The Graduate Education working group this fall will focus on a foundational set of challenges referenced in CGS report recommendations. Doing so will be crucial to pursuing other CGS recommendations over time, and to increasing clarity and operational stability.
This working group is charged with developing recommendations to address the following questions:
1) What policies and procedures should guide graduate education delivery at CU Denver and how should these policies and procedures be managed and communicated to the CU Denver community?
Even if large portions of graduate education operations are governed by schools and colleges, such decentralized governance must operate within a set of rules and regulations that ensure effectiveness, efficiency, and fairness. Operations must abide by regent, system, university, and HLC guidelines, and some degree of coordination is essential to providing unified support from offices such as Admissions, the Bursar, the Registrar, and Financial Aid.
The 2022 version of Graduate School’s Policies and Procedures represents a starting point for determining what is needed. These must be updated to reflect the structures we envision governing graduate education, and guidelines must be revised to reflect our current and future goals and strategic priorities. What would a unified Policies and Procedures handbook include? What should program or school/college policy handbooks include? What is the mix of unified and decentralized processes (i.e., what must be consistent and evident in all graduate programs, and what processes can vary across schools/colleges or programs)?
2) What administrative structure should oversee and coordinate CU Denver graduate education operations?
Our exit from the dual-campus Graduate School in 2022 left significant questions for the CU Denver campus relating to authority and influence over various graduate education administrative processes. Ambiguities remain regarding what central body (if any) coordinates this work, ensures accountability for the work being done within policy and in consideration of various rules and regulations, and provides feedback and assistance to students and other decision-makers.
A careful review of peer benchmark institutions reveals that all have either a Graduate School or an Office of Graduate Education that is part of the provost’s office, with a clear mission and purview over a set of operational roles. What structure should we create to oversee graduate education, what should the mission/goals of this office be, and what areas of operation should the office have responsibility over?
3) What policies and procedures should guide graduate student employment and tuition remission?
A longstanding challenge for CU Denver graduate programs has been insufficient resources to support graduate students. While some centrally allocatable funding does exist, it’s important that this limited funding be allocated intentionally and strategically to maximize student recruitment and retention, and to maximize the financial sustainability of the university in the long term. Meanwhile, approaches to graduate student employment and financial support differ substantially across programs, which contributes to feelings of inequity as well as recruiting challenges.
Building on financial modeling with OIRE support during spring and summer 2025, we are poised to address the following questions: What guidelines and processes should we create and enact to make assistantships available to graduate students who seek it? What guidelines and policies should we create and enact to allow tax-free tuition remission payments for graduate students who perform teaching or research activities for the university, and under what conditions should tuition remission be required?
The working group will use the CGS report as a factor in forming their recommendations. The working group aims to share recommendations in draft form initially with the Graduate Council and GEST for feedback, both to optimize the recommendations and to ensure broad-based faculty involvement in their formation.
