Financial aid improvements
The Graduate School has announced broad improvements
in financial aid for students in PhD programs, which take effect July 1. The
standard nine-month stipend for both entering and continuing students in all
humanities and social sciences departments and programs will increase from
$19,000 to $20,000 in the 2007-2008 academic year. University
dissertation fellowships will also increase from $19,000 to $20,000. Summer
support for students on nine-month fellowships will increase from $3,500 to
$3,700 beginning this summer. Stipends for entering and continuing students in
the sciences, which depend on field of study and usually provide 12 months of
support, will increase by similar amounts. Teaching fellowships will increase
by more than 5 percent.
Supporting new parents
Dean Jon Butler introduced a new Parental Support and
Relief Policy this spring to assist full-time PhD students when they become
parents. Doctoral students who wish to suspend their academic responsibilities
because of the birth or adoption of a child may request parental support and
relief during or following the semester in which the birth or adoption occurs.
During this period, students will remain registered, receive the full financial
aid package as specified in their letter of admission, and have their
departmental academic expectations modified according to their individual
needs. Students who use this parental support and relief policy may be
entitled to an additional eight weeks of stipend funding at the end of their
fifth year, and their academic clock will stop, effectively adding a semester
of time towards their degree at the end of what otherwise would have been the
student's sixth year.
Applications see increase
This year, 8,540 hopeful applicants sought admission
to the Graduate School, making 2007 one of the most competitive years in the
history of the school. The great majority -- 7,775 -- applied to PhD
programs; 765 requested slots in master's degree programs. International
applicants numbered 3,609. The Graduate School expects to enroll about 420 new
doctoral students and 70-80 master's students in the fall, so most
applicants had to be turned away. Among doctoral programs, departments with the
greatest number of applications were economics, 694 (with 22 openings);
psychology, 604 (12); engineering and applied science, 536 (45). Among smaller
programs, philosophy was extremely competitive, with 223 would-be students
vying for five places.
Forum addresses grading systems
Sometimes students seem to be more interested in the
grade they get for a course than in the skills, information, and insights they
can gain. The ninth annual Spring Teaching Forum and Innovation Fair tackled
this problem head-on. Titled "Why Do We Grade?" the forum raised provocative
questions about how and why students are evaluated. What are grades supposed to
communicate? Are they meant to give information to students, potential
employers, graduate and professional schools, other faculty members, or all of
the above? How and to what extent do grades shape the learning environment in
the classroom?
The event was organized by the Graduate Teaching
Center, headed by Director Bill Rando, with assistance from the graduate
student teaching coordinators. Keynote speaker Michael Lesy, a professor at
Hampshire College -- where written evaluations are used instead of letter
grades -- presented the pros and cons of that system. Lesy is a former
lecturer in American studies at Yale. The heart of the forum was a panel
discussion, "What Grades Communicate, Why They Matter, and Whether We Need
Them," with Charles Bailyn ’81, professor of astronomy and physics; Marvin
Chun, professor of psychology; Valerie Hansen, professor of history; and
political science graduate student Justin Zaremby ’03.
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