The New Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

I thank everyone for their input on how to build on the past successes of the Graduate School by positioning us for leadership in graduate education for the 21st century. Over the past few months we have had dozens of faculty, staff, and student meetings all focused on how we can get better.

I’ve devoted several blogs to the three-iteration process of decision-making, and we have zeroed in on an option that, while not the first choice of all faculty, achieves a balanced mix of innovation and respect for past successes. We began with a large set of options and through discussion and reflection have narrowed it down step-by-step. The new Graduate School retains the features of the 3rd iteration straw man proposal, while adding more explicit mention of the role of the Graduate School in the Medical Campus graduate educational activities.

The key features are:

1. The Graduate School will be a key catalyst and incubator for new interdisciplinary graduate programs. It will be the “go to” place for faculty and students from multiple disciplines who wish to coalesce into new groups to offer multiple perspectives on new fields of inquiry, for the benefit of their scholarship and student formation. Current interdisciplinary programs under the Graduate School will remain there. In addition, we will determine the best model to foster strong interdisciplinary biomedical science educational programs (Masters, Ph.D., MD/Ph.D. and postdoctoral) at the Medical Center. Included is the possible creation of a decanal structure within the context of a School of Biomedical Sciences, which would be under the academic oversight of the Graduate School, as is with other Schools involved with graduate education at Georgetown University.
2. The administrative support traditionally offered by the Graduate School on admissions, international student support, etc., will not change under the new Graduate School.
3. The new Graduate School will increase the frequency and comprehensiveness of program reviews of graduate programs. These would be guided by a set of performance criteria to be established by faculty input over the coming months.
4. The research support functions, pre- and post-award support, internal research grants, and related activities, as well as research institutes and centers and the GU Press, now under the Graduate School, will be moved to the Vice-Provost for Research.
5. A near-term focus will be the enhancement of financial support for graduate students and increased support for graduate student affairs support. Some of this will be guided by recent recommendations of the Graduate Student Organization.
6. The Graduate School dean would retain key decision input on tenure and promotion of faculty.
7. Over the next five years, the new budget model for the School will use graduate tuition streams (both GTR programs and nonGTR programs). Similarly, when undergraduate teaching is performed by graduate students, the undergraduate tuition streams will fund at least part of those activities.

We can map these features to the goals of the decision process. In a real way, we have chosen to fulfill the six goals of the Graduate School decision process through a combination of reorganizing the provost’s office and reorganizing the Graduate School. The six goals were the following, with commentary below each on mapping them to the decision taken:

1. Improve alignment of undergraduate and graduate activities.
   The new vice-provost for education will focus on integration of undergraduate and graduate activities.
2. Strengthen graduate education for the benefit of the larger university.
   The new Graduate School will focus directly on graduate program excellence, with special attention to interdisciplinary programs.
3. Increase research/ scholarship among faculty.
   The increased attention to research within the provost’s office will unite both internally funded scholarship and external grant activities. Humanities scholarship will be explicitly addressed. Redesigning and improving service to faculty from the research administration support attached to the vice-provost for research is designed to increase the volume and quality of research and scholarship among faculty.
4. Integrate research into undergraduate and graduate experience.
   This effort will be within the portfolios of the vice-provost for education and the vice-provost for research.
5. Increase the attractiveness of Georgetown among the best students.
   Improving the fellowship support structure for graduate students is a feature of the new Graduate School. By attending to the student affairs issues related to graduate students, the time as a graduate student at Georgetown can be enriched.
6. Strengthen the support of interdisciplinary graduate programs.
   An explicit key mission of the Graduate School is the nurturance and support of new interdisciplinary programs. Indeed, this will be one of the hallmarks of the School.

Given the retirement of Dean Mara, I will appoint an interim dean for the Graduate School as soon as possible. We will begin a formal search for the new dean this summer, using the traditional search procedures applied to decanal appointments. The movements of the research administration functions and other units will take place over the coming months in a manner that respects ongoing work and avoids disruptive changes.

Again, I thank my colleagues for all the hours of discussion they devoted to this issue and all the thoughtful emails they have sent. Together, we have made this a better decision, and together we will create a stronger environment for faculty research and scholarship and graduate programs at Georgetown.