GRADUATE SCHOOL
ACADEMIC REPORT—2007-2008
The mission of the Graduate School is to provide leadership for all aspects of the graduate enterprise at OSU, thereby contributing directly to OSU’s goal of achieving top ten land grant status. Of the myriad activities that our unit performed over the past year, several are of particular importance.
The Graduate School is in the process of a very significant refocusing and reorganization process that will have positive long term impacts on the graduate enterprise at OSU. Martin Fisk was hired in September as Associate Dean, succeeding Bruce Rettig who served as Associate Dean for the prior eight years. In January, Rosemary Garagnani was hired into a newly created position, Assistant Dean, to lead the transition of the graduate admissions function from the Office of Admissions to the Graduate School.
During FY08, nearly $2 million were allocated in direct graduate student support, primarily in the form of tuition remission. Strategic investments were made to leverage other sources of funding in support of OSU’s goals.
The report of the team that reviewed the Graduate School during 2007-08 indicated that our delivery of core service functions is consistently excellent. We take great pride in the valuable service provided by our office to students, Graduate Faculty members, departmental staff, and others on a daily basis. We work with faculty and staff across campus both formally and informally on a wide variety of policies and procedures and smooth the way for many. The present report focuses mainly on the Graduate School mission and less so on delivery of core services.
2007-2008 Highlights
1. Programmatic Achievements—List initiatives undertaken and outcomes achieved in the following areas:
a. Student engagement and success
o Following several years of discussion and planning, graduate admissions is being transferred from the Office of Admissions to the Graduate School. As a first step, Rosemary Garagnani was hired as Assistant Dean with responsibility for graduate admissions and monitoring graduate student progress. Initial work involved listening to campus needs as the basis for developing an admissions process that will be responsive and effective. An information technology (IT) specialist has been hired and searches are underway for two professional faculty positions to lead staff teams tasked with these functions. To accommodate this function and the new personnel associated with it, the Graduate School space has been enlarged and remodeled.
o During FY08, the Graduate School distributed $1,951,903 in centralized graduate student financial support, up 7.5% over the prior year. Of the total funds distributed, 84.9% ($1,658,127) consisted of tuition remission resources. The remaining 15.1% ($293,776) consisted of scholarships, fellowships, and loans from gift and endowment accounts, institutional diversity funding, and Oregon Sports Lottery revenue. The Graduate School distributed 267 scholarship, fellowship and loan awards, of which 212 (79.4%) consisted of full or partial tuition remission. Awards were allocated on a competitive basis to students enrolled in all colleges with the exception of the College of Veterinary Medicine, which has a small graduate enrollment. Overall, the Graduate School distributed 24 more awards, an increase of 9.9% over the number of awards distributed during the prior fiscal year.
o Mary Strickroth continues to implement recommendations made by the Graduate Student Financial Support Committee. A proposal to convert the Oregon Laurels Graduate Scholarship Program from a centralized selection process for individual nominees to a competitive block grant program was developed and presented to the Provost’s Council in winter term 2007 and received general endorsement for further development and implementation. With input from the deans, an implementation committee was appointed to refine the block grant approach. The plan is pending the Provost’s approval with the hope of launch in fall, 2008.
o In collaboration with Human Resources and the Student Health Center, Mary Strickroth is currently developing a proposal to extend health insurance benefits for select graduate fellows under the graduate assistant health insurance plan. The plan is designed to optimize the competitiveness of graduate student financial support packages and to compete for a diverse graduate population of the highest quality.
o Members of the Graduate School leadership team developed a policy option package for graduate education in conjunction with the Graduate Deans at the University of Oregon and Portland State University and representatives of the regional OUS institutions. We understand that the Provosts’ Council passed the POP along for presentation to members of the Oregon State Board of Higher Education on June 5, 2008. The purpose of the proposal is to increase the competitiveness of OSU to attract advanced degree students and includes improvements in graduate assistant compensation and stipends; funding to reduce fees; paid childbirth leave for graduate students on .49 FTE assistantships; fellowship funds for recruiting new students in economic/workforce development areas and for increasing diversity within the graduate student population.
