OFFICE OF GRADUATE STUDIES
STRATEGIC PLAN
The Office of Graduate Studies will play a major role in achieving the central vision of the UCI Strategic Plan: “growth with excellence.” Strong advanced degree programs whose graduates become leaders in their fields are the signature of all top-ranked research universities. It is the mission of OGS to provide leadership in all areas of graduate education. It will collaborate with other academic and administrative units on campus to increase the numbers, quality and diversity of our graduate student body, assist in the development of innovative new graduate programs, including interdisciplinary, international, professional and Master’s programs, and develop activities that will promote the professional and personal development of all graduate students.
Mission of the Office of Graduate Studies
As it enters a new era as an independent unit, OGS will build on its current mission of providing information and support to its multiple constituents in the university and the community. Currently, it provides centralized administrative support for a variety of activities related to graduate education: admissions, enrollment management, graduate and postdoctoral financial support (including block fellowships, external fellowships, and teaching and research employment), and institutional data analysis. It collaborates with the Graduate Council in developing academic policies and procedures, academic oversight, graduate student support, and new degree programs and concentrations. Its office of Graduate Preparation and Student Programs is dedicated to recruiting and supporting a diverse student population. In collaboration with other units, OGS provides graduate student services such as TA training, grant writing assistance, career workshops, internships, and other enhancement activities. It also serves as an advocate for graduate issues on the campus, within the UC system, and in the community, and it represents UCI at the national level in such organizations as the Association of Graduate Schools (AAU institutions) and the Council of Graduate Schools.
These activities will continue to comprise the core of the expanded mission of OGS as UCI works towards its goal of attracting “the best graduate students in the U.S. and the world….” The OGS strategic plan will expand the range and scope of its services in the following interrelated areas: graduate enrollments, new concentrations and degree and certificate programs, graduate student support, graduate student services, outreach, communications, and advocacy. Fulfillment of the goals laid out in this plan will depend on continued collaboration with academic and administrative units across campus as well as additions to the OGS professional staff, a greater focus on development, and enhancement of its physical space.
A report of the Academic Senate Study Group on Graduate Education in 2001 warned that UC Irvine was “at risk” of losing its identity as a UC campus whose mission includes research and graduate training because of a growing imbalance between undergraduate and graduate students. The UCI Strategic Plan accordingly envisions an increase of 96% in state-funded graduate and professional student enrollment, with a target of 25 percent of enrolled students, or a total of 7,500-8,000 by 2015-16. At the same time, it speaks of focusing resources effectively by investing in the core academic disciplines, existing programs of excellence, and new programs (particularly interdisciplinary and professional programs) that address unmet community needs and respond to emerging opportunities for scholarly innovation.
Goals and Strategies
The goal of the Office of Graduate Studies over the next ten years will be to encourage substantial growth in the numbers, quality and diversity of the graduate student population, to nurture high quality doctoral programs and new professional, interdisciplinary and international programs, and to expand the services it offers to academic units, faculty, graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. To achieve these goals, it will pursue the following strategies:
Recruitment and Outreach
Although UCI has stepped up its graduate recruitment efforts in recent years, graduate student enrollments lag substantially behind rapidly growing undergraduate enrollments. Fall 2006 undergraduate enrollments increased 4% while general campus graduate enrollment growth was less than 1%. The Office of Graduate Studies will assist the academic units to grow their graduate programs in numbers (where appropriate) and quality by providing administrative and financial support for recruitment of an academically talented and diverse graduate student population, both domestic and international.
- Provide expanded support for recruitment activities, including funding for faculty visits to campuses with underrepresented populations, on-campus visits by prospective students, website enhancements, and the development of attractive recruiting materials. Update OGS website to make it more attractive and informative to prospective students. Sponsor recruitment workshops for academic units.
- Work with the Office of Institutional Research to provide academic units with accurate and up-to-date data to help them determine their capacity for growth, develop effective recruitment and retention strategies, and improve outcomes.
- Assist faculty in the development of training grant proposals like the IGERT and GAANNS.
- Continue and enhance existing programs for outreach and recruitment of a diverse student body, including diversity fellowship programs such as AGEP, UC LEADS, SURF, ECR and GOF; continue our working relationship with national societies such as ABRCMS and SACNAS; and develop partnerships with local CSUs and with UCI undergraduate diversity programs such as CAMP and MBRS. UCI will host the Southern California Forum for Diversity in Graduate Education in April 2008.
- Collaborate with the Division of Undergraduate Education in the development of new pipeline programs to recruit talented undergraduates, especially those from underrepresented groups, to graduate education. In collaboration with DUE and the Office of Student Affairs, submit a new proposal to DOE to restore the McNair program to our campus.
- Work with academic units to expand international exchange programs to enhance our students’ educational experience and promote UCI’s reputation abroad.
- Extend outreach efforts to the international students who attend summer programs through University Extension.
Graduate Student Support
A key component of effective graduate recruitment—and, of course, retention—is adequate financial support, but the level of student support currently available at UCI is inadequate to cover living costs and not competitive with that of other public and private institutions. OGS will work to provide prestigious fellowship packages to attract the best students, as well as increased fellowship support for a much greater proportion of students enrolled in graduate programs, in order to reduce reliance on teaching assistantships and to promote more timely completion of degree programs.
- Work with academic units to set enrollment goals and collect and analyze data on the distribution of block allocations and other forms of student support, with the goal of making efficient use of existing resources and improving retention and time to degree. Support enrollment growth where capacity exists while maintaining and enhancing the quality and visibility of existing programs that may already be at optimum size given the constraints of the market for the degrees they award.
