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Department of Geography 5-year plan for improving Ph.D. program.
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Department Chair: Michael W. Binford
Geography is a STEM discipline that works to understand the complex relations among people,
places, and environments. Our faculty and graduate student research interests fall under four
broad headings of Human –Environment Interactions, Medical Geography, Physical Geography
and Economic Geography, although there is active interaction and exchange among them. The
department is the center of geospatial technologies, such as GIS and remote sensing, that . Our
department does research worldwide, and our graduate student population comes from 16
countries and XX States.
The Department of Geography has been in transition since 2006, which postdates the data used
by the NRC report and includes some of the data used in the internal committee report. Since
2006 we have reformed our Ph.D. program, lost three senior faculty members who had reduced
their engagement in Ph.D. supervision and added five junior faculty members to the department,
increased our participation in IGERT grants, and increased our research funding nearly five-fold.
The rankings given by the NRC and the internal study committee are based on the earlier
conditions in the department; however more recent data show improvement in many aspects of
our program which in some part are consequences of the reforms we established in 2006. In the
interests of looking forward, we will not belabor this point throughout most of this proposal. It
takes 5+ years for the effects of our reform to begin to be manifest because the students that were
admitted under the new rules are beginning to graduate only this year. Instead we will propose a
5-year plan that extends the reformation that we have undertaken and adds several new actions to
improve the still challenging parts of our program. We assert that the Geography Department is,
as an external review committee stated in 2008, “…on the cusp of being a “top-rated” program in
Human-Environment Interactions.” The even more recent hiring of three Medical Geographers
has pushed us even closer to top rankings as a department. Our plan describes how we will
achieve this level.
Our plan addresses the weaknesses that were shown in the internal UF report on graduate
education, and also describes how we will maintain our rankings in the areas in which we are
strong. The plan consists mostly of increased investment in recruiting, especially of minority
students, reducing the time to graduation by increasing fellowships and restructuring the teaching
assignments of the graduate students and some faculty. The resources required to achieve our 5year plan will be modest but not insignificant. Many things we will do without increased
resources. We ask for several more multi-year internal fellowships (GSF, others), support for an
enhanced Web site for our department, support for joining an international consortium of
universities involved in GIS and Remote Sensing technologies, support for attendance at
international graduate school “fairs,” and support for bringing promising students to campus to
visit the department and the university. Finally, two strategic faculty hires would drive the
department to achieve the goals.
Current Program Status (5-year data include 2006-2007 to 2010-2011 Academic Years):
1. Ph.D. Program Inception
2. Recruitment: Applicants per year
1955
17.0 + 6.2 (s.d.)
2
Admission Offers/yr
Acceptances/yr (Yield)
3. Retention: Attrition Rate
4. Program Productivity: how many students
were enrolled in Ph.D. program in each of
the past 5 years.
5. Program Productivity: How many
students received the doctorate in each of the
past 5 years?
6. Graduate -Faculty members
7. Ph.D. production per GF, tenure-track
faculty
8. Percent of students graduated by the
program annually.
9. Are the statistics in (7) and (8) typical of
those at peer programs?
10. Faculty Productivity
a. Number of faculty who graduated 10 or
more doctoral students in last five years: 0
b. Number of faculty who graduated 5-9
doctoral students in last five years: 2
c. Number of faculty who graduated 3-4
doctoral students in last five years: 3
d. Number of faculty who graduated 1-2
doctoral students in last five years: 2
e. Number of faculty who graduated zero
doctoral students in last five years: 8
f. Please comment if there are significant
numbers of faculty in categories (d) and (e).
11. Program Size:
9.4 + 5.1
6.4 + 3.4
28.6% according to the PhD
Assessment Data. 6.25% according to
our own data 2007-2011 (we lost 2
students of 32 who matriculated in the
program 2007-2011).
37, 32, 33, 32, 31 from 2011 to 2007,
respectively. We include SNRE
students.
