UW opens new school of graduate education

The University of Wyoming opened the School of Graduate Education Thursday, September 1 Knight Hall room 250.  The school will be dedicated to promoting excellent graduate education at UW. 

Provost and Executive Vice President Kevin Carman, the University’s Chief Academic Officer, noted that UW was previously one of very few land-grant universities without a dedicated school for graduate education. 

“Vibrant graduate programs are essential to fulfilling the mission of a research university, and the establishment of the School of Graduate Education is a major milestone toward that end,” Carman says.

Before the opening of the school, all administrative and personnel functions for graduate programs at UW went through the Office of Graduate Education. Some of these functions include oversight of all UW graduate programs, allocation of graduate teaching assistantship funding, marketing and recruitment for graduate programs, implementation and enforcement of policies and procedures surrounding graduate education.

All of these functions will now be taken on by the School of Graduate Education, with an additional renewed focus on strategic leadership and vision, as well as increased advocacy and support for graduate students. 

“The graduate school also will serve as the conduit through which significant improvement to UW’s graduate education functioning will be made, including reestablishment of the graduate faculty, creation of a graduate student council, and clarification and elevation of the role of UW’s Graduate Council,” UW’s official announcement on the opening of the School of Graduate Education says.

Dr. Jim Ahern will lead the new School of Graduate Education as its Dean, in addition to his duties as Vice Provost for Graduate Education. 

“I am privileged to serve in the new graduate school dean role and continue to lead UW’s graduate education efforts. Creation of a UW graduate school is a positive step forward,” Ahern says.

Promoting graduate education has long been a goal of UW administration, brought further into the limelight by the recent push for UW to become an R1 research institution as determined by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, a prominent metric in higher education. R1 status indicates “very high research activity.” UW is currently at R2 status, indicating “high research activity.”

“UW’s commitment to graduate education is firm and long-standing,” UW President Ed Seidel says. “Many of our ambitions as Wyoming’s land-grant and flagship university hinge on high-performing graduate programs, and the School of Graduate Education will raise the visibility and presence of graduate education here, around the state and across the higher education landscape.”