- Encourage development of multi-year support packages to compete with peer institutions nationally for the best students.
- Increase the number and competitiveness of diversity fellowships.
- Establish a centrally-administered major fellowship program that will award prestigious recruitment fellowships and dissertation-year fellowships on a competitive basis.
- Actively seek external sources of funding: continue relationship with ARCS Foundation and Chancellor’s Club; host fellowship fairs and support grant writing by faculty and students; seek support from funding agencies at state and national level; make graduate fellowship support a priority in upcoming Capital Campaign.
- Work with other UC Graduate Deans and UCOP leadership to find a solution to the problem of non-resident tuition, particularly for international students.
New Programs
New graduate and professional programs offer another avenue to increased graduate student enrollments. Compared to other research universities, UCI has relatively few such programs, although their numbers have been increasing in recent years. Opportunities are particularly abundant in interdisciplinary areas, where a good deal of innovative scholarship is now taking place, and in professional programs, where UCI lags behind its peers. Another target for development is international programs. OGS will provide support for the development of new programs and will work to overcome the structural impediments to interdisciplinary programs at UCI.
- Continue to work closely with faculty and the Graduate Council in the preparation of successful proposals for new degree programs, both academic and professional.
- Encourage selective development of new Master’s programs (including professional programs, interdisciplinary, and MAT programs), as well as concurrent Master’s/Ph.D. and certificate programs.
- Encourage and support international initiatives that involve graduate student training, such as the Embedded Systems program with ICS and the Instituto di Cibernetica “Edoardo Caianiello” in Italy. Develop templates to assist faculty wishing to establish new programs.
- Provide seed money to promote dialogue among faculty and graduate students across disciplines that will serve as a springboard for scholarly collaboration and, eventually, future interdisciplinary gateway programs, concentrations, or degree programs.
- Assume a leadership role in overcoming the structural obstacles to interdisciplinary graduate programs that exist at UCI.
- Work with the Office of Research to encourage greater institutional investment in research infrastructure to attract outstanding faculty and graduate students to UCI.
- Work with the Career Center to heighten awareness of academic and alternative career options among doctoral and postdoctoral students through development of strategies originating in the Preparing Future Faculty and Responsive Ph.D. initiatives. Facilitate pedagogical internships at partner institutions and internship opportunities in local businesses, agencies and community organizations.
Graduate Student Services
Retention is as important to the growth of graduate enrollments at UCI as recruitment, yet retention and time-to-degree statistics for many programs are discouraging. In collaboration with the Office of Student Affairs and Graduate Council, the Office of Graduate Studies will expand the services it offers to graduate students in recognition of their value in creating opportunities for graduate student growth, both professional and personal, and in alleviating the stresses that negatively affect graduate student retention and postdoctoral training.
- Continue ongoing efforts to provide attractive and affordable on-campus housing, health care and child care for all enrolled graduate students and postdoctoral scholars who require them.
- Take the lead in the creation of a Graduate Student Center on the campus to provide a place for intellectual and social interaction, study, community building, professional development workshops, and other services for graduate students.
- Institute a more extensive campus-wide Orientation for new graduate students. Work with the International Center to enhance orientation activities that address the special needs of international students and assist in their integration into the academic community.
- Establish a separate Commencement ceremony for graduate students, featuring a noted speaker and special awards—e.g., for “best dissertation” and “best graduate teacher/mentor”.
- In conjunction with the Instructional Resource Center and the academic units, expand and enhance teaching assistant training and create new opportunities for pedagogical training and internship.
- Provide leadership in improving faculty mentoring of graduate students and postdoctoral scholars (in collaboration with the Office of Research).
- Based on the model developed by the Community Outreach Partnership center in the School of Social Ecology, establish a Community Scholars Initiative to link the research training of graduate students with community building non-profit agencies in the surrounding region.
- Provide better training in issues related to academic honesty and scholarly ethics.
- Work with DUE and Humanities ESL faculty to enhance oral and written English proficiency of international students.
Development, Outreach, and Advocacy
As the campus embarks on the upcoming Capital Campaign, the Office of Graduate Studies will play an active role in raising public awareness of the contribution that graduate education makes to the region, the state and the nation. It will work with academic units and Graduate Council in support of their goals for graduate training and research and it will also seek endowments for centrally-administered fellowships of various kinds as well as selected programmatic initiatives. Expansion of its outreach and communications functions will provide vital support for the recruitment activities of the academic units.
- Appoint a development officer to oversee the fundraising activities of OGS and to act as a liaison to the academic units and University Advancement.
- Dedicate greater resources, focus, and energy to communications and marketing activities within OGS, including website development, the Graduate Quarterly, and other outreach publications.
- Advocate for changes in UC and UCI policies that negatively affect graduate education, such as the structural barriers to interdisciplinary scholarship and the inadequacy of research and community infrastructure.
- Participate actively in state and national organizations whose mission is to advocate for graduate education.
Staff and space requirements
Staffing in the Office of Graduate Studies has fallen from 22 to 19 since 2003, even as the graduate student and postdoctoral populations have grown and its responsibilities have increased. Its separation from the Office of Research will entail adding some additional personnel to handle financial and human resource operations. More importantly, the enhancement activities envisioned in the OGS strategic plan will require additional professional staff and resources. The physical space for the Office has not been renovated for over 25 years; it is badly deteriorated; and it is poorly designed for its current and new functions. One of the immediate tasks facing OGS is the development of an appropriate organizational structure and the identification of both immediate and long-term resources needs, so that it is able to support the goals for graduate education set out in the University’s Strategic Plan.