5.2 + 4.1 (std. dev.) per year
Average 13.6 + 1.5
2011: 16 of 16
2010: 12 of 17
2009: 13 of 17
2008: 13 of 15
2007: 14 of 15
(GF of total faculty)
0.382 / tenure-track fac / year
13 %
Our numbers are a little better than
the peers. Peers from NRC: average
4.6 + 2.1 Ph.D. graduates/year,
average 19.25 + 5.1 allocated faculty =
0.24 Ph.D. graduates/allocated
faculty/year.
a. 0 graduated 10
b. 2 graduated 5-9 (both 8)
c. 3 graduated 3-4
d. 2 graduated 1-2
e. 8* graduated 0
*Six of those who supervised
zero Ph.D. graduates are
assistant professors, only two
of whom has been at UF longer
than 4 years.
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Funding is the major driver of the Ph.D. program size. We support as many students as we can
with teaching assistantships, Graduate School Fellowships, IGERT fellowships, FLAS
fellowships, and an occasional but no longer available Presidential Fellowship from internal
sources, and, in the past 7 years, two NASA Earth Systems Science Graduate Fellowships and an
EPA Graduate Fellowship. Most Ph.D. students are supported by teaching assistantships, but
stipends for teaching assistantships were much lower than in peer programs until 2009 when we
were able to raise a 9-month stipend to $15,000, which is about the median for peer institutions
(reference to Chronicle dataset and AAG dataset). A large fraction of the people offered
teaching assistantships have gone to other institutions.
Ability or willingness of faculty to supervise Ph.D. students is the second most important factor.
Half of our faculty members supervise all of our Ph.D. students. This is changing because five
assistant professors are beginning to supervise Ph.D. students. All but two of the six assistant
professors have been in the department as tenure-track faculty for four or fewer years. Most
faculty supervise one or two students at a time. A few faculty supervise no Ph.D. students. Our
Ph.D. program will become larger as the assistant professors take on more students. The problem
then becomes funding.
Teaching needs are the third important factor driving the size of the program. Graduate TAs
teach 43% of the Fall 2011 student credit hours in the department. They have taught over 50% in
past years. The department needs the TAs to maintain both SCH count and the student pipeline
from lower-level classes to majors to upper-level classes. On the other hand, the teaching duties
take time, and Ph.D. students who teach every semester tend to take longer to finish their
degrees.
Research/laboratory needs have only recently become important, and some faculty members
have begun to recruit grad students as research assisstants. The medical geography assistant
professors have significant grant income (two of the three are required to bring in 50% or more
of their own salaries), and they both require and supply support for research assistants. This
pattern started only in 2010-2011. Another assistant professor has been awarded an NSF
CAREER award, which has two research assistantships in its budget. The department has
committed to supporting each of these students for one year of their four-year programs.
The report “State of Doctoral Education at UF” states: “There appears to be an impression
among many UF science faculty that graduate students are too expensive to write into their
research grants…” This is more than an “impression.” Research assistants supported by grant
funds are relatively expensive, as the students’ stipends, health insurance, and tuition are all paid
by grant funds. Postdocs cost only a little more but produce much more. Granting agencies often
have budget limits. When grant proposals with RAs are funded but with reduced budgets, RA
support is usually the first item to be cut and instead RAs are paid as OPS students without
tuition or health benefits.
The Ph.D. program could be moderately larger. If each GF faculty member were to supervise 4
Ph.D. students, we would have 64 students in the program. We should have 2-4 more teaching
assistants (see the plan below), but more fellowships and research assistantships, funded both
internally and externally, are the objective.
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12. Stipends: Since 2009 we have offered $15,000 for 20-hr/week teaching assistantships. Some
of these are supplemented by $2000-$5000 Grinter Awards for extraordinary students. GSFs are
offered $20,000 with no time assignment except that they teach two of the four years of their
funding. IGERT fellows have been paid $30,000 for two years, and TA-level stipends in the
other two years of their fellowships. FLAS fellows are funded at ~$15,000 for the academic year
but one year at a time. We have had one NSF-SPICE fellow for two years at $30,000. Funding is
guaranteed for Ph.D.-level TAs for four years as long as they are in good standing. GSFs and
IGERTs are guaranteed for four years. These guarantees are less than our average time-todegree.
