GSFEI
2007-08 TOP SCHOLAR AWARDS
Four Highly-Rated Proposals
1. DANCE
2. HEALTH SERVICES ADMINISTRATION
4. SOCIOLOGY
Request Letter
Dance Program Request for Top Scholar Award funding
The UW Dance Program requests travel funding support for six candidates per year
for a total of $1800 annually. As requested, we are providing answers to the questions detailed in the call for proposal document.
Rate the quality of the graduate program for which Top Scholar funding is requested
The UW Dance Program’s MFA is highly competitive. We accept only three applicants each year. We actively seek to recruit mature dance artists with a minimum of 8 years of professional dance experience.
We do not use the GRE as a metric for admission. We look carefully at undergraduate transcripts, GPAs, and the quality, reputation and ranking of the undergraduate institution.
We are extremely interested in the range of professional performance experience and dance training that our applicants describe.
Types of metrics in use:
1) Has the candidate performed with a nationally or internationally recognized dance company?
2) Has their professional experience exposed them to a range of choreographic methods, styles and esthetics?
3) Are the criteria described above evinced in the sample video we ask all applicants to submit?
4) Letters of recommendation are also scrutinized. Can referees speak to candidates commitment to the creative process, work ethic, open-mindedness, ability to work cooperatively and collaboratively?
Using funds requested to attract top-tier students.
Measurements of success
Because our program is small and individually tailored, it is imperative that we arrange an on-site visit for our top applicants to the program. We need to
see them dance and have them meet with faculty and students. We rely quite heavily on the feedback received from our current MFA students; they must be able to work well with all new candidates to the program. Applicants also watch Chamber
Dance Company rehearsals to get a real sense of how rehearsals are conducted and the type of repertoire being reconstructed.
We are primarily competing with Ohio State University, the largest graduate program in the county and top-ranked. Other competing programs include UT Austin, Florida State, and University of Utah. We are finding that other programs have the ability to offer more financial incentives. It is crucial to have funding to support candidate visits to the UW. We are trying to attract talented dance professionals. Success is not necessary marked by financial gain
in our field. We must be able to foot the bill for these individuals. They often do not have the resources to pay for cross-country travel.
Diversity of graduate program in serving under-represented minority populations.
The Dance Program has a high success rate in recruiting minority populations to our program. Currently, 50% of our graduate students are from underrepresented groups. Our ability to offer full tuition waivers and TAs for the entire length
of the degree is crucial with regard to recruitment and retention.
We have written letters to the office of graduate admissions in the past, when an applicant’s GPA was lower than admission standards, if we feel the candidates
demonstrates exceptional talent, experience, and readiness to commit to graduate study. Faculty work closely with MFA candidates to help them succeed in the
program. One-on-one meetings are a common occurrence. We have also arranged for additional tutoring or mentoring to help students succeed academically.
Utilizing Dance Program resources together with Top Scholar funding to increase the success of recruiting top students.
Currently, the Dance Program has no additional recruitment funding beyond what is provided by the Graduate School.
Some metrics or qualitative factors that might be used in addressing the areas above include:
National rankings
Our program remains unique in the country in that it is geared specifically toward professional dancers wishing to return to academe, especially those interested in moving into higher education positions.
Academic leave rates
Exceptionally low. The last leave was to accommodate a pregnancy.
Placement rates
We have exceptionally high job placement rates when students enter the national job market. At minimum the rate is 50% but for many years it was 100%. The lure of Seattle is the primary cause for lower job placement rates. Go to 10 yr
review for list of placement history.
Existence of formal mentoring plans
Mentoring readily available. Second year students select their own faculty member, who serves as the head of their master’s project supervisory committee.
Dance program graduate orientation.
Quarterly meetings with graduate students.
Formal and informal observation of graduate student teaching.
Support for professional development opportunities
We have a consistent record of supporting graduate students to present original research at national and international conferences.
Interdisciplinary research/teaching opportunities
We offer unique opportunities to study Integrated Dance Studies, Dance and Technology. Graduates of our program have more opportunities to teach than at
any other graduate program in dance. They teach during the entire length of their degree programs, typically, in at least two dance idioms and at least two levels in those idioms. Graduates all have experience teaching theory and studio
courses, additional teaching experience is readily available by TAing for faculty courses. We are the only program in dance that affords candidates the opportunity to create and implement their own theory and technique courses.
