GRAD REBEL MENTOR September 2019

A Message from Dean Kate Korgan Dear colleagues, Welcome back to the new academic year! I hope that you enjoyed the right combination of everything that you most needed this summer -- relaxation, productivity, fun, downtime, writing, whatever! And I hope you’ve returned invigorated and ready to tackle the academic year ahead. We have a lot going on, so it’s going to be a busy, productive, and yes, even fun year ahead! Gateway Building, here we come! After two years of planning, we’re finally on the verge of moving into our new 2nd floor space at the University Gateway Building on the east side of Maryland Parkway between Starbucks to the south and Cafe Rio to the north. We expect to move the last week of September and be up and running in our beautiful new space by the week of Sept. 30. Stay tuned for exact moving details and please stop by for a visit this fall. And please be on the lookout for an email invitation to join us for the grand opening of our Gateway Graduate Faculty Commons! It’ll be a lovely reception for graduate faculty, and we hope that you’ll be able to stop by! This Year in R1: Doctoral Graduation Metrics Summer 2019, Fall 2019, and Spring 2020 are our critical “count” semesters. Count what, you ask? These are our reporting semesters for doctoral graduation numbers to Carnegie for their next ranking. So, to maximize our chances of maintaining our new Carnegie tier one status we need to graduate a few more students than the last ranking year. More specifically: Humanities 2015 doctoral graduates: 9 2018 doctoral graduates: 24 Estimated Required Growth: Minimum of 3 additional degrees -- new total 27+ Social Science 2015 doctoral graduates: 23 2018 doctoral graduates: 19 Estimated Required Growth: Minimum of 4 degrees -- new total 23+ STEM 2015 doctoral graduates: 25 2018 doctoral graduates: 25 Estimated Required Growth: Grow as much as possible this academic year, but 65 more doctoral degrees to be in competitive range -- new longer-range goal of 90 Other 2015 doctoral graduates: 67 2018 doctoral graduates: 87 Estimated Required Growth: 3 degrees -- new total 90 To support degree completion, we appreciate your efforts to encourage doctoral students who can and should reasonably complete their degrees in fall ‘19 or spring ‘20 to do so! Anything you can do to plan ahead and encourage students’ timely completion if they’re approaching graduation this academic year would be appreciated and impactful. On the Horizon: A Preview of a Few of Our Big Projects this Academic Year We have a number of projects and initiatives under way for this academic year. Here is a sampling of a few things to expect in the year ahead: Strategic Planning: We will be holding a meeting to elicit input on a new Graduate College Strategic Five-year Plan after an initial draft is approved by the Graduate College Executive Committee. The Graduate Council will be the final reviewing and approving body. We are reviewing applications for the 2020-2023 Top Tier Doctoral Graduate Research Assistant (TTDGRA) program and faculty winners will be notified in early November. Later this fall, we’ll be providing the next three-year allocation of state GA funds to college/school deans. We continue to build and expand our CRM and student/faculty services in the Grad Rebel Gateway. This year you can expect expanded prospect and student communication flows, as well as Graduate College event registration, sign-in, and tracking for our Professional Development Academy programs. Our team is working on mandatory comprehensive system upgrades this fall, so stay tuned for a new look and feel to the Salesforce/Grad Rebel Gateway faculty/staff user interface. We plan to roll out a new “Finishing Fellows” program in spring 2020 to support timely doctoral student completion. This fall we’re implementing the new IGA (Instructional GA) program to fund more students in GA positions and support undergraduate instruction. More info coming soon! You can expect two new handbooks to support graduate faculty this year: a Graduate Faculty & Graduate Coordinator Handbook and a Postdoctoral Affairs Handbook. This fall we’ll be sending out our annual fall Graduate Student Life & Climate Survey. We appreciate your students’ participation! We’re working on making graduate data more easily available, transparent, and actionable. We know that good data = well-informed decisions. We’ll be sending out a new “Grad Data Resources” flyer and website link, as well as easy access to key reports, in the coming months. This spring we’ll publish our first Graduate College Annual Report. This fall we’re publishing and will distribute a Graduate College lookbook to support graduate student recruitment efforts. We’re implementing our Graduate Student Lifecycle model for communications, milestones, and professional and career development for graduate students. It is designed as a way to share the right info just when students need it, and we’re hopeful that it will be a useful tool that promotes and supports graduate RPC efforts. Thank you for all you do for our graduate students and programs. I am very grateful for your research, scholarship, creative activities, mentorship, teaching, advising, service, and leadership. We have all the right ingredients in place for a successful and impactful year -- let’s make it a great one together! As always, if I or my team can help you or your graduate students in any way, please let us know. Warmly, Kate Kathryn Hausbeck Korgan, Ph.D. Dean, Graduate College