The Association of American Geographers (AAG) published a survey of stipends for 34
responding university Geography programs nationwide, finding a median TA stipend of $13,241
and a median fellowship stipend of $15,300 in 2006. Our AAU peer (U. Michigan was not
included) stipends were about the same as the national averages. Considering inflation, the
stipends in our department are about at the national median, but have been so for only two years.
13. Time-to-degree:
The 6.66 years median time to graduation from the Internal Review and NRC data were accurate
for students who matriculated prior to 2006, when we instituted annual reviews and assessments
of individual students’ progress, among other things. The median time to degree for our AAU
peer institutions is 6.3 years (NRC spreadsheet), so even our earlier duration was in line with
peers. Since 2006 many students who had been in our program for very long times were pushed
to graduate or were removed from the program, keeping the time to graduation high. It is too
early to assess fully the effect of the 2006 reforms as only the 2011 graduates indicate the
success of the program reform. The five spring and summer 2011 graduates, all of whom were
subject to the new procedures, averaged 5.2 + 1.0 (s.d.) years (Median 4.76) to completion.
14. Mentoring:
The following procedure was adopted for the 2006-2007 admissions. The department requires
that applying students contact one or more geography faculty members, and that a faculty
member agrees to serve as the preliminary advisor. The preliminary advisor, who may or may
not serve as the dissertation advisor, then guides the beginning students as to the formation of a
committee, which is done in the second semester in residence. After the formation of the
committee, the chair and the committee members mentor the student in the traditional manner.
There are several department-level mentoring procedures. There is an orientation led by the
graduate program director and department chair at the beginning of each academic year during
which expectations and procedures are described. Each student who has been enrolled for more
than one year must complete an “Annual Graduate Student Report” in the very early fall
semester {Give Web Site}. The 5-page report reminds the student of all the required steps and
their timing, and requires the inspection and signature of the chair of the dissertation committee.
The reports are reviewed by the Graduate Coordinator and Graduate Secretary who write an
evaluation of remaining steps, and deficiencies are brought to the attention of the student and the
chair of the committee. Students are given the opportunity to correct the deficiencies. If they do
not, they are placed on a probation that requires the creation of a contractual time line for
completing the deficiencies. If the deficiencies continue past the deadlines, the student risks
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being placed “not in good standing,” having any funding revoked, and ultimately being removed
from the program.
Other departmental procedures are listed in the next section on Professional Development.
15. Professional Development:
We have instituted courses in proposal writing, “How to Survive (and Thrive) in Academia,” and
“Publish or Perish,” all of which have led to increased understanding among the graduate
students of what is now and will be expected of them in their future academic careers. In 2007
we increased graduate student support for travel to conferences (registration, housing at
conferences, van transport to drivable conferences) by both eliminating support for faculty travel
and increasing the payday contribution that faculty members make to our Foundation account.
The increasingly used model for dissertations is now a collection of “publishable papers,” which
in many cases are already published or in press at the time of the defense and final examination.
We have a bulletin board in the department with graduate student publications posted for all to
see. When we have visiting distinguished scholars in the department they always meet with a
group of graduate students for lunch, and usually have meetings with especially interested
individuals.
16. Communication of Expectations:
Our Web site, admissions materials, graduate student handbook, annual orientation, annual
reports, monitoring of each graduate student and active advising by chairs and members of
dissertation committees make the expectations and standards for good academic progress and
timing of milestones very clear. Incoming students are also now involved in discussions upfront
on the role of the faculty adviser, the committee etc. and all advisers review their students’
progress to the full faculty at an annual meeting in the spring semester on graduate student
progress.
17. Recruitment, retention, and graduation of minority Ph.D. students:
We have no explicit process in place for recruitment, retention, and graduation of U.S. minority
Ph.D. students. Our graduate student body is extremely diverse, but as they are from XX
different nations, including Africans, Latin Americans, and Europeans, none qualify as U.S.
minorities. This is an area that we will address below in the plan to improve our program.