Interdisciplinary study is a requisite component of MFA study. Graduate students much take coursework in other departments and select members of their supervisory committee from areas outside of dance.
2. HEALTH SERVICES ADMINISTRATION
Request Letter
Top Scholar Awards Proposal
TRAVEL FUNDS REQUEST
The overarching recruitment goal of the UW Master of Health Administration
(MHA) Program in Health Services Administration is to attract and retain high
quality, diverse students who are at career-entry and mid-career levels in healthcare. To do so, our recruitment plan includes the following activities:
• Attend
university-based and healthcare-related recruitment fairs primarily targeting
undergraduate students and recent college graduates interested in careers in
healthcare. For undergraduates, we are foremost interested in avenues for
attracting students studying pre-medical, business, and the social sciences,
although we welcome applications from all academic backgrounds.
• Build relationships and collaborative efforts with human resource staff,
health services managers, and executives of regional hospitals and large
healthcare organizations to market the Program to career-entry and mid-career
employees interested in furthering their education and skills in Health Services
Administration.
• Create awareness of the Program through membership activities of
organizations we belong to, including the Association of University Programs
in Health Administration (AUPHA), the National Association of Advisors for the
Health Professions (NAAHP), the American College of Health Executives (ACHE),
and the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA). Available resources through
these organizations allow us to bring our Program to the attention of
prospective students as well as those who influence prospective students, i.e.,
advisors, faculty, and student services staff.
• Provide information about all aspects of the Program, including how to
apply, through the Program website. An online inquiry form is available there,
which, when submitted, sends an email to the program coordinator. She responds
by answering questions asked by the inquirer and providing fundamental
information about the Program.
• Coordinate prospective student visits that include meeting with the
Program Director, Manager of Student Services, faculty, current students, and/or
alumni. Offer the opportunity to sit in on a class and tour facilities.
• Work with Advisory Board and alumni to develop MHA Program Scholarship
opportunities.
Diversity and Minority Recruitment
The MHA class of 2007 is made up of 42% of students from diverse populations
(non-Caucasian). Underrepresented (African American, Hispanic, and Native
American) minority students make up 13% of the class. We utilize the services
provided by GO-MAP to both recruit as well as support underrepresented
minority students in the MHA program.
For the specific recruitment of underrepresented minority students, our plan
includes the following activities:
• Receive names of prospective minority students interested in health-oriented careers from GO-MAP through the National Name Exchange, and provide
information about our program to these prospective students through direct
electronic mail. The National Name Exchange is a consortium of twenty-nine
nationally known universities that annually collect and exchange the names of
their talented but underrepresented ethnic minority students who are in their
sophomore, junior or senior year of their undergraduate education.
• Attend the Minority Student Medical Career Awareness Recruitment Fair,
part of a conference hosted by the Association of American Medical Colleges.
The conference is attended by high school and undergraduate minority students
(and their parents) interested in the field of medicine and healthcare.
• Offer a supplement to our application for admission. On our website we
provide a description of the supplemental statement, the services available to
underrepresented minority students through the SPHCM Office of Student
Services, and options for pursuing financial assistance. The supplemental
statement is in the form of a personal statement about the applicant’s
educational, cultural and economic background, and how these aspects of their
personal history have shaped, hindered, or otherwise affected their
intellectual development and career.
• Build relationships with minority-serving institutions of higher
education. This will include a commitment from Department of Health Services
faculty for inviting faculty from minority-serving institutions to give
seminars/lectures on health-related topics. It will also include efforts on
the part of the MHA Program’s recruitment and marketing specialist to build
connections with student advisors at minority-serving institutions.
• Participate in and promote Prospective Student Days.
Quality of Program
The UW MHA Program in Health Services Administration is ranked among the best
Health Services Administration programs in the country. Specifically, for 2007
U.S. News & World Report ranked the UW MHA program 5th in the nation. Our
program is housed in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine, which
is ranked 4th in the nation by U.S. News & World Report for 2007.
