This letter was sent to CGS member deans on October 19, 2021.

As announced earlier this fall, the Council of Graduate Schools is moving forward with its plan to host a place-based Annual Meeting, Leading Change in a Rapidly Changing World, in New Orleans from December 1-4, 2021. As the CGS President and members of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors, we write now to emphasize our commitments to CGS members planning to attend the meeting.

A variety of well-known and distinguished speakers (in order of appearance) include:

• Candace Thille, Director of Learning Science, Amazon
• Tara Westover, Best-selling author of Educated, named one of the 10 Best Books of 2018 by The New York Times
• Kevin Young, Director, National Museum of African American History and Culture

CGS released the CGS/GRE Graduate Enrollment & Degrees: 2010-2020 report on October 14, 2021. The latest data on graduate enrollments and degrees demonstrate the continued demand for graduate education in the U.S. Both graduate applications (7.3%) and first-time graduate enrollment (1.8%) increased overall for the Fall 2020 semester, welcome news during the disruptive COVID-19 pandemic. While international graduate first-time enrollment declined 37.4%, domestic enrollment grew 12.9% — growth driven, in part, by increases in traditionally underrepresented students.

The CGS Nominating Committee recently emailed electronic ballots for the CGS Board of Directors election to CGS graduate deans and primary contacts. We encourage you to participate in this year’s election. Take a few moments to complete your ballot before the November 1st deadline.

The CGS Nominating Committee:

John Keller (Committee Chair), Karen Butler-Purry, Joann Romagni (Board Representative), Janet Rutledge, Jerry Weinberg

CGS recently announced that Lisa Tedesco, previously vice provost for academic affairs – graduate studies and dean of the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies at Emory University, has been named the CGS Dean-in-Residence for 2021-2022.  Tedesco, a long-time advocate for graduate education, has served as a member of the boards of CGS and the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) and as president of the Association of American Universities (AAU) Association of Graduate Schools.

This past summer, CGS was fortunate to have five virtual interns from member universities across the country. Our interns are exceptional students in master’s and doctoral programs across a number of fields and contributed to grant-funded projects, government affairs and public policy, and communications and corporate relations. While their fields of study vary, they’re driven by a shared desire to support the accessibility of graduate education.

Jeffrey Engler and Julia Kent, Council of Graduate Schools

The challenge of Big Data in graduate student research

Large datasets present exciting new opportunities for the U.S. and global research enterprise. Indeed, “big data” approaches to research have the potential to develop new knowledge and innovations across nearly every broad field of study, particularly in the biomedical sciences, computer science, engineering, and the social sciences. Yet the methods used to assemble large datasets, and their applications in decision-making contexts, challenge existing ethical paradigms for data management, data integrity, human subject protections, and data use.