GradNews October 2011
Photo by John Pollock
Welcome to the Fall 2011 edition of GradNews, the Occasional Graduate College Newsletter
No summer or winter enrollment required for doctoral students taking comp exams or final defense
The Graduate College, working with the GPSC, and in consultation with the Provost's Office, announces new enrollment rules for doctoral students:
- Doctoral students who have maintained continuous enrollment and are taking only comprehensive exams during summer or winter term no longer have to register for that summer or winter term.
- Doctoral students finishing in the summer or winter term who have maintained continuous enrollment, completed all other degree requirements as well as the required 18 credits of dissertation may defend in the summer or winter term without registration. Students should verify eligibility with their degree auditor.
The Graduate College is working to extend the no-summer registration for master's students completing thesis or master's report, pending finalization of our new system for tracking student progress (GradTrack) and our survey of master's programs (see below). Requirements for master's completion vary across and within programs; our being able to determine eligibility requires more detailed information as well as GradTrack functionality.
Subscribe to new Grants and Fellowships Newsletter
The Graduate College Office of Fellowships and Community Engagement is happy to introduce the Gradfunding newsletter. This monthly alert will assist graduate and postdoctoral student in acquiring funding for their work. To subscribe, send an email to listserv@listserv.arizona.edu. Include "subscribe gradfunding Jane Doe" in the body with your name replacing Jane Doe.
Directors of Graduate Studies and Grad Coordinators can now view grad student milestones in UAcess Student
Visit UAccess Analytics for new dashboard and reports
UAccess Analytics continues to roll out new dashboard reports and to enhance existing dashboards for campus users.
The latest addition is a Research dashboard with multiple tabs that allow for many useful queries to be generated on the fly using only a web browser. Other Dashboard topics include detailed information on Students, Budget, Employees, and Financials.
More dashboards are being added regularly. If you have ideas or needs for additional dashboards or reports, please contact Tom Rhodes. If you need training, visit the Mosaic page and click on the Training tab at the top.
Coming soon: Surveys
New Grad College study of master's completion
We know quite a bit about PhD completion, thanks to the extensive data collection from the NRC study. Much less is known—nationally or at UA—about master’s completion. In tandem with the Council of Graduate Schools, we will begin a study of master’s education. The results will allow programs to benchmark their results against similar programs and monitor their progress, both in terms of completion rates and time to degree. The results will be available on a dashboard for an easy way to monitor your students. Directors of Graduate Studies and Graduate Coordinators should look for an email with complete instructions later this semester. Surveys to students will follow in the spring.
Commission on the Status of Women will be sending a survey to all graduate students this fall. Encourage your students to participate.
See preliminary results from the Grad College exit survey. Remind all graduating students to do this survey.
New Federal Financial Aid rules will affect Graduate Students
New federal Satisfactory Academic Progress Policy is now in effect and eliminates financial aid for students after two consecutive semesters with GPAs below 3.0, even if the Graduate College allows the student to continue as a degree-seeking student. The new policy also requires students to complete at least 66% of the credits attempted. Thus excessive incompletes can jeopardize financial aid. Changes coming July 2012
New rules will eliminate the interest subsidy on subsidized loans for most graduate students. Students should direct questions to the Financial Aid office.
BABIES! BABIES! BABIES!
New babies welcomed in new Parental Leave program
See more CUTE BABIES. Read about the program.
Puzzled by forms and policies? Got a problem and need help?
Invite your degree auditor to a departmental meeting. Need training? Log into MyGradColl for dates and information. Grad data needs? Questions about Analytics/dashboards? Contact Tom Rhodes. Maria Teresa Velez (admissions, recruitment, diversity) and Dianne Horgan (post-admission issues, new programs) are also available for consultations.
Keep up on Graduate Education. Suggested readings
Women in STEM. "There are two notable findings in examining the relationship between STEM, gender and earnings. First, as is clearly documented in our previous re-port “STEM: Good Jobs Now and for the Future,” STEM workers earn considerably more than their non-STEM counterparts (what we call in this report the “STEM earnings premium”). Second is the gender wage gap – a robust finding that women earn considerably less than men, even after controlling for a wide set of characteristics such as education and age.”
Teaching is not wasted time! Graduate Students' Teaching Experiences Improve Their Methodological Research Skills.
Council of Graduate Schools released a new report, Preparing Future Faculty to Assess Student Learning, which describes the need for greater faculty engagement in the assessment of undergraduate student learning and outlines a strategy for achieving this goal through enhanced preparation of graduate students. The report examines how model programs introduce graduate students to assessment concepts and approaches and identifies promising practices for scaling up these efforts within and across institutions of higher education. The report is the result of a grant to CGS from the Teagle Foundation to explore the potential for an expanded national network of universities to improve the preparation of graduate students in the assessment of undergraduate learning.