18. Training Grants:
Only one other single department of any discipline in the country has had as large a role in as
many NSF-IGERT (Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship) grants as the
Department of Geography. Multiple faculty members have been co-Investigators or affiliated
faculty for all three different NSF-IGERT grants that UF has had over the past 10 years. One
student was awarded an NSF-SPICE fellowship for one year to gain experience teaching K-12.
These are the only training grants for which our students would be eligible. We have had seven
Ph.D. students with IGERT or related fellowships (international students are not eligible for
IGERT fellowships but other sources of funds have supported them within the structure of the
IGERT programs). The 10 AAU peers average 2.8 + 1.8 IGERT grants (Max U. Texas with 6,
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Michigan with 5, Cal-Berkeley with 4, Wisconsin and UF with 3, all others with 1 or 2). Only
one other department (Computational Science and Engineering at U. Texas) has been involved in
three IGERT grants.
*****************************************************************************
Five-Year Plan
Our plan focuses on problem areas identified by the NRC and internal UF reports. We reviewed
our graduate program in 2004-2005 with reformation beginning in 2006. We instituted a series of
guidelines and policies that we have since followed. We created a new graduate handbook in
August of 2007, instituted annual activities reports for all students, instituted annual faculty
reporting about all their advisees, and increased funding for grad student travel to conferences.
We now encourage students to attend local, state, regional and national meetings and contribute
to funding for those students presenting their research. We started two new professional
development courses and we made new connections with programs at other universities that
could feed students to us. This overhaul, occurring over the last 5 years is now starting to show
results across the program. We see better PhD graduation rates, job placement, career success,
happiness and satisfaction of grad students. New students entering the program realize that the
bar is set high. We refer to these changes we have instituted and continue to assess and evaluate
in the document below. We are still behind our peers in several areas, especially recruiting,
minority enrollment, and size of the Ph.D. program, and will emphasize both the maintenance of
the current reforms to continue the good practices and outcomes and new proposals for actions to
improve in those areas in which we are not strong now.
PROBLEM AREAS FROM INTERNAL UF ANALYSIS – Quartiles are relative to all UF
Ph.D. programs:
Q3








Q4 (Best)


Q1 (worst)
Q2
Percent of admits from those who applied 2005-2010
Percent of admits who matriculated in 2005-2010
Median time-to-degree: 2005-2010
Percent Minority Students Enrolled
Budgeted graduate faculty number
Number of students enrolled
Number of 2009 program graduates
Attrition Rate for 2001-2004 Matriculants (although the number is
incorrectly high)
Completion Rate for 2001-2004 Matriculants
Number of 2009 graduates (from any program) chaired per budgeted
faculty
Q1 Categories: Recruitment and Yield:
Three of the four Q1 (poor performance) variables are related to recruitment. Our applicant pool
is small and we admit a high proportion of all applicants, and of the students we admit, we lose a
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large number to programs at other universities. This pattern may have changed with our very
recent increase in TA stipends but, although we are monitoring the numbers, it is too early to
assess the outcome. Students have not been recruited except by cooperation with other units on
campus with ties to “education fairs,” advertising through IGERT grant recruitment, exposure by
UF undergraduates to our faculty, and, very rarely, students from other universities are brought
to our attention by colleagues and former graduate students who are now faculty members
elsewhere.
Minority representation in our graduate program is very low. We have a deep challenge here.
Although we have students from 16 different countries including five Africans, nine Latin
Americans, 12 Asians, and two Europeans, we do not have African-Americans, American
Latinos/Latinas, or Asian-Americans in our program. The diversity is high, especially in the
context of the Internationalization theme of the university, but it is not U.S. diversity.
