Graduate Education at Indiana University

Mission Differentiation

Graduate Education at Indiana University

Executive Summary

• Pressure is building at all campuses of Indiana University to expand graduate program offerings, both in response to national trends and local needs.
• Guidelines for expansion of degree offerings will facilitate maintaining the high quality of IU degrees and making the most efficient use of resources available now and in the future.
• IUB and IUPUI are the only campuses of Indiana University with sufficient breadth, depth and quality to engage extensively in PhD education.
• Graduate education in the form of masters degrees or graduate certificates should be expanded on all campuses of Indiana University with documented need for the degree and appropriate resources to support it.
• Partnerships across campuses to engage existing qualified faculty in graduate education at all levels allows Indiana University to respond rapidly and efficiently to Indiana’s educational needs.

Scope

Post-baccalaureate education has traditionally been divided into two categories: academic and professional. Indiana University offers internationally recognized academic graduate programs in humanities, arts, and sciences, including health sciences. Indiana University has also embraced the mission of offering professional graduate programs that directly support workforce development, a key economic driver for the state of Indiana. At Indiana University, the University Graduate School has held responsibility for academic degrees whereas professional degrees have been offered under the auspices of the respective professional schools. The academic degrees include the PhD, Master of Science (MS), or Master of Arts (MA). Professional degrees include the JD, MD, DDS, Doctor of Physical Therapy, Doctor of Audiology, EdD, MBA, MEd, MPA, MSN, MSW, and EdS. Recent national trends toward more professional masters degrees have resulted in the development at Indiana University of targeted programs such as masters degrees in geographic information science, informatics, museum studies, and philanthropic studies; two of these fields, informatics and philanthropic studies, also offer the PhD. Graduate certificates exist both as complements to PhD programs (e.g., Medieval Studies, Renaissance Studies, Victorian Studies) and as free-standing academic or professional programs (e.g., Biotechnology, Geographic Information Science, Museum Studies, Professional Editing).

Pressure is building at all campuses of Indiana University to expand graduate program offerings, both in response to national trends and local needs. This document offers guidelines for expansion of degree offerings both to maintain the justly deserved reputation for quality of IU degrees and to make most efficient use of the resources available now and in the future.

PhD Education

PhD programs support the research mission of the institution and bring national and international recognition. At Indiana University, PhD education is limited to the IUB and the IUPUI campuses, because of the significant commitment required from the institution to offer nationally and internationally competitive programs. IUB offers PhD degrees in arts and sciences and in informatics. IUPUI offers PhD degrees in Philanthropic Studies, Social Work, Nursing, Dental Science, and in several fields of basic medical sciences; the IUPUI campus also offers Purdue PhD degrees in several fields of science and in engineering.

PhD education has traditionally been aimed at creating “stewards of the discipline”. Thus, in a narrow sense, PhD programs were designed to replenish faculty ranks at PhD-granting institutions. A more modern view recognizes the reality that many PhD graduates aspire to teach in institutions focused on masters or undergraduate education, and that national or international corporations as well as government agencies need talented individuals with PhD training. Indiana University, with its broad range of PhD programs and its Preparing Future Faculty/Professionals programs, prepares students for any of these career paths.

Masters Education and Graduate Certificates

Masters education has become quite varied both nationally and at Indiana University. Academic masters degrees may be offered as an end unto themselves or these masters degrees may serve as a steppingstone to a doctoral program. Professional masters degrees may focus upon a single field (e.g., biotechnology, business, economics, geographic information science, policy studies, political science, public affairs, public health, sociology, and social science survey and analysis techniques) to open employment opportunities for the graduate. Terminal masters degrees designed to enrich the intellectual life of individuals and their communities typically cross disciplinary lines and offer breadth of experience rather than disciplinary depth; one such degree is the MA in Liberal Studies.

At Indiana University all three types of masters degrees are offered. Academic masters degrees that prepare students for doctoral programs are offered on both the IUB and IUPUI campuses. Professional masters degrees are offered on almost all campuses of Indiana University, although IUB and IUPUI offer much broader arrays of these degrees than the other campuses. The MA in Liberal Studies is offered at four regional campuses.

Graduate certificates meet the needs of the institution in that they can be developed quickly, most often building enrollment in existing graduate courses. Because graduate certificates are typically less than 30 credits, they do not require approval by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education. These features allow graduate certificates to be used effectively to rapidly respond to local educational needs or to serve as a preliminary step to the development of a full masters degree.

Characteristics of High Quality Graduate Programs

High-quality graduate programs deserving the imprimatur of Indiana University have the following characteristics:

1.Strong faculty

a. Faculty depth must be sufficient to offer a full range of disciplinary expertise,

b.Faculty must attract external funding as appropriate to the discipline and degree,

c.Faculty numbers must be sufficient to offer mentoring, research and/or training opportunities to a critical mass of students,

d.Faculty must be available to offer required courses at the frequency required to maintain continuous student progression through the program

e.Faculty must be knowledgeable of and compliant with accreditation standards appropriate to the degree/discipline, if applicable.

