August 28th Email from Provost Wise to Deans, Directors, and Chairs

Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 11:35:28 -0700 (PDT)

From: UW Provost's Office <provost@u.washington.edu>
To: uwddc@u.washington.edu
Subject: [UW Administration] Ten-year National Research Council (NRC) Survey on the Assessment of Research Doctorate Programs

Dear Colleagues,

As you may have heard, the ten-year NRC Survey on the Assessment of Research Doctorate Programs will be launched and completed this year. The Institutional Coordinator for the University of Washington is Dr. Suzanne Ortega, Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School. See below for the NRC Statement of Purpose.

I am writing to stress the importance of this survey to our institution and our doctoral programs. It will have ramifications for the reputation of our institution, including peer perception, which in turn will affect our ability to attract outstanding faculty, students, and funding. I ask you to share this information with your faculty and students and urge them to visit the NRC website to examine the program and the faculty questionnaires that they will be asked to complete beginning in September. Note that students in five representative programs will also be surveyed. The Graduate School has created a web site with information concerning the UW response and timetable, with links to the NRC questionnaires and other information:

The results of this survey will be our legacy for the next ten years. As the National Academy Press stated in an article that referred to the strengths of the 1995 NRC study, "It was widely accepted, quoted, and utilized as an

authoritative source of information on the quality of doctoral programs." NRC

has issued a statement of purpose, which I have included as additional information.

Sincerely,

Phyllis M. Wise
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs
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NRC STATEMENT OF PURPOSE:

The National Research Council, which conducted assessments of doctoral programs in 1983 and 1995, proposes to conduct a new study, the purposes of which are to:

-- Help universities improve their doctoral programs through benchmarking.
-- Expand the talent pool through accessible information, easily available to potential doctoral students, about doctoral programs.
-- Benefit the nation's research capacity by improving the quality of doctoral programs and their students.

This study will be a marked departure from earlier studies. Although it will proceed primarily through questionnaires to universities, programs, faculty, and students (for a few fields), it will gather information about a large number of quantitative variables that are related to:

-- Scholarly productivity of program faculty
-- Effectiveness of doctoral education
-- Research resources
-- Demographic characteristics of students and faculty
-- Resources available to doctoral students
-- Characteristics of the doctoral program.

These data, collected under uniform definitions, will be used to construct a large web-resident database for about sixty fields of study, thus permitting comparisons of programs within a university and across universities. The database will be constructed so that it can be updated regularly.