Contact: Julia Kent

(202) 223-3791

jkent@cgs.nche.edu

Three New Members to Join Board in 2016

Washington, DC – The Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) Board of Directors has announced its officers for the 2016 term. CGS is governed by a 12-member Board of Directors drawn from member institutions. Board members serve for set terms.

Dr. M.J.T. (“Mark”) Smith, Dean of the Graduate School at Purdue University, was announced as the 2016 Board Chair at the conclusion of the 2015 CGS Annual Meeting. A member of the faculty in Electrical and Computer Engineering whose scholarly interests focus on digital signal processing, Smith was appointed graduate dean in 2009. He is a Fellow of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and is a former IEEE Distinguished Lecturer. Smith has authored many technical papers, six international standards publications, three textbooks, and two edited books, the most recent of which is the 2014 edited book GPS for Graduate School—Students Share Their Stories.

“CGS is honored to have Dr. Smith’s expertise during this critical time in graduate education. He has provided exceptional leadership of the Graduate School at Purdue and will help CGS meet the evolving needs of our member institutions,” said CGS President Suzanne T. Ortega.

The new Chair-elect, Dr. Nancy Marcus, the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of Oceanography has been Dean of The Graduate School at the Florida State University since August 2005. Her responsibilities include oversight of the education of approximately 8,000 graduate and professional students. She has enhanced several programs offered by the Graduate School during her tenure, including the Preparing Future Faculty program and the Professional Development Workshop Series. She has also established programs to promote interdisciplinary engagement, fellowships for international study, and an online tracking system to monitor graduate student progress. She earned a BA from Goucher College and a PhD from Yale University.

Beginning their three-year terms on the board on January 1 are Dr. Kinchel C. Doerner, Dean of the Graduate School at South Dakota State University; Dr. Sarah (Sally) Pratt, Vice Provost for Graduate Programs at the University of Southern California; and Dr. Carol W. Shanklin, Dean of the Graduate School at Kansas State University.

Dr. Barbara Knuth, Senior Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School at Cornell University, will remain on CGS’s Executive Committee for one year as immediate past chair. 

“I am honored to have worked with Dr. Knuth during her term as CGS Board Chair,” Ortega said. “She has contributed greatly to the success of graduate students at her institution and has been on the forefront of the pressing issues graduate schools face today.” 

Contact: Julia Kent

(202) 223-3791

jkent@cgs.nche.edu

Washington, DC – The Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) has awarded the 2015 Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities to Dr. Stephen S. Bush, Manning Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Brown University. The awards ceremony was held during the CGS 55th Annual Meeting.

The Arlt Award is given annually to a young scholar-teacher who has written a book deemed to have made an outstanding contribution to scholarship in the humanities. Dr. Bush becomes the award’s 45th recipient for his book, Visions of Religion: Experience, Meaning and Power (Oxford University Press, 2014). He received his PhD in Religion from Princeton University in 2008.

Dr. Bush’s book “examines influential proponents of the three visions of the nature of religion – religion as experience, symbolic meaning, and power – and argues that each approach offers substantial and lasting contributions to the study of religion, although each requires revision. Bush rehabilitates the concepts of experience and meaning, two categories much maligned in present day culture, and demonstrates the extent to which these categories are implicated in matters of social power. This book articulates a social practical theory of religion that can account for all three aspects, even as it incorporates them into a single theoretical framework: religion as a social practice.”

[From left: Suzanne Ortega, President, CGS; Stephen S. Bush, winner, 2015 Arlt Award and Manning Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Brown University; Kevin Gibson, Interim Dean, Graduate Programs, Marquette University]

Created in 1971, the Arlt Award honors the first president of CGS. The winner must have earned a doctorate within the past seven years from, and currently be teaching at, a North American university. Nominations are made by CGS member institutions and are reviewed by a panel of scholars in the field of competition, which rotates annually among seven disciplines within the humanities. This year’s field was Religious Studies. The winner receives a $1,000 honorarium, a certificate, and travel to the awards ceremony.

Julia Kent, CGS                                                  

(202) 461-3874                                       

jkent@cgs.nche.edu

Tom Ewing, ETS

(609) 683-2803

tewing@ets.org  

Washington, DC – The seventh annual ETS/CGS Award for Innovation in Promoting Success in Graduate Education: From Admission through Completion was presented to the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). The award is sponsored by CGS and Educational Testing Service (ETS). Dr. Robin L. Garrell, Vice Provost for Graduate Education and Dean of The Graduate Division, accepted the award on UCLA’s behalf during the 55th Annual Meeting of the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS).