The MHA Program provides students with multiple opportunities for career
exploration and professional development:
• Panel discussions led by local health care professionals
• Informal opportunities to learn from local alumni
• A mentor program, which matches students with local health care leaders
• Full-time salaried internship opportunities within health services
organizations in the area
• Summer internship application and placement assistance
The student organization Healthcare Administration Student Association at the
University of Washington (HASA) also offers opportunities for learning about
the field of healthcare, networking, and establishing professional affiliations.
The MHA Program is also among the first Health Services Administration
programs to participate in a national demonstration project in graduate
competency-based leadership education through the National Center for
Healthcare Leadership. This project involves the reconfiguration of curriculum
and teaching methods, and our participation reflects our commitment to and
national reputation for innovation in health management education.
Other measures of Program quality include:
• Average GPA upon entry is 3.4
• Retention rates are very high: of the students who entered the program in
2005, 93% are scheduled to graduate Spring 2007. The remaining 7% will finish in
2008.
• 92% of the students who graduated June 2006 were placed within four months
of graduation. All were placed by October 2006.
Benefit of Funds
We are specifically requesting travel funds to bring top-tier applicants to the
UW MHA Program. Although developing MHA Program scholarships is part of
our recruitment plan, we do not currently have funding to support them. In
contrast, our top competition, University of Minnesota and University of
Michigan, have the resources to provide funding to their incoming MHA students.
With travel funds, we could, at the very least, offer financial assistance to
applicants who, due to limited resources, would not otherwise be able to visit
the UW campus and MHA Program. Once here, we feel confident that we could
impress the quality of our Program upon them, and subsequently have a greater
chance of successfully recruiting them.
In particular, we would like to offer travel funds to top-tier, underrepresented
minority applicants. An ideal context for providing these funds would be to
bring applicants to Prospective Student Days hosted by GO-MAP, which would give
them the chance to learn about the MHA Program, as well as funding
opportunities, housing, campus climate, and living in Seattle. Ultimately,
success would come in the form of these top-tier applicants accepting our offer
of admission, matriculating, and graduating.
Combining MHA Program Resources with Top Scholar Funding
In May 2006 the MHA Program hired their first Recruitment and Marketing Specialist, responsible for executing the Recruitment Plan, building alumni relations, marketing and communications. Upon hire of the Recruitment and Marketing Specialist, one of the first projects undertaken by the Program was to revise the admissions process to better ensure that diverse, top-tier applicants are identified and subsequently offered admission. This process included updating application and recommendation forms, as well as restructuring the application review process to assess applications accurately and consistently. This new admissions process combined with the recruitment efforts of the new Recruitment and Marketing Specialist, provide an excellent framework for the effective and strategic use of Top Scholar funding.
Request Letter
Summary: The Mechanical Engineering Department is
undergoing strong growth in research funding and other measures of research
productivity. This growth is having a positive impact on measures of quality and
quantity for our graduate program. In addition, the Department has had a
significant diversity effort underway for some years, and this is now yielding
hard results, most notably with respect to graduating women from the PhD
program. The TSA funding we request is important to us because it is used to
leverage our highest quality applicants into becoming our highest quality
students.
Program Quality.
The Mechanical Engineering (ME) Department stands 28th among 164 mechanical
engineering programs in the 2007 US News and World Report rankings, with the UW
graduate engineering program at 21st in the nation. These statistics are,
however, more reflective of the past than of the present or
future. The department is now undergoing an unprecedented growth in its
externally funded research. Our total research expenditures have steadily
increased from 2.85M$ in FY01 to 6.30M$ in FY05. This growth has been the result
of a number of initiatives involving both hiring of key faculty as well as a
targeted emphasis on critical growth areas in our discipline (e.g.,
bioengineering applications of ME, quantum engineering, sustainable energy).
Another recognition of our growth is the recent allocation of the 3rd floor of
the AERB building to ME for use as a nanomaterials and molecular engineering
laboratory (two other space initiatives are in the works). All of these
developments are reflective of the growing opportunities available to our new
graduate students. Most of the following narrative discusses the approaches we
use to attract, retain and mentor these graduate students, and the key role the
TSA support plays in this process.
With respect to program quality, our faculty have received many honors
including: 1 National Academy of Engineering member, 3 Endowed
Professorships/Chairs, 1 Presidential Faculty Fellow, 3 Presidential Young
Investigator/Career Awards, 4 Past Presidents/Chairs of Major Engineering
Societies, 2 Fulbright Fellows, and 20 Fellows of Major Engineering Societies.
