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Chancellor’s Fall Conference
Social Sciences, Fine Arts & Humanities
Small Group 3B
Small Group Questions
  1. How can we expand the pool of high quality graduate students attracted to our programs? In the area of student support, how can we use our existing resources more effectively and how can we increase our resources?
    • Improve the design of graduate web pages, programs should work closely with the Public Communications Office, which is currently employing a web master who could take responsibility for developing a web page template for graduate programs.
    • Recruitment committees should target the twenty or thirty best programs and contact undergraduate advisors in order to identify promising applicants.
    • Organize recruitment weekends for clusters of graduate programs under the sponsorship of colleges or divisions.
    • Publish special newsletters that feature graduate students and alumnae for distribution to prospective applicants and undergraduate advisors in colleges nationally as well as regionally.
    • Encourage graduate students to publicize the program at professional meetings.
    • Work with development officers in the colleges, the UC Davis Foundation, and private industry to develop graduate student fellowships.
    • Offer multi-year financial packages to the best applicants.

  2. What kinds of curricular change/innovation should be considered in our programs?
    • Encourage the establishment of certificate programs or designate emphases that combine practical training with academic programs, especially in the humanities. Courses taught in professional schools and in the sciences could enrich the graduate education of students in the humanities and facilitate the establishment of new programs.
    • Introduce internships for graduate students in private business, public agencies, and K-14 schools and community colleges.
    • Provide more opportunities for graduate students to develop knowledge of effective teaching techniques that can be applied to all educational levels.
    • Establish UC Presidents’ Fellowships in the Humanities involving interdisciplinary graduate training to be administered by the Humanities Institutes on the individual campuses.
    • Extend the "smart-start" program to business sponsorship of graduate students.

  3. What kinds of mentoring work best? What steps can be taken to improve mentoring?
    • Establish workshops that help graduate students prepare c.v.’s, dissertation abstracts, letters of application, and teaching portfolios.
    • Programs should develop detailed handbooks for graduate students that provide guidance at all stages of their graduate careers.
    • Departments should improve the quality of faculty mentoring by establishing workshops or informal meetings for junior faculty.
    • Mentoring of graduate students should be evaluated in all personnel actions and promotions.
    • The importance of graduate teaching should be recognized by the University through the establishment of an annual campus-level award for outstanding graduate teaching.
    • Encourage the graduate student associations in each graduate program to develop mentoring relationships between advanced and beginning graduate students.

  4. What kinds of placement efforts, both academic and non-academic, work best? How can we improve what we currently do in this area?
    • Alumnae from graduate programs who have developed diverse career opportunities should be invited to participate in career workshops. Such workshops can alert students to a broad array of employment options.
    • Introduce more awards for graduate students, especially at the campus level.
    • Use the resources of the Internship and Career Center to publicize job opportunities with the State of California.
    • Assist students in putting their application materials on departmental web pages.
    • Provide financial support for students to attend scholarly meetings that publicize their scholarship.



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Modified: 07/29/2003 02:05:10 PM
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