The award recognizes promising, innovative proposals to enhance student success and degree completion at the master’s or doctoral level while promoting inclusiveness. The winning institution is selected on the strength of its proposal to meet the award’s goals and to serve as a model for other schools. The winner receives a two-year, $20,000 matching grant.

UCLA plans to build upon an existing web-based platform, the Graduate and Postdoctoral Educational Support (GRAPES), and create a new tool – Smart Recommendations (Smart Recs) – that will provide funding information to students based on their unique backgrounds, academic pursuits, and aspirational goals. Once the Smart Recs platform for funding information is built, UCLA plans to expand it to include other recommendations to support student success, such as information on campus seminars and workshops, professional and career development opportunities, and key deadlines.

[From left: Robin Garrell, Vice Provost, Graduate Education and Dean, Graduate Division accepts on behalf of University of California, Los Angeles, the 2015 ETS/CGS Award for Innovation in Promoting Success in Graduate Education: From Admission through Completion; David Payne, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Global Education, ETS ]

“We are excited about developing a dynamic, customized recommendation system that will support the success of UCLA graduate students. The potential impact of Smart Recs extends well beyond our campus. We hope that other institutions will take note of our UX design methodology, with its focus on the graduate student user experience.” Dr. Garrell said. “Because the software architecture is largely open-source, we look forward to exploring ways the underlying technology and infrastructure can be shared.”

“The practices showcased by this award competition greatly benefit the graduate education community,” said CGS President Suzanne T. Ortega. “On behalf of our members, I thank the University of California Los Angeles for sharing their creative expertise with graduate institutions everywhere by designing a platform that will provide graduate schools with better tools to bolster graduate student success. And of course, I thank ETS, whose support makes possible this novel way to promote best practices among the graduate community.”

David Payne, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Global Education at ETS, also lauded UCLA’s innovation. “Smart Recs will provide much needed support to prospective and current graduate students and postdocs as they move through admissions, deadlines, courses and seminars, professional development and especially funding,” said Payne. “With this initiative, UCLA brings it all together in one place to save students time, reduce frustration and make for easier access to necessary information to help them pursue their studies and careers. Importantly, Smart Recs will meet students where they spend a great deal of time and where they look to gain information – online and connected to useful and needed information.”

This year, the selection committee chose one institution to be named as Honorable Mention: The University of Buffalo, SUNY for the “Master’s 360 – Enhancing Opportunities for Academic Success and Professional Development.” This project’s aim is to expand the existing initiatives of the iSEED program to enhance and improve academic success for all URMs in any discipline at the master’s level. Graham Hammill, vice provost for graduate education and dean of the Graduate School, was recognized during the award luncheon.

Julia Kent, Council of Graduate Schools                                               

(202) 461-3874                                                            

jkent@cgs.nche.edu                 

Beth Dempsey, ProQuest

(248) 349-7810

beth.dempsey@proquest.com                           

Awards recognize outstanding research by graduates in the fields of Biological & Life Sciences and Humanities & Fine Arts

Washington, DC – The Council of Graduate Schools / ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Awards, the nation’s most prestigious honors for doctoral dissertations, were presented to Jeongmin Choi and Timo Schaefer at an awards ceremony during the Council’s 55th Annual Meeting. Dr. Choi completed her PhD in 2014 at University of Missouri, in Plant Science, and Dr. Schaefer received his PhD in 2015 from Indiana University, in History.

Bestowed annually since 1982, the awards recognize recent doctoral recipients who have already made unusually significant and original contributions to their fields. ProQuest, an international leader in dissertation archiving, discovery, and access, sponsors the awards and an independent committee from the Council of Graduate Schools selects the winners. Two awards are given each year, rotating among four general areas of scholarship. The winners receive a certificate, a $2,000 honorarium, and funds for travel to the awards ceremony.

“The Distinguished Dissertation Awards demonstrate the dramatic impact young scholars have on their fields,” said CGS President Suzanne T. Ortega. “It’s a testament to the vitality and value of graduate education when recently minted PhDs contribute and expand upon knowledge to raise the level of understanding in their fields.”

