In 2006 the Graduate School began offering incoming doctoral students in nearly every program five years of guaranteed financial support from Brown. This decision, which took effect with the cohort of students who matriculated in the fall of 2006, was an attempt to make explicit the fact that, in general, doctoral students at Brown have been receiving five years of support for some time. Under this model, steady funding for graduate study is no longer a concern. We hope that our longer commitment, combined with the substantial increase in our base stipend (nearly fifty percent since 2001), will allow students the time and energy they need to apply to their research and scholarship. As always, any guarantee of support is conditional upon students' maintaining satisfactory academic progress in their programs.
In an effort to better understand the full implications of this decision, the Graduate School has conducted an evaluation of its methods and practices for assigning support for doctoral students. Under the current practice, the Graduate School allots each doctoral program and some other units around the University a pre-set number of different types of appointments, in particular teaching assistantships, proctorships, and fellowships. These allotments are tied to a wide complex of needs within these units, including undergraduate enrollments and the professional development of graduate students as future faculty (in the case of TAships), technical and programmatic support (proctorships), and graduate students' research and scholarship (fellowships). Upon recommendations from academic programs and other units at Brown, student appointments are then processed by the Graduate School according to the original allotments and to these criteria, among others.
After we completed a review of our current practice, we came to a number of conclusions and have begun to implement the following decisions:
- The Graduate School needs to concentrate its resources, and the responsibility for their distribution, within existing degree programs. One immediate consequence of this decision is that funding has been suspended for a number of proctorship positions that exist outside of degree programs (in such offices as the Graduate School, the Dean of the College, Campus Life, and the Sheridan Center). Each of the offices affected by this decision was notified of the change in September 2006; students currently serving in these appointments will be supported according to the original terms. In cases where the suspension of an appointment presents a possible reduction in service or opportunities for graduate students, the Graduate School is in the process of negotiating the manner in which these functions will be replaced.
- This increased guarantee of support needs to come with improved oversight of students' academic progress within their programs. To that end, we have established new procedures and are reinforcing current policies regarding the advice and guidance that graduate students receive within their programs.
- In 2006 we developed a new plan for doctoral support, which will be implemented in fall 2007. Under the new plan, the Graduate School will not predetermine, but will more closely coordinate the decisions regarding the forms of support (TAships, fellowships, etc.) with academic programs. Each program's director of graduate study, in consultation with students and other faculty in the program, will decide the most appropriate form of support for each doctoral student in a given year. The flexibility of the new plan will help ensure that within the constraints of other departmental needs doctoral students receive the type of appointment that is most appropriate for their current level of professional development and that will support their progress through the program. The Graduate School will be working with programs that support many of their students on external grants to determine exactly how to integrate the needs of graduate students with those of the faculty securing those grants, and the conditions of the grants themselves.
We believe these changes represent new opportunities for the University. Graduate students will get a clearer sense of the direction of their careers at Brown and will have an opportunity to more actively shaped their experiences here, and faculty and programs will have greater flexibility in addressing their own needs as well as the needs of their academic departments.
As these changes develop, the deans of the Graduate School are particularly interested in giving graduate students the opportunity to be heard and participate in them. Please email us any concerns you have (
Graduate_School@brown.edu).
Doctoral Support FAQ
A summary of frequently asked questions about doctoral student support.