Nonetheless, many of the geography faculty members work in Latin America, sub-Saharan
Africa, and Southeast Asia, and minority students could be attracted to conducting dissertation
research in these study areas. We plan to advertise the research projects that we have and the
globally diverse graduate students, as an attraction to work on a Ph.D. in our department. We
will use the Association of American Geographers Diversity Clearinghouse for lists of
institutions, some of which are very near, that educate minority undergraduates and reach out to
them. We have a recent Ph.D. graduate now on the faculty of Florida A&M University, a
historically black college, who could identify promising students for recruitment to our program.
We will also use the graduate school’s Campus Visitation Program to bring in potential students
to meet the department.
ASSESSMENT: We should have a U.S. minority of 10 - 15% of our Ph.D. students by 2016.
This would put us into the Q3 rank.
Nearly all students seek potential graduate schools by browsing Web pages or conducting
Google searches that lead to Web pages. Our Web presence is unimpressive for numerous
reasons. One of our first priorities is to upgrade the department’s Web site to a modern, welldesigned presence that will attract second and third looks. There are several institutional barriers
to an effective Web site, and we must work to overcome them. It will require some investment in
design, implementation/construction, and maintenance of the site. These have been done up to
now by a senior secretary who does not have training for effective Web design or maintenance.
A skilled graduate student with Web design capabilities could be supported as a TA for a
semester to design the site, and then the site could be maintained by the secretary with
cooperation from the faculty.
Our catalog, specifically the coursework within it, is part of our visibility and on-line
recruitment, and we have recently made strides in improving our visibility through these
avenues. We held a workshop in Spring 2011 on coursework submission, and since then XX
new graduate courses have been approved and XX more submitted through the curriculum
pipelines. {Too much what we have done, and not enough what we will do).
ASSESSMENT: Comparison of Web visitations before and after the rebuilt web site should
increase. We will have a “contact the graduate coordinator” button that will both initiate
expressions of interest in the Ph.D. program and monitor usage.{Comment: How about adding a
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contact the grad reps button so that potential students can talk directly to the current students – this might be
more effective than what the faculty have to tell them.}
We plan to participate more {One commentor didn’t have such good opinion about this} in
natural recruiting networks such as professional meetings, more inquiries of Ph.D. graduates who
teach in colleges and universities, and use of the faculty members’ own groups of colleagues.
ASSESSMENT: ???
When first-rate students are identified and admitted, we can help support their travel to
Gainesville to meet faculty and current graduate students. One of the most useful actions for
prospective graduate students is to meet the people in their future department. We are aware of
the Graduate School’s Campus Visitation Program, but it is limited and may not cover all
potential applicants. We plan to develop a ‘recruitment weekend’ visit, advertised on the website
and in materials sent to interested students, where interested grads are invited to our program, we
host them with graduate students (free) and organize events around this visit. While students will
have to cover their travel costs we will cover the minimal expenses and entertainment.
ASSESSMENT: We will assess success based on how many students visit each year and on how
many of the students who visited actually commit to the graduate program. We should be able to
increase the Ph.D. yield to 80%.
Nationally, we may consider initiating an effort for the university to rejoin {Comments: doesn’t
recall the earlier membership – check with Smith, Zwick, etc.} the UCGIS (University
Consortium of GIS) together with urban planning, geomatics, soil and water science, and
agricultural and Biological engineering. The GIS/RS population in the department is growing
and we now have a critical mass of faculty with technical expertise to support a strong program
in GIScience. Students seeking PhD advisors attend UCGIS meetings, learn frontiers of GIS
research and talk with their potential employers. UCGIS requires support from the highest
administrative level of the university (President or Provost), an initiation fee of $4000 (winter) or
$5000 (summer, good for 1.5 years), and annual dues of $2000. Florida State University and
Florida International University are both members. UF was a member in the early days of the
UCGIS but dropped out when the dues were increased.
ASSESSMENT: Monitor the applications that come from potential students met at UCGIS
conferences, or via the UCGIS web links to graduate programs. We should be able to attract 1015 applications each year for the GIS, RS, and Medical Geography components of the program.