Austin McLean, director, ProQuest Scholarly Communication and Dissertations Publishing said, “ProQuest has devoted decades to improving both discovery of and access to dissertations because of the vital roles they play in advancing knowledge. We’re delighted to honor the excellent examples Dr. Choi and Dr. Schaefer have provided of the fresh perspectives and innovative thinking that are found in graduate works.”​

The 2015 Award in the Biological and Life Sciences was presented to Dr. Choi for her dissertation, “Identification of an extracellular adenosine 5’–triphosphate receptor in Arabidopsis thaliana.” Recent research demonstrates Adenosine 5’-triphosphate (ATP) plays an important role in plant growth, development, and stress responses. This project focuses on the enigmatic mechanism of extracellular ATP recognition in plants. Choi describes “a mutant screen that identified a key molecular component involved in extracellular ATP recognition in Arabidopsisthaliana. The gene identified by isolation of an ATP-insensitive mutant was termed DORN1 (Does not respond to Nucleotides 1).” She argues that DORN1 is “essential for perception of extracellular ATP and likely plays a variety of roles in plant stress responses.” Dr. Choi is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge.

[From left: Suzanne T. Ortega, CGS; Jeongmin Choi, winner, 2015 ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award; Marlene Coles, ProQuest]

Dr. Schaefer received the 2015 Award in Humanities and Fine Arts for his dissertation, “The Social Origins of Justice: Mexico in the Age of Utopian Failure, 1821-1870.”  His project is a “comparative study of legal-institution building in indigenous towns, mestizo towns, and estate (hacienda) settlements in post-independence Mexico.” Schaefer argues that “struggles over the shape of Mexico’s post-colonial justice system turned on different conceptions of the appropriate place of labor in social life.” He concludes that “the historical failure of liberalism in nineteenth-century Mexico was linked to the defeat of a civic imagination that had conceived of labor not as the subordinate or alienated pole in an antagonistic property relation but as the constitutive and ordering power of all social life.” Dr. Schaefer is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History at the University of British Columbia.

[From left: Suzanne T. Ortega, CGS; Timo Schaefer, winner, 2015 ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award; Marlene Coles, ProQuest]

More information about the CGS / ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award is available at www.proquest.com/go/scholars or at www.cgsnet.org.

The Council of Graduate Schools, published a report earlier this month showing that international students are coming to American universities in increasing numbers. Foreign student enrollment increased by 11.2 percent from 2013 to 2014 — accounting for two-thirds of the 0.4 percent in total 2014 growth of graduate students who enrolled for the first time. “International students are coming to U.S. institutions in growing numbers, and they are particularly attracted to [science, technology, engineering and math] fields,” said Jeff Allum, CGS assistant vice president for research and policy analysis and one of the report’s co-authors.
 

Minority representation in U.S. graduate schools continued to grow, rising from 28.3 percent of first-time domestic enrollment in 2008 to 29.1 percent in 2009. International students’ share of first-time graduate enrollments dropped from 18 percent in 2008 to 16.5 percent in 2009. Hispanics continued to lag behind. Only 4 percent of them were in graduate school. This issue of HO provides useful suggestions on what can be done to encourage more Hispanics to pursue graduate education.

The Council of Graduate Schools recently released a new report on enrollments and degree attainments in master’s and doctoral degree programs at U.S. universities. Among the first-time graduate students in 2014, Blacks were 8.8 percent of all students. Among the Black first-time graduate students, women were 69.1 percent of the new students. For students of all races, women were 56.9 percent of all new first-time graduate students. So the gender gap in new graduate students is far greater among African Americans than is the case generally.

International students continue to fuel enrolment growth at US graduate schools with international students accounted for more than two-thirds of the growth in first-time enrolment headcounts at US graduate institutions from 2004 to 2014 according to CGS’s Graduate and Enrollment Degree report. An analysis of applications by foreign students to specific academic programs found that nearly two-thirds were for admission to masters and certificate programs, challenging a long-held assumption that most are pursuing doctoral degrees.

International students drove enrollment up at graduate schools across the country last fall, delivering the largest one-year increase in first-time graduate enrollment since 2009. The 3.5 percent increase in new graduate students was bolstered by high enrollment in mathematics, computer science, and engineering, all of which experienced double-digit growth with an influx of students from overseas. “The increase in overall enrollments is good news, but the disparity between U.S. and international growth is a cause for concern,” said CGS President, Suzanne Ortega.

First-time graduate school enrollment was up 3.5 percent in 2014 from the year before, the biggest annual increase since 2009. The increase is a combination of “very robust” growth among international students -- up 11.2 percent year over year -- as well as a significant, 1.3 percent jump in enrollment among U.S. citizens said to CGS’s Jeff Allum. According to the survey, last year set records in terms of applications, offers of admission, and total first-time enrollment.