students. The main component of a great graduate school is a distinguished faculty. Since the Dean of the Graduate School seems to have only a limited role in the development of departmental faculties, and the Dean of the College is principally interested in undergraduate programs, it falls on the Provost, and the Associate Provosts to strive to strengthen the faculties of all departments on the main campus, especially those that offer graduate programs, and to advocate more competitive salaries and professorships, and increased funds for faculty research.
5. It is good that efforts will be made to determne to what extent tuition income from graduate programs cover their costs. However, tuition has never entirely covered costs of graduate programs especially at the Ph.D. level. Also, it is unrealistic to expect tuition income from Master’s programs to cover most of the costs of Ph.D. programs, as tuitions at the Master’s level are already high, and students at that level may increasingly bulk at further increases. The solution is to have a more robust fund raising to support graduate programs, including for faculty salaries, professorships and chairs, graduate fellowships, and research. The Provost, the Associate Provosts and the Graduate School Dean should play a role in explaining the importance of giving for these purposes to alunmi (including graduate alumni), other donors, and in sensitising the university advancement managers and staff on this matter.
6. Metrics are important and needed to assess departments and programs. But they should be intelligently used. For example, placement of graduates may differ from field to field because of the existing labor market situation, and of no fault of the concerned departments. The placement situation may change over time as the labor market situation changes. Perhaps the placement record of a department should best be compared to the record of similar departments at other universities. Futhermore, there are some metrics that are very important at the graduate level but were not mentioned such as the success of departments and programs in filling faculty vacancies, and in attracting and retaining valuable faculty. Some other factors that affect the quality of graduate education such as collegiality and good management in various departments and programs are not easy to measure.
are you going to release these statistics, of graduate school metrics, once they exist to the public and encourage other universities to do so as well ?