Dear Colleagues:
The University’s initiative to enhance graduate funding for key programs this year is already reaping tremendous benefits in the Department of Communication. Based on their recent analysis, next year is shaping up to be the sort of success that we all hoped was possible, and demonstrates the remarkable difference these enhancements can make when they are strategically applied.
Graduate Coordinator Tony de Velasco reports: “We will enroll three new PhD GAs funded because of the enhanced stipend, two full-time PhDs who will receive 1st – Generation Fellowships, and two part-time PhDs who are coming to us self-funded. Three applicants accepted our offer for MA funding, while two applicants are coming to us full-time, self-funded. We are still accepting applications, of course, and expect to admit additional self-funded students for F2014. Our investment priorities for the F2014 admissions’ cycle were to:
- Offer enhanced stipends to only our top PhD applicants
- Target funding to applicants with potential to help grow research productivity in Health Communication
- Target funding to top MAs with demonstrated potential to feed into PhD.”
The number of new PhD applicants in COMM has increased by two-thirds over the program mean since 2007, with the highest number of new PhD applications in the program’s history this year. The news for self-funded (no university funds) graduate admissions is also impressive: over the past three years combined, the department enrolled only four such graduate students but this year they will enroll four for 2014 alone.
The department has made specific and concerted long-term strategies to bring greater quality and efficiency and focus to the graduate program in many ways, such as:
Deploy new and existing resources to increase new PhD stipends to grow research impact of Health Communication area and to remain competitive with peer institutions more generally
- Aggressively recruit qualified PhD and MA applicants in all areas who can self fund or who qualify for existing funds available elsewhere
- Fund qualified MA students in all areas who demonstrated research excellence and high probability for completing a PhD in the COMM program
- Reduce and streamline total number of graduate course offerings to free up full-time faculty for more undergraduate teaching
“Streamlining our graduate course offerings seems like a small step, explains Communication Department Chair Leroy Dorsey, “but it goes hand-in-hand with the overall creative strategy in maximizing the additional funding to impact the graduate program greatly and, subsequently, impact other areas in the Department (i.e., tenured/ tenure-track faculty available to teach more undergraduate courses). More efficient scheduling goes with our decision to reduce COMM’s overall number of GAs in order to foster the focused growth of our PhD program. Reducing the overall number of GAs, in short, enables us to increase the ratio of funded PhDs to MAs.”
Professor de Velasco summarizes: “The additional funding we received from the Provost’s office, along with the subsequent priorities and strategies influenced by that additional funding, will help to reposition COMM to grow its PhD strategically in all three of its research areas in the long term.” The department is a model of what is possible when enhanced funding is applied strategically to grow the department responsibly and within its own goals. They are to be congratulated for their initiative, and the success it is already reaping.
Go Tigers!
M. David Rudd, Provost