o At the request of Jay Kenton, Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration, the OUS Graduate Deans met to explore options for establishing differential graduate tuition such that resource fees may be eliminated. Principles guiding the discussion include a) program costs should not become an impediment to student choice; b) any changes must be revenue neutral; and c) each campus will develop its own plan to help them achieve their unique strategic goals. A report was prepared in June summarizing progress to date and issues that are still being studied. The primary issues that face OSU are 1) the existence of the CGE bargaining agreement and current practice of remitting full tuition costs; and 2) principle investigators will face a significant financial burden if more educational costs are to be expensed for graduate research assistantships funded by grants and contracts.
o OSU continues to enjoy a national leadership position in the area of professional science master’s degrees (PSM). The Dean continues to serve on the national PSM Advisory Board. Francis gave an invited presentation, “Funding models, new buildings and promotion/tenure considerations for interdisciplinary collaborations” at Life Cycle of Interdisciplinary Programs Workshop, University of Idaho.
o Annual Advanced Degree Recipients Exit Survey data continue to be collected and shared with programs undergoing a Graduate Council Program Review for their use in determining what graduate students perceive as program strengths and weaknesses.
o A workshop was held on April 16, 2008 to inform leaders of graduate programs that are scheduled for review in the next five years of the requirements of the review.
o OSU is an “affiliate” of the Council of Graduate Schools’ initiative focused on providing education in the area of the responsible conduct of research and is invited to participate in PI meetings. Affiliate status affords an opportunity to keep abreast of national directions in the area of RCR. The Associate Dean is working with interested OSU faculty and administrators to discuss viable strategies to address this critical need at OSU. An important partner is the Office of Research.
o Sally Francis assumed responsibility as director of the economics graduate program upon the retirement of Bruce Rettig. This task includes day-to-day oversight of the program as well as leading the planning for our future offerings in the field of economics at the graduate level. As part of this work, a consulting firm was hired to conduct a review and to prepare a comprehensive and detailed report regarding our graduate offerings in economics and to make recommendations regarding how OSU should move forward in this area. Since receipt of this report, considerable effort has been devoted to analyzing the options and developing next steps—in collaboration with the Deans of CAS, CLA, and COF and with the Provost. Dean Francis participated in a faculty retreat facilitated by Steve Shields which produced a vision, mission, criteria for graduate faculty membership, and criteria for selecting a program director. These ideas are critically important because they form the foundation for next steps. A search for a new director is currently underway.
o Seminars on the topics of applying to graduate school and financing graduate education continue to be delivered to targeted groups during the academic year. Participants in programs such as the NSF-sponsored Ecosystem Informatics Research Experience for Undergraduates were among the audiences for whom the seminar was provided.
b. Research and its impact
o Renewed effort will be given to designing a University wide student research fair to replace the Graduate Student Conference.
o The Graduate School continued to provide tuition support to leverage external grant dollars. Financial commitments are currently in effect for two NSF-IGERTS (Ecosystem Informatics and the Interdisciplinary Materials Program to Accelerate the Transition from Student to Scientist for which the University of Oregon serves as the lead institution); one NIEHS training grant (Robert Tanguay, PI), and one USDA-CSREES Food & Ag Sciences National Needs training grant (Melinda Manore, PI). These commitments will continue during FY09. During FY08, commitments to future projects were pledged and are pending federal funding decisions. These include two new plus two renewal NSF-IGERT proposals: Genome Biology (Jim Carrington, PI); Waterborne Pathogens (Kate Field, PI); Ecosystems Informatics (Julia Jones, PI); and Subsurface Ecosystems (David Myrold, PI). A third new NSF-IGERT proposal focused on Green Materials is pending (UO is the lead institution with Doug Keszler as local co-PI). An NSF Expeditions proposal, Producing/Consuming Dependable Computations & Data in an Uncertain Cyber-world (Margaret Burnett, PI) is also pending as is a second USDA-CSREES Food & Ag Sciences National Needs proposal, Team-oriented Graduate Training in Forest Resources Utilization (Lech Muszynski, PI). A renewal proposal was also submitted for the current NIEHS training grant (Tanguay, PI). Total pending tuition commitments toward these future projects is $610,000 annually if all are successful. This would represent a 378% increase in training grant tuition support over actual expenditures for FY08.
