Expand the Graduate School’s educational opportunities and programs
Action Taken
- Launched new doctoral programs in modern culture and media, development studies, and electronic music and multimedia
- Established partnerships to create graduate degrees in biology through the Marine Biological Laboratory, in acting and directing through the Brown/Trinity consortium, and in mathematics with Paris VI University in France
- Established a new professional master’s program in innovation management and entrepreneurship engineering (PRIME)
- Established professional master’s degree programs in public affairs, public policy, and urban education policy
- Initiated process to make fifth-year master’s degree programs more accessible to Brown undergraduates
- Established partnership with NIH to provide additional training for students in the graduate neuroscience program in fall 2005
- Established new research opportunities for graduate students and faculty through a partnership with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory
- Completed the launch of a system to allow doctoral students to submit and catalog their dissertations electronically in cooperation with the University Library
- Began collaboration with the Academic Priorities Committee to review masters’ level graduate programs
- Established the Working Group on Graduate Education to review the size and scope of graduate education at Brown and the role of research training and support
- Received Corporation approval in February 2007 for new Ph.D. program in Health Services Research
- Won a grant for $571,000 from the Andrew Mellon Foundation to support dissertation writing workshops for students in the humanities and social sciences
- Revised course approval process of the Graduate Council and College Curriculum Council to more carefully manage the academic connections between the College and Graduate School
- Won a $3 million endowment from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to increase graduate education in humanities and to create new interdisciplinary seminars
- Launched a pilot writing project with the Writing Center that provides graduate students with coaching services and seminars on making the transition from conducting research to communicating findings
- Launched three new doctoral degrees in computational biology, coordinated with programs with degrees or tracks in this area on admission, support, and tracking
- Attracted grant of $1.2 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support postdoctoral fellowships in the humanities and humanistic social sciences
- Awarded nearly $400,000 by the National Science Foundation to further develop ethics training for graduate students
- Reinstituted Graduate Council reviews of all graduate programs in concert with external review process
- Performed an organizational review of communications position and functions and instituted a new pilot for shared positions with OVPR
- Received approval to combine Cognitive and Linguistics Sciences and Psychology to better organize and position research and training strengths
- Launched three new doctoral programs, anchored at the Center for Computational Molecular Biology, and gained approval for the Africana Studies program
- Collaborated with Alumni Relations, co-hosting an annual reception for Graduate School alumni and graduating PhD and master’s students during Reunion/Commencement Weekend 2010
- Continued to build program support for post-doctoral appointees, and worked with Provost’s Office to further incorporate the training of postdocs into the mission of the Graduate School
- The Graduate Council completed five academic program reviews in 2010-11: Chemistry; English; Literary Arts; Modern Culture and Media; and Physics
See Phase II for other actions that support this objective
Action Needed
- Continue to work with departments, the Graduate Council, and the Dean of the College to develop plans for a graduate curriculum that crosses departmental boundaries and relates to the undergraduate curriculum
- Continue to work with departments and programs to establish a strategic and comprehensive plan for managing the creation of new master’s and doctoral programs and a schedule and process for their evaluation
- Continue to work with other offices to increase the involvement of graduate alumni
- Expand training capacity of Graduate School and OVPR in grant-writing for graduate students and postdocs
- Engage faculty and graduate programs in designing curriculum that includes summer as an explicit part of the training period for doctoral students
Responsible
- Dean of the Graduate School
- Provost