Internationally, we plan to advertise in international graduate scholarship fairs, such as the
recent ones in China. Faculty and college/department administrators in other UF colleges have
been successful in recruiting top international students by exhibiting in these fairs. The
University of Central Florida is listed as participating in the “QS World Grad School Tour” that
visited 13 cities in the Asia/Pacific, and India/Middle East regions this fall. Attendance at this
kind of venue has travel costs for faculty or administrators to attend, but the decreased
uncertainty about international applicants will be worth the expense.{Pete didn’t think that this,
or the assessment, makes much sense.}
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ASSESSMENT: We should be able to increase our international applicants by about 10 students
per year, and be able to admit the best students with more confidence that they will have the
language skills that Ph.D. students require.
One inexpensive way to build a profile is through social media. We have already established a
Facebook page for graduates of our program, and with little modification we can update our
department information there, such as news, grants, TAs/RAs, highlights.
ASSESSMENT: ???
Finally monitoring the enquiries that come into the department versus who actually applies, is
accepted, and matriculates will give us an idea of how our practices affect our graduate student
body. We plan to keep a list of all students that contact all faculty members about our program
and are thinking about applying. {Pete didn’t like this, either. My correspondence with Cori
agrees with Pete.} {Cori idea: All faculty members will receive a standardized form to record a
list of inquiries that they receive and forward this list to the graduate program director to
assemble prior to the annual meeting of the graduate admissions committee.}
All faculty members will forward all enquiries to the graduate program director, who will
maintain the list. The list will include the name, any test scores they report, current university,
topical areas, etc. We can then compare these lists with who actually applies. Does something get
lost in the translation here between them expressing interest and actually applying? Do they
apply to SNRE or other UF programs instead? We will provide all faculty with boilerplate
responses that can be pasted into emails from prospective students and that list highlights of our
department and graduate program to encourage more applications.
If all of these methods add to the applicant pool, and we can increase the certainty of success for
the students we meet with visits, fairs, or recommendations by people we know, then we will
require additional funding. Some of this may come from more grants that have shown a track
record in increasing, but some will have to come from university resources such as teaching
assistantships or fellowships.
OVERALL ASSESSMENT: We should be able to double the number of applicants to the
program to ~40 per year, admit 12-13, and have about 10 come to the program.
Mentoring: Long time-to-degree
The fourth category of Q1 performance was the long time to degree. Our objective will be to
reduce this time to 5.5 years by 2016. We are well on the way already and our plan is to continue
the procedures that have been in place since 2006. We have a very detailed mentoring and
monitoring plan in place, centered on an annual activities report required of all graduate students
each year, by which we monitor their progress, flag them if they have problems, and inform them
how to get back on track. Written evaluations and specific tasks are given to students annually
with timelines attached. Every student is monitored and problems are caught very early. We also
are developing an exit interview for all graduating PhDs, which they have with the
Chair/Graduate Coordinator as part of their final graduation check, where we can ascertain what
they found to be most useful and informative for leading to graduation. These exit interviews
will then be able to educate us to changes which may be needed in the future and allow us to stay
on top of this process.
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Our reforms, implemented in the 2005-2006 academic year, have reduced the time to degree
from 6.6 years to 5.2 + 1.0 years for the five spring and summer 2011 graduates, all of whom
were subject to the new procedures. It will be difficult to reduce this number further because
many of our Ph.D. students conduct long field-work research in remote areas. Others have access
immediately to the data that they need for their dissertations via satellite remote sensing or other
sources of regional, national, continental, and global data. The mix will always yield a
moderately long period for Ph.D. research, with a large standard deviation.
One area that is not addressed by our new procedures but adds to the time required to graduate is
that we overtax our teaching assistants. Most of them have full course responsibility rather than
true assistantships. We have begun transforming some of the introductory courses from multiple
sections, each of which has a different instructor, to larger lectures given by professors with
multiple sections of discussion or discussion class meetings led by teaching assistants. We can
grow 2000 and 3000 level courses, have them taught by faculty and use the TAs as they are
meant to be used. A few graduate teaching assistants may wish to teach one full course toward
the end of their time here so they can put that on their CV. By doing this we will reduce the time
commitments of the graduate teaching assistants and attract more students to the basic classes
because they will be taught by professors with excellent teaching reputations.
