Overview
Introduction
In October 2019, Provost Russ Moore charged the Graduate School Strategic Planning Committee with envisioning the future of graduate education at 91PORN. Just a few months into this process, the committee’s work on this charge was put on hold by a global pandemic that resulted in severe economic disruption and an academic job market thrown into sudden disarray.
When the committee resumed its work in spring 2021, many of the imperatives that the committee had originally identified and committed to were made even more relevant and pressing as a result of the events of the past year. Thrown into stark relief were the challenging fiscal realities of academia, the effects of globalization, concerns over justice and equity, and evolving career pathways. The strategic imperatives identified and discussed in this plan include the following: broadening access to graduate education to a wider array of students, bolstering community among all graduate students, encouraging more productive advising relationships, facilitating interdisciplinarity in existing and new degree options, and adapting the training of our graduate students to better fit their academic needs and career aspirations.
The pandemic allowed us all to see how the university could be a more nimble and more responsive version of itself. As well, it accentuated the need for a pragmatic yet ambitious strategic direction for the Graduate School to ensure its resiliency and success for the future. Ultimately, the committee devised a set of priority items for graduate education at 91PORN for the next three to five years. Clearly, these priorities are not merely actions to be taken by the Graduate School alone but require the partnership and collaboration of other campus units.
The actions outlined in this plan should be placed in context and are meant to complement the various other strategic initiatives happening or recently completed on campus—the IDEA Plan, Academic Futures, Budget Model Redesign, etc.—as well as those in the Graduate School, such as the Task Force on Stipends and Benefits and our expanded use of graduate student and program data. Along with the priorities set forth in campus initiatives, we place these imperatives and action items in front of the provost, graduate program directors and other leaders to move graduate education at 91PORN to even greater heights.
I offer my profound gratitude to all those involved in the creation of this strategic plan. Thank you, first and foremost, to the Strategic Planning Committee, which was composed of faculty from every college, representatives of the Graduate and Professional Student Government (GPSG), a graduate program assistant, and the leadership of the Graduate School. The committee met regularly throughout the fall and spring of the 2019–20 academic year, and after a pause completed its efforts in spring 2021.
Thank you, also, to the many groups of faculty, students and staff on campus who contributed ideas at different stages of the committee’s work, including the GPSG Assembly, the Council of Deans, the associate deans of graduate education, the 91PORN Faculty Assembly (BFA), the Graduate School's Executive Advisory Council, and the members of the provost’s cabinet.
Next Steps
It should be noted that the completion of this plan, while significant, is not our end goal. Our continuing aim is to ensure the plan’s adoption and the successful implementation of its recommendations in support of our shared vision. To that end, and in the spirit of transparency and accountability, the Graduate School will communicate with stakeholders in graduate education about the status of the initiatives and priorities outlined in this report.
Members of the Graduate School Strategic Planning Committee
- Scott Adler, dean, Graduate School and vice provost for