c. Outreach and engagement
o The Graduate Education Strategic Task Force (GESTF) was appointed and met for its initial meeting June 9; a second meeting occurred on July 29. The primary charge to the GESTF is to provide advice and assistance regarding prioritization and implementation recommendations offered by the team that conducted the Support Unit Program Review in October.
o With John Cassady, Sally Francis co-chaired the Task Force on the Postdoctoral Experience appointed by President Ray. The Task Force has met regularly throughout the year and is nearing completion of its report to President Ray. A recommendation of direct impact on the Graduate School is to establish a postdoctoral office staffed by a part-time employee to be housed within the Graduate School. Because of this initiative, Sally Francis attended the National Postdoctoral Association annual meeting (24-27 April 2008).
o Graduate School staff conducted brown bag workshops on topics such as graduate student financial support, continuous enrollment policy, master’s and doctoral programs, event scheduling and thesis requirements. A new collaboration with Valley Library was undertaken to enhance the graduate student financial support workshops such that student participants get hands-on experience using online databases to facilitate their search for external financial support.
o The Graduate School represented OSU at national graduate student recruiting events focused on diversity including the California Forums for Diversity, the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science, and Graduate Horizons.
o Janet Morandi continues to serve on the University Commencement Committee and managed essential Graduate School commencement responsibilities including graduate degree certification.
o The Graduate School hosted a booth at University Day.
o With Dean Moheb Ghali, WWU, Sally Francis co-presented a workshop on program/dean review at the July, 2007, meeting of the Council of Graduate Schools in Puerto Rico.
d. Community and diversity
o The Graduate School sought an opportunity to submit an Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) proposal to the NSF. The lead institution is UW and the other allies are UO, WSU, and UI. The proposal was submitted June 30, 2006. Upon request of the relevant NSF program officer, the proposal was revised and resubmitted for consideration during FY08. The grant would have brought about $800K to OSU to support activities designed to increase the participation of underrepresented populations in doctoral programs in the STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) with the ultimate goal of increasing the diversity of the professoriate. Unfortunately, we recently received notification that the resubmission was unfunded.
o The Graduate School continues to receive central support under the institution’s Faculty Diversity Initiative program. In response to national pressure from the courts and public interest groups to eliminate race and/or ethnicity criteria from admission and fellowship consideration, the former Minority Graduate Pipeline Fellowship program was redesigned. Revised criteria were modeled largely after the Graduate Diversity Recruitment Bonus program.
o During its third year of operation, the Graduate Diversity Recruitment Bonus program augmented financial support packages offered to eight applicants from under-served populations with the goal of broadening participation at the graduate level. Bonuses of $5,000 each were offered to three doctoral applicants and five master’s applicants, including four Hispanic females, one African American female, one Asian American male, one Asian American female, and one white female.
o Marketing and centralized recruitment efforts focused on broadening student participation in graduate education at OSU continued to be undertaken by the Graduate School during the reporting period. Activities included participation in Project 1000 (under which eleven minority graduate applications were received – one student admitted; one student deferred); administering a McNair Scholars Incentive Program (from which applications from four minority and five low income or first generation students were received – six students admitted); encourage OSU undergraduate participation in the Western Name Exchange (53 OSU students enrolled) and communicate with the entire exchange listing (3480 WNE enrollees) to invite interest in graduate study at OSU and distribute list to OSU grad programs for recruit purposes; representing OSU at the California Forums for Diversity in Graduate Education (made direct contact with approximately 140 potential recruits and distributed the list of 2200 student names with grad programs for recruit purposes; exhibiting at the annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science; participating in Graduate Horizons (made 48 direct contacts and shared contact information to relevant graduate programs.)