2.Financial Resources

a.The institution/campus must commit to support the salaries of faculty necessary for the program,

b.Financial resources must be available to support graduate students as appropriate to the discipline (e.g., in the sciences, multi-year commitments are required to be competitive for top students),

c.Financial resources must be available to support the training venues of graduate students as appropriate to the discipline.

3.Facilities/resources

a.Research facilities (laboratories, library collections) must be adequate for the discipline or degree,

b.Training facilities (laboratories, clinics) must be adequate for the discipline and degree,

c.Technology must be available to support research and to facilitate collaborations within and across campus boundaries.

Meeting the Needs for New Doctoral or Masters Programs at Indiana University

Healthy universities must continually add programs as new fields of study emerge or as demand for specific degrees appears. Indiana University is challenged to respond appropriately to the needs of all its campuses, while maintaining the quality inherent in an Indiana University graduate degree. The University must be frugal with its resources and agile in its response to demands for growth. Establishing guidelines for new degree programs facilitates the process of natural development.

Only IUB and IUPUI currently meet the criteria for high-quality PhD education noted in this document. No other IU campuses would be expected to be able to support independent PhD education in the foreseeable future, because of the large institutional investments required.

In order to develop new, independent doctoral or masters programs, a campus must demonstrate the faculty strength, financial resources, and facilities as noted previously. In addition, the proposers of any new independent doctoral or masters program would need to address the following issues:

A.Viability of the program must be assured with a business plan that works within the constraints of available resources,

B.Student demand must be documented; the program must draw from a large enough area to avoid potential depletion of the student pool within a short period of time,

C.Market demand for graduates with the degree must be documented,

D.The proposed program must fit within the campus mission and the mission of Indiana University, complementing existing programs across the University,

E.The proposed program must not negatively impact other missions, such as undergraduate teaching, on the campus or within the university, as documented by a specific plan of course offerings,

F.An assessment plan based upon concrete milestones should be built into the program,

G.A plan must exist for shutting down the program, should its goals not be met; this plan must include a strategy to allow students who are already enrolled to complete the degree.

Developing graduate certificates would follow similar guidelines to those noted above, and should reflect the specific purpose of the certificate. Graduate certificates would normally be expected to differ from masters degrees mainly by being shorter (15 to 24 credits) and by being intentionally more focused.

Partnering Between Campuses to Offer Quality Graduate Education

Establishing independent graduate programs is only one alternative to producing the type of growth that best serves Indiana University. A more powerful strategy would combine the faculty expertise from the multiple campuses and allow full participation of qualified faculty in graduate education at all levels. Partnering offers the powerful incentive of lessening duplication in terms of course offerings and in faculty hiring while making a specific expertise available to more than one campus. Faculty whose expertise makes them attractive for cross-campus programs would be expected to be recognized for this activity in promotion and tenure decisions.

This model of partnering is not only endorsed but also practiced by several deans of professional schools at IU. Deans Dan Smith (Kelley School of Business), Michael Patchner (School of Social Work), Marion Broome (School of Nursing), Gerardo Gonzalez (School of Education), and Astrid Merget (School of Public and Environmental Affairs) all indicated that his/her school was invested in distance education and could partner with regional campuses to meet state needs. Dean Smith noted that Kelley Direct is an online program that is growing at a rate of about 20% annually and requires about 21 faculty FTE teaching on overload status. Dean Smith felt that faculty at regional campuses could participate as Kelley Direct Faculty for many of the courses involved in the program. Dean Merget noted that SPEA has allowed different campuses to develop their own focus for MPA programs but that the School is interested in distance coordination of these programs to make the full spectrum of faculty expertise available around the state. Dean Patchner commented that the MSW could make a fair portion of the program available regionally by a combination of online education from Indianapolis and regional experiential components, which the school now supports statewide. Dean Broome noted that the MSN could work in a similar manner. Such an arrangement would benefit all partnering campuses: the Indianapolis campus might be able to maintain its graduatedegree granting availability and at the same time expand its graduate programs. This wouldincrease the availability of PhD nurses as faculty on regional campuses to support growth in regional BSN and MSN programs as demand for these programs grows.

The partnering model also applies well to academic graduate degrees, especially in areas where the university needs to expand its academic offerings in the economic and population center of the state. For example, foci of significant faculty strength exist at IUPUI in various disciplines unconnected to doctoral programs. The development of independent PhD programs to engage these faculty involves significant investment of time as well as money, as new PhD programs take several years to be approved and launched. This strategy is by no means sufficiently agile to meet the needs of the institution in the current environment. Indiana University would be better-served to involve these faculty in full partnerships with existing programs on the IUB campus, a strategy that can be implemented rapidly. The benefit to the IUB program is rapidly to gain faculty strength in new areas within the discipline, without huge financial investments. The benefit to IUPUI is increased accessibility to PhD students for faculty who add to the research strength of the institution. The benefit to Indiana University is to increase enrollments in existing programs without the huge investments that would otherwise be required. Partnerships that were successful might well lead eventually to independent PhD programs, but these would be based upon a strong record of actual achievement rather than projections of an uncertain future.

Mission Differentiation: Graduate Education at Indiana University

Sherry F. QueenerPage 110/19/2018