ASSESSMENT: The goal will be to average 5.5 years to completion. This would give us the
third-best time of the 10 AAU peer institutions, based on the 2010 NRC database. Only Penn
State (4.1 years) and Texas A&M (5.0 years) would be better.
Q2 Categories: Size of Program:
The three categories in which the Department of Geography ranked in the second quartile were
all related to the size of the program: budgeted graduate faculty number, number of students
enrolled, and number of 2009 program graduates. We cannot do much about the first number in
the current economic environment. We have requested several new and important faculty
positions each year, with an Economic Geographer {This got several comments.} and a
Regional Climate Modeler at the top of the priority list. The former would strengthen our
connections with the economics departments in both the business school and the CALS
department of food and resource economics. The latter would enable us to offer American
Meteorological Society certification for our graduates. {Pete comment: In the intro these two hires
were mentioned up alongside the other requests for funds. Do you think that we need to really push a little more
strongly here how these hires would benefit other units on campus/ That is to say that one hire makes several nits
happy and better>}
Q3 Categories: Attrition and Completion Rates
Our attrition and completion rates for 2001-2004 matriculants are in the third quartile, and may
not be seen as problems. There is evidence that the attrition number is incorrectly high as we
have not lost nearly as many as seem to be credited to us. Both numbers are good at least in part
because of the 2006 reforms, and we plan to continue the practices.
ASSESSMENT: Continued attrition and completion rates in the third or fourth quartile of all
doctoral programs at UF.
Q4 Categories: Graduates per Faculty Member
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The Department of Geography’s number of 2009 graduates, including SNRE Ph.D.s chaired per
budgeted faculty was among the higher on campus, which surprised us. As mentioned in the
statistics section, this number is slightly higher than our AAU peer institutions. A
disproportionate share of the graduates were chaired by five faculty members (2 with 8 grads, 3
with 3-4 grads over five years), and most of our faculty members chaired 0-2 over a five-year
period. In part this was because six of the faculty were Assistant Professors who were not
appointed to the Graduate Faculty early enough to chair a Ph.D. student to completion by the
report date. As the new graduate faculty assistant professors work through their first Ph.D.
students we should increase both the per-faculty number as well a more equal division of labor.
Also, the faculty members who advise a disproportionate share of the Ph.D. students may be
given a reduced teaching assignment during semesters of very heavy work. The loss of SCH by
this can be made up by allowing faculty with no or very low Ph.D. supervision to teach
additional classes that increase their contribution to the department. This will of course provide
an incentive for faculty members to recruit and advise Ph.D. students, which will also help raise
the number of students in the program and the per-faculty member graduation rates.
ASSESSMENT:
We will increase the per-faculty number of Ph.D. graduates to 0.5 students in the next 5 years as
the new Assistant Professors come online and start graduating students, and up to 0.75 by 2020.
The ideal mix would be for each faculty member to be advising four Ph.D. students at a time, in
various stages of their program.
Additional Criteria
Job Placement:
We have been successful over the past three years (2009-2011) in placing our Ph.D. graduates.
Of the 24 who graduated, 17 are in academic positions (assistant professors or post-docs), one is
in industry, three are in government jobs requiring Ph.D.s, and one is working for a nongovernmental organization exactly as she planned. We track the students for five years at least,
and then informally keep in touch with most of them as they move through the tenure decision
and beyond if they are in academia. The course mentioned above, “Surviving (and Thriving) in
Academia” is explicitly developed to aid this, as is the emphasis on the dissertation composed of
publishable papers. We have had a lot of feedback from institutions who hired our students to tell
us how well-prepared they were for their interviews and then their jobs for the first few years.
Our plan is to continue to track our Ph.D. graduates with more attention.
ASSESSMENT:
We will continue to assist all of our Ph.D. students in gaining the training that they require to
attain positions in academia, government, industry, or NGOs as they wish.