Graduate Education Updates

Enhancing Graduate Education at CU Denver

CU Denver educates more than 4,000 graduate students across more than 75 CU Denver graduate programs. So it’s crucial that CU Denver provides excellent student experiences, promotes affordability and research productivity, and supports career success. We can do this best when CU Denver’s graduate education administration is efficient, consistent, and supportive of each program’s unique strengths.

This is why CU Denver has been reviewing aspects of its graduate education operations, most recently through a March 2026 report with recommendations for:

Academic and administrative policies that provide baseline guidance for all graduate programs, while allowing flexibility for programs to apply tailored academic standards.
Administrative structures such as a new central Graduate Studies Office (to open in fall 2026), a Graduate Council with revised scope, and updated graduate faculty appointment rules and procedures.
A tuition remission policy that will defray costs for graduate students with qualifying academic assistantships starting in 2027.

Provost Karen Marrongelle supports the implementation of these recommendations, pending refinements by affected stakeholder groups. Updates will be published on this page throughout 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions

To ensure these recommendations reflect our collective community wisdom, Graduate Education Working Group leaders have been soliciting CU Denver community feedback throughout spring 2026. Here are some common questions, with responses as of May 2026.

Below are three important ways in which the new office will differ from the old one.

1) Universal Program Participat ion: Unlike the previous model, in which some graduate programs could (and did) choose not to participate , all programs will now operate under a common set of overarching policies and be represented and served by the Graduate Studies Office. This will ensure greater consistency in baseline standards and more transparent and equitable oversight , while also permitting some latitude for programs to establish tailored standards based on their own attributes and priorities .

2) Role and Scope: The role and operational scope of the previous Office of Graduate Education w ere insufficiently clear , which inhibited its effectiveness. The Graduate Studies Office is being developed in a more intentional and phased manner, with a newly clarified mission, role , and function , as well as clearer authority and accountability structures (detailed further in Working Group Report pages 20–22 and in response to the question below ) .

3) More Robust Staffing: The new office will initially be staffed with at least two full-time staff members (previously 1.5 FTEs). One of these staff members will support changes based on newly developing policies on graduate student employment and tuition remission . The office will coordinate closely with graduate education– oriented staff in schools ,colleges , and central enrollment management and student success functions including admissions, registrar, and financial aid.

Although many details will be refined over the coming year through ongoing dialogue between GSO leadership and campus stakeholders, this table (which also appears on Working Group Report pages 26–29) outlines our best recent thinking on constituent roles and responsibilities moving forward.

Graduate Council will be reconstituted in the 2026-27 academic year with an updated set of bylaws articulating its specific roles and responsibilities, which will primarily focus on strategic planning, policy development, and academic standards. Its structure will be designed to facilitate meaningful faculty input into the operation of all graduate programs.

Initial proposed responsibilities for Graduate Council are articulated on Working Group Report pages 22–24. A draft set of bylaws defining its structure and functions is currently in review by current Graduate Council members, who will serve on an interim basis for academic year 2026-27, and the bylaws will likely be finalized in the early part of that academic year.

CU Denver is the only public, PhD-granting campus in Colorado that does not provide tuition remission for graduate students with qualifying assistantships. Our working group report recommended we provide tuition remission to students with eligible teaching (GTA, GPTI) and research (GRA) assistantships, so as to improve CU Denver graduate student recruitment and retention. This topic is addressed more thoroughly in Working Group Report pages 30–35.

The current proposal posits that students with qualifying 0.5 FTE assistantships receive 100% tuition remission, and that students with qualifying 0.25 FTE assistantships receive 50% remission. While fine points may be modified, we anticipate that policy along these parameters could be implemented for students no later than fall 2027. During the implementation process, some standardization of hiring practices and normalization of graduate student assistantship budgeting would emerge across schools and colleges.

Criteria for graduate faculty appointments are being updated to clarify how faculty qualify for and maintain graduate faculty status. Eligibility will be aligned with a faculty member’s university appointment and their ongoing standing in that role.

Compared with the existing criteria, the updated criteria is likely to consider faculty more comprehensively and provide expanded opportunities for (especially) IRC faculty to participate more directly in the delivery and oversight of graduate education.

As the Graduate Studies Office becomes operational, it will establish procedures for the ongoing management and record-keeping of regular and adjunct graduate faculty appointments.

More detail is available on Working Group Report pages 24–26, including the proposal that graduate faculty appointments no longer be department-specific, and that anybody with a graduate faculty appointment in one department may sit on graduate exam committees in other departments without special approval.

Working group leaders have convened over 30 meetings, including a March 31 campuswide information session, at which they’ve spoken with a broad cross-section of stakeholders. Groups met with include:

MA and doctoral directors and staff
Deans and Associate Deans
Faculty Assembly
Graduate Council
Educational Policy and Planning Committee
University of Colorado Denver Association of Lecturers and Instructors
CU Anschutz Graduate School
Graduate Education Support Services team
Senior Leadership for Student Success team
University Research Council
Human Resources
Office of University Counsel
Central and School/College budget staff
Registrar and enrollment management
Admissions and recruitment

The aim of these meetings is to ensure that recommendations are broadly understood and that input about variables and potential impediments to implementation is meaningfully considered.

Background

Until 2022, many (but not all) CU Denver graduate programs were administered through a Graduate School shared with CU Anschutz graduate programs. In 2022, CU Denver exited that dual-campus graduate school and transitioned to a new model to serve CU Denver students exclusively. Since 2022, many graduate education functions have been managed locally, whereas other functions have been managed by a central Office of Graduate Education, with a faculty Graduate Council advising the provost on matters of significance.

Gaps in policy and process clarity and coordination, along with insufficient funding, have impeded the overall competitiveness of CU Denver graduate education programs and operations. To gain further insight and context on the state of play for CU Denver graduate education, in spring 2025 the university engaged Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) consultants to review operations and make recommendations for CU Denver graduate education going forward.

Since April 2025, CU Denver has engaged in extensive internal dialogue and exploration to address recommendations in the CGS report and optimize conditions for CU Denver graduate education. Most notable among these activities has been a Fall 2025 working group that addressed three key questions raised by the CGS report, through recommendations published on March 2, 2026 in the group’s final report.

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