The current graduate program consists of 160 students, with 59 of these pursuing
a PhD. We support a relatively large terminal MS program, something that has
strong demand from both students and employers and a feature common in our
discipline. Most of our financial aid goes to our PhD students, and to those MS
students who are continuing on for a PhD. We have used our previous TSA awards
for these students, and will continue to do so.
The average GPA of entering graduate students this fall was 3.55, and the GRE
scores were 492-verbal, 729-quantitative, 4.35-writing (we have found over the
years that success in our program is most closely correlated with the
quantitative score, and that the best use of GRE scores is to point out a
potentially poor student, rather than to select the best applicant).
One metric we have been watching is our PhD production. The Department has
graduated 97 PhD's over the last 10 years. Over the last 5, our PhD production
rate is about 0.4 PhD's awarded per tenure track faculty per year. This number
is similar to other ME programs we use for peer evaluation. Within UW
engineering, three departments significantly exceed this number. Bioengineering
is a special case with 1.1 PhD's/yr-TT. Both Chemical Engineering and Electrical
Engineering are at 0.6 PhD's/yr-TT. The remaining departments are at 0.4
PhD's/yr-TT, with a couple coming in much lower. In light of our increase in
research funding and research activity in general, we have set a long-term
target to increase our per capita production to at least 0.6, a 50% increase
over our historic 5-year average. Our approaches for doing so include a rework
of our faculty merit evaluation criteria, and an increased emphasis on
recruiting PhD's (as discussed in the next section). In summary, we are in a
significant growth mode, and we view PhD education as one of the cornerstones
upon which we are building the department.
How TSA Funds will be Used.
Our traditional use of TSA funds is to leverage offers to students (1) who have
records that would allow them to attend any graduate school in the country, and
(2) who appear to have a 50:50 chance of coming here. Thus, we do not use these
funds to support students who appear likely to come under a standard
departmental offer, and we do not spend time pursuing those when the likelihood
of their coming here is determined to be small.
To do this requires a solid recruitment strategy, something the department has
been developing for several years. The GPC initially reviews each applicant file
for quality and compatibility with our program. Those applicants of interest are
assigned to a faculty member who shares the same research interest for an
initial telephone interview. The main goals are (1) to evaluate the depth of the
applicant's interest in our program, and (2) to show our interest in the
applicant. The buy-in of the whole faculty to this process shows the applicant
that we are a place that cares about the student, something that has repeatedly
come out of surveys of our students. In the past we made an open invitation for
applicants to visit campus on their own schedule, but last year we held our
first Prospective Student Visitation Day, which was a success. We believe this
one change was responsible for 20% increase in our acceptance rate this last
fall. We have also made it a strategic priority to increase our fellowship
funding. During this last year, the Department led a multi-departmental IGERT
team focusing on renewable energy. We also submitted a GAANN proposal focusing
on renewable energy/energy self-sufficiency (a GAANN priority area for this
cycle). Finally, we surveyed our peer institutions and determined the RA rate
needed for us to be competitive. We have made use of this enhanced RA rate for
four years now.
How are the TSA funds used in this process? Our principal tool is the AY RA
quarters. Our standard offer is for 2 TA quarters coupled with 1 quarter of TSA
RA. This offer allows the student a chance to learn teaching skills, and then to
use the RA at the time they are becoming deeply involved with their research.
The RA rate provided by the Graduate School is supplemented by the Department to
bring the total up to the standard department rate. Thus, the goal is to
leverage the Department's teaching resources into a first-year mixed
teaching/research package that is competitive. We then guarantee a second year
of support based on a grant RA, with department TA support as a fall-back.
We also use the travel grants extensively for bringing prospective students to
campus. Traditionally, we have requested $3000 for ten $300 grants. These travel
grants are very important to us, with the benefit far outweighing the cost.
Role of Diversity
In the last 10 years, the ME Department has produced 97 PhDs students, of
which 16% were women and 8% were underrepresented ethnic minorities. Growing
these numbers has been an emphasis for some time, and results are starting to
appear. For example, we graduated 25% and 27% women in our PhD
program during the 2004-2005 and the 2005-2006 academic years respectively.
