TAHOE CITY — UC Davis needs to enhance the graduate student experience, provide more professional development opportunities, and dedicate more resources toward maintaining the quality of its 85 graduate programs, according to recommendations from campus leaders at last week's Chancellor's Fall Conference.

As graduate education faces increasing challenges from international competition and financial constraints, 150 UC Davis student leaders, graduate students, staff, faculty leaders, alumni and administrators gathered for two days to confront those challenges and brainstorm ways to strengthen existing programs.

UC Davis currently enrolls 4,200 graduate students in master's and doctoral programs. And the campus is projecting significant growth in graduate programs over the next decade to eventually enroll approximately 6,000 academic graduate students — about a 43 percent increase. This rate of growth would build on the 45 percent increase over the past decade.

"The central question, really, is 'How can UC Davis build on its distinctive combination of multidisciplinary graduate groups, departmentally-based programs and designated emphases to ensure excellence in graduate education?'" Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef said at the opening of the conference in Tahoe City.

The chancellor asked participants to focus on recruitment and diversity, mentoring and student welfare, and academic planning as key issues for discussion.

Much of the conversation also focused on helping the public, opinion leaders and funding agencies better understand the valuable contributions made to society by graduate students.

"Our failure to convince fellow citizens of the importance of what we do may prove to be more consequential than competition from any foreign country," said Earl Lewis, provost of Emory University, in his keynote remarks on "A Matter of National Concern."

"Most of us are guardians of the status quo. Are we willing to innovate, to change, to argue for what we do well?" Lewis asked.

Officials noted that UC Davis has already made considerable improvements in the delivery of graduate education. The annual Chancellor's Fall Conference last dealt with graduate education in 1998. In the eight years since that time, the campus added 14 new graduate programs and implemented recommendations including investing in graduate student support through block grants and fellowship programs, developing graduate student mentoring guidelines and creating a Distinguished Graduate Mentoring award, and creating a professional development program to help prepare graduate students for both academic and nonacademic careers.

However, also since 1998 several external forces have impacted graduate education, including significant decreases in the number of international students applying to American universities and a state budget shortfall that has led to dramatic increases in fees and non-resident tuition.

'Fresh recommendations'

During this year's fall conference, participants made a number of fresh recommendations to confront today's challenges and move graduate education forward. Among the highlights:

• Set standards for regularly assessing the quality of graduate programs on campus, assuring stronger and more cohesive core curriculum. A recent study by a Graduate Council committee found a lack of faculty availability to offer a core curriculum in many graduate programs to be a primary campus challenge.
• Establish a physical location for a graduate student center that would be a gathering place for networking, sharing ideas and information, and connecting to resources. "The important thing is to have a location where graduate students can meet at their leisure to interact with one another," said Frank Samaniego, professor of statistics.
• Increase opportunities for interaction between graduate students and successful UC Davis graduate alumni, as well as partners in business and industry. Incorporating more graduate students into the annual Alumni College event was one suggestion.
• Consolidate the operations of smaller graduate programs so that they can share common staffing and support resources.
• Provide more training for graduate students in effective communication. It was noted that strong writing and speaking skills would be critical for graduate students' future success in academic and private sector jobs, and also would help graduate students be more effective ambassadors to articulate the value of their research contributions.
• Increase campuswide marketing efforts to help the public better understand the valuable contributions made by graduate education. Conduct research to better understand how key campus constituents view graduate education and to determine what messages would be most persuasive with those audiences.

Improved marketing emerged as a common theme throughout the conference.

"One of the things about the campus culture is that we are modest," said American Studies Professor Jay Mechling. "We need to create a marketing campaign based on what is distinctive about graduate education at UC Davis. We need market research on public perceptions of graduate education. We don't know what our audiences know about graduate education or what their expectations are."

Added Nicole Biggart, dean of the Graduate School of Management: "We need more confidence in ourselves in terms of speaking publicly. What do we tell people when they ask about UC Davis? There is a strong sense of community, of collaboration, a rootedness in excellence. How do we talk about those things in a way that is meaningful?"

Graduate Studies Dean Jeffery Gibeling said he was gratified that a number of the conference suggestions echoed initiatives already being discussed or under way in both Graduate Studies and the Graduate Council.

"These suggestions affirm what we have been discussing," said Gibeling, who has been charged with taking action on the conference recommendations.

"But I also appreciate the fresh ideas, fresh approaches and thoughtful suggestions of which issues need our immediate attention. We will take the recommendations that have emerged from the fall conference and include them in our future planning."

In closing the conference, Provost Virginia Hinshaw said, "Our efforts (to improve graduate education) create an intellectual endowment that keeps on giving. I was particularly pleased with the remarks about getting the message out, the need to communicate. You can't expect people to support you unless they understand what you are doing. I came to UC Davis because of your excellent reputation. The progress and the potential are there."

"We are here to address an institutional priority of significant impact, and now we must act."