Faculty Participation Crucial in NRC Study of Graduate Programs

Four hundred faculty members who have been involved in graduate education at UCSF over the last five years are being asked by the National Research Council (NRC) to participate in its nationwide Assessment of Research Doctorate Programs. This study is considered to be the most comprehensive and respected assessment of PhD programs nationwide. Each identified faculty member at UCSF should have received a URL to respond online to a faculty questionnaire. Details of the study can be found at the NRC website. The NRC national assessment of graduate programs was last done in 1993, and published in 1995. At that time, several UCSF graduate programs ranked in the top 10. They were biochemistry (first) genetics (second), cell and developmental biology (third), neuroscience (fourth) and physiology (fifth). Only UCSF faculty who complete the online survey by Thursday, Feb. 15, will have the opportunity to participate as "raters" of other graduate programs involved in the survey. The faculty chosen as "raters" will provide input to the NRC on indicators of program quality, and will assist in determining the national rankings of other doctoral programs. The NRC is collecting data from more than 200 universities and 120,000 faculty members across the nation to help doctoral programs improve their quality through benchmarking; provide potential students and the public with information on doctoral programs nationwide; and enhance the nation's overall research capacity. UCSF's participation in the project will be very important in maintaining and raising the visibility of the campus graduate programs, campus officials say. This survey has been approved by the institutional review boards of both the NRC and UCSF. Individual responses to the questionnaire will be kept strictly confidential and will not be available to anyone at UCSF. The campus, and the public, will receive aggregated statistics from the NRC when the results are finally analyzed and presented. For more information regarding the NRC assessment, please contact campus liaison, Interim Graduate Dean Pat Calarco, PhD, or Assistant Dean Karen Nelson in the Graduate Division.