Our underrepresented minority percentage increased to 11% during this same time
period. During the last 10 years, we are proud to state that our Department
achieved a 100% retention of women and minorities in our graduate program.
Our principal tools to increase diversity include the Department's grant under
the NSF ADVANCE grant to the College of Engineering, and the initiation of
deeper involvement with GO-MAP fostered by the participants from the GAANN
proposal noted above. Through their efforts, we have learned that
personal communication with all types of students before the formal application
for graduate school is the best and most efficient form of recruitment. We note
that this is particularly true in the case of women and underrepresented
minorities, given fewer educational role models and a lack of awareness of the
intellectual and financial opportunities available. Two examples of this
approach are leveraging the National Name Exchange (NNE) and the GEM. NNE was
founded in 1976 as a consortium of 30 nationally known universities which
annually collect and exchange the names of talented but underrepresented ethnic
minority undergraduate students who could be recruited to the graduate programs
at these institutions. The UW has been providing institutional coordination and
data distribution for NNE since 1986. With the help of GO-MAP staff, we will
review the list of accredited postsecondary minority institutions at ed.gov to
determine which have active MS programs in engineering. We will next contact our
counterparts to identify faculty or individual students to contact about
research and education opportunities.
Our goal is to increase the participation of underrepresented minorities to at
least double the average of that of our discipline (currently 9%).
Leverage of TSA Resources
As noted above, we use the TSA RA quarters with Departmental TA support to
provide a mixed teaching/research experience in the first year. A second year of
grant RA support is guaranteed. The travel funds are leveraged to cover expenses
beyond the $300 airfare offset provided by TSA. The fellowship support provides
an additional cash supplement that significantly strengthens the overall
package.
Request Letter
1. The Quality
of the Sociology Graduate Program
The quality of any graduate program must be measured by the training it gives
to its students. Good training produces students who do well on the job market,
publish in peer-reviewed outlets, and succeed in competitions for external
awards By any of these standards, the UW sociology department does very well.
Among the 16 Ph.D.s we had on the job market last year, all found jobs. Ten
took tenure track jobs in other graduate sociology departments (four in
departments ranked among the top 20 U.S. sociology departments), two took
tenure-track jobs in 4-year colleges, three took prestigious postdoctoral
fellowships, and one took a position as a Research Analyst in the U.S.
Government Accountability Office.
Last year six of our graduate students published sole-authored papers in top
sociology journals, including one in our flagship journal, the American
Sociological Review (ASR’s current rejection rate is approximately 90%). Eight
more wrote articles with faculty that appeared in top sociology journals
(including another article in the ASR).
Last year two of our students received grants supporting their dissertation
research (one from the Guggenheim Foundation and the other from the National
Science Foundation). Two more received 3-year fellowship awards, one from
the NSF and the other from the Ford Foundation. Five of our students won
“Outstanding Graduate Student Paper” awards from sections of the American
Sociological Association, and two more collaborated on a paper that won a
similar award from the UW Harry Bridges Center for Labor Research. Because we
give our students strong training in quantitative methods, they are in demand
as research assistants not only by our faculty, but by faculty in other units of
the university. For example, in academic year 2005-06 our students had 43
quarters of RA support from outside units compared to 23 quarters of support
from members of our department. Finally, our students have won disproportionate
numbers of fellowships from UW’s interdisciplinary Center for Studies in
Demography and Ecology and West Coast Poverty Center, and a disproportionate
number of awards from UW’s Center for Statistics and the
Social Sciences.
2. Recruitment Strategy for the Future
Our department was always ranked highly in reputational assessments of
departmental quality during the 20th century, and we expect that we will
continue to receive high rankings in the future (three of our current faculty
are members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and last year one was
elected to the National Academy of Sciences). In the past our department’s
prestige led strong candidates to apply for admission to our graduate program,
and we often succeeded in recruiting them. Since 2000, however, private and
better-funded public universities have been cutting into our advantage in
recruiting top candidates because they have been able to offer more fellowships
and more remunerative financial support. It has therefore become clear that we
can no longer rely on our department’s reputation to recruit our top candidates.
