Growth Inspired by Illuminate
Advancing Our Strategic Plan
Sara Dolan, Associate Dean for Professional Development; Bill Hockaday, Associate Dean for Research
Growth in Alignment with Illuminate
Doctoral Program Review
The hallmark of a research university is excellence in training scholars to address society’s grand challenges, through research and education. Evolving with the pace of innovation requires constant realignment of a graduate program’s training elements with the trajectory of the field. To facilitate this, the Graduate School works with graduate program directors to conduct internal and external reviews of graduate programs at five-year intervals. The purpose of external review is to look holistically at each of Baylor’s doctoral programs with the help of senior faculty from other research-intensive institutions. Reviewers are selected by the graduate faculty and give opportunities to visit with faculty, students, and administrators. Reviewers are tasked with providing observations, insights, and suggestions intended to improve graduate student and faculty satisfaction, productivity, and competitiveness. Programs that have completed or scheduled reviews for the 2022 -2023 academic year include Psychology and Neuroscience, Curriculum and Instruction, and Biology. We are learning that each Baylor program has unique strengths and weaknesses and that we are competitive with other R1 universities in some areas, while we have room for improvement in others. External review leads to collective planning and strategic action at all levels of the university which helps us to recruit and retain more excellent faculty and graduate students. If anything, the achievement of R1 status has empowered bolder planning and higher aims.
Ph.D. Program |
College/School |
Dates |
Status |
Geosciences |
Arts & Sciences |
Oct. 2018 |
completed |
Sociology |
Arts & Sciences |
Sept. 2018 |
completed |
Kinesiology, Exercise Nutr, and. Health Promo. |
Health & Human Sciences |
Nov. 2018 |
completed |
Environmental Science |
Arts & Sciences |
Oct. 2019 |
completed |
Chemistry & Biochemistry |
Arts & Sciences |
Jan. 2020 |
completed |
Information Systems |
Business |
Feb. 2020 |
completed |
Religion |
Arts & Sciences |
Sept. 2021 |
completed |
Philosophy |
Arts & Sciences |
Feb. 2022 |
completed |
Electrical & Computer Engineering |
Engineering & Computer Science |
Apr. 2022 |
completed |
Psychology |
Arts & Sciences |
Aug. 2022 |
completed |
Curriculum & Instruction |
Education |
Jan. 2023 |
scheduled |
Biology |
Arts & Sciences |
Apr. 2023 |
initiated |
Doctoral-level graduate students are likely to find themselves writing research proposals and persuasive request for resources throughout their careers, whether working in industry, government, or academia. Proposal development and grant writing are indispensable professional skills, learned experientially through mentored practice and critical feedback. This year, the Biology and Anthropology departments are both adding formal grant writing courses to their doctoral programs, joining existing courses in Chemistry and Biochemistry, Psychology and Neuroscience, and the Geosciences, among others. To aid all Baylor graduate students with proposal writing and grant seeking we have teamed with the Graduate Writing Center and Office of the Vice Provost for Research to employ graduate student grant specialists to develop tools and resources, curate online lists of funding opportunities, and offer workshops on finding grants, writing grants, reviewing, and editing proposals. Maddie Whitmore, Reyna Johnson, and now Sarah Madsen have made all of these resources available on the Graduate School website.
Illuminate Academic Priorities
Two exciting initiatives are being developed in the Graduate School, both focusing on interdisciplinary research in areas highlighted in the Illuminate strategic plan: Behavioral Health and Materials Science. The Behavioral Health Research Initiative aims to increase visibility and impact of the outstanding health-related research conducted Baylor faculty who are outside of the biomedical sciences. In its infancy, this initiative is launching by first bringing together social science graduate students with interests in research that broadly impacts health. Additionally, rapid progress is being made toward the establishment of a doctoral program in Materials Science—driven by the hiring of senior faculty to endowed positions in the departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Physics. The goal is to admit students to a doctoral program in Materials Science as early as Fall 2023. Both of these interdisciplinary programs will enlarge Baylor’s research footprint, allow us to recruit and retain faculty with increasingly impactful research, and attract even more high ability graduate students.