As a result, we have decided to emphasize our current students’ successes in our
communications with applicants. To do this, we are sending each applicant an
email attachment that details the kinds of student achievements discussed above,
sending the same email attachment to undergraduate sociology programs throughout
the country, and featuring this information on our departmental website (see
http://www.soc.washington.edu/academics/grad_program/flyer.pdf). By stressing
the kinds of scholarly skills we give our graduate students, as reflected in
their scholarly achievements, we believe that we will be able to at least
partially counteract our increasing disadvantage in the number of fellowships
we can offer and the relative financial attractiveness of our TA and RA
stipends.
3. Rationale for Requested TSA Funding
Awards from the Graduate School’s TSA Program are the most important element of
our department’s efforts to recruit outstanding students. Our department has
only teaching assistantships to support incoming students, and TAships are not
competitive when it comes to attracting our best prospects, who typically
receive multi-year fellowship offers from the departments with whom we compete
(Wisconsin, Chicago, Berkeley, UNC Chapel Hill, etc.). We have no chance of
attracting them without fellowship or “fellowship-like” support to offer.
During the past two years the TSA program supported our recruitment efforts by
providing (1) a named fellowship consisting of a $10,500 stipend and tuition
waivers, (2) a 3-quarter RAship with tuition waivers, and (3) $5400 to bring 18
of our top prospects to campus during our annual Recruitment Weekend, held in
conjunction with GO-MAP’s Prospective Student Days. We use the RAship as
an “informal fellowship” by matching the student who receives it with a faculty
member in the student’s area of interest with the understanding that the goal of
the position is to facilitate progress on the student’s MA thesis.
This year we are requesting continuation of the support we received in the last
biennium as well as an additional three quarters of fellowship support with
tuition waivers. As noted above, fellowships and “fellowship-like” awards are
the entry ticket in the national competition for top prospects, and such TSA
support determines how well we can do in that competition. Our annual
Recruitment Weekend has also been a key factor in our success in attracting good
students because it puts them in face to face contact with current graduate
students, who are our best ambassadors..
Our department has two small endowments that we have used and will continue to
use to supplement the TSA awards we offer our top prospects. Typically, we
use these funds to provide summer support, including tuition support, so that we
can offer year-round funding during an awardee’s first year.
We measure our success in using TSA funding to attract top prospects by
comparing the yield rate for awardees with the yield rate of prospects just
below the level of our best candidates, and whom we offer TAships. The latter
rate is very close to zero, reinforcing the above claim that TSA support is the
key to success in the competition for top prospects.
4. Sociology Graduate Program Diversity
According to Graduate School data, 15% of our graduate students are members of
racial or ethnic minorities, a figure that places us third (behind Anthropology
and Communications, each with 19%) among the 9 units with programs of at least
30 students in the Division of Social Sciences here at UW. We work hard to
recruit members of underrepresented minorities to our graduate program and
have mobilized to do our part in increasing their presence by 70% in the next
five years. For example, this year our department has appointed a standing
committee on diversity issues, and one of its charges is to prepare a new
proposal for the GO-MAP funding competition (it will also focus on recruiting
minority faculty to our department).
Each year our department offers the endowment-based Blalock Award as a
recruitment incentive to an admitted applicant who will contribute to
diversifying our graduate program. This award was established in honor of Hubert
M. Blalock, a nationally renowned member of our department whose scholarship
focused on issues of power, inequality, and racial inequities. The
award is currently accompanied by a stipend of $1000. Our department has
committed itself to increasing the size of the Blalock endowment. Last year our
faculty and graduate students took advantage of an offer by the College of Arts
and Sciences to match our contributions, and increased the endowment from
$16,000 to $30,000. This year we are seeking to increase its size by a similar
amount. Our long-run plan for this endowment is to raise enough money so that
its interest can support a graduate fellowship.
We strive to be an open and inclusive department, and have worked to make
members of underrepresented minorities feel at ease in our community. Evidence
of this is the fact that in 2004 our department won a GPSS Department Gold Star
Award. In addition, we encourage minority graduate students to apply for
fellowship support from external sources and work with them to help them
succeed in winning such support. For example, several of our graduate students
have been supported by the American Sociological Association’s Minority
Fellowship Program, and last year one of our students won a prestigious 3-year
Ford Foundation Minority Fellowship. Finally, members of our department have
worked to insure that minority students receive full consideration in decisions
about research assistant positions, and currently proportionally more of our
minority students hold such positions than nonminority graduate students.