Graduate Responses to 21st C. Initiative Forum
21st Century Initiative: Graduate Student Responses
Strengths and Opportunities:
Devotion to academic and professional development
Diversity initiatives
Support research and have notoriety for some of our research departments
Reward initiative towards academic and research development
Support for international students on a central level (SIGS and Int’l Center)
Community connection
Building peer mentoring
Good outreach to local businesses
Building a larger community with Cardinal Towne, etc.—extending the campus
Health and Wellness programs
Business partnerships (esp. downtown) –creates opportunities for students
Internship and Externship opportunities
Some departments are very good at keeping students informed about funding
opportunities and getting them funded—overall, we provide many funding opportunities
Strong endowments
Sports
Students
Public awareness
Some unique facilities
Professors’ and students’ abilities to do interdisciplinary research
Faculty research and their ability to have time to do their work
Work with alumni, career development
Partnerships with industry
Affordable cost-of-living
Access to grants
Law, medicine and dental’s ability to work with the community
Strong professors and labs
Strong support for international students
Scholarship programs
Endowments
Grants-management
Alumni-relations
Geographical location, middle of US, big city with low cost of living
ACC conference
Support interdisciplinary through shared spaces and to support more collaborative projects
Good fellowships
Internationally acclaimed programs
Good research
Approachable faculty
Opportunities to work for community and UofL
Expansion of the zone of influence—beyond the region
Development of residence halls and research labs
Can increase technology
Advertise faculty credentials more- update info on websites
Weaknesses and Threats:
Low visibility of the university, except for sports
Actual diversity on campus—in terms of number of students and especially faculty (versus
support for diversity in theory)
ADA compliance/accessibility
Lack of multiple departmental relationships to do research- red tape (slows down
dissertation process)
More relationships between different departments
Forming agreements and systems (university-wide) about how students who want to cross
disciplinary boundaries can do this
Lack of shared space to interact with other graduate students, other departments
Campus too spread out- health clinic too far from campus
Divide between HSC and Belknap
Students don’t have any knowledge or information about the other campus (the one they’re
not on)
Some departments don’t have orientations
IT department
Inequity across departments and buildings
Prioritization of certain building and improvement projects
Having to wait until there is mold in the building before they do anything to improve it
Parking
Hidden charges- deceptive, without notification- inconsistent- lack of transparency
Charges being offloaded onto students that used to be responsibility of institution-
university gets to advertise low tuition but students get slammed with unexpected charged when they arrive
Alumni (or engagement office?) pushing for funding certain projects over others
Sustainability
Reliance on Part-time and adjunct labor, as well as graduate student labor, without
adequate recognition of their role as labor
Students taking on costs that used to be responsibility of the institution
Training on how to respond to safety threats
Crime
Food market is expensive- a monopoly
Unsafe buildings
Unsafe to walk between campuses
Parking
reputation as a commuter school
lack of advertisement for facilities and events to community and other universities
low research connections with surrounding community
lack of architectural connections with building projects
no communication between programs happening on diff. campuses- duplicate
lack of global web presence- out of date
large class sized
use of old lectures, materials—professional development of older professors
lack of accountability and oversight
unbalanced funding across depts.- should be based on need as well as recognition
national funding cuts
educational exportation
increase academic output, modernizing teaching methods
lack of awareness of research opportunities
lack of accommodation of non-traditional students
lack of recognition of what graduate students do –especially their misrepresentation as
“students” (read undergrads) without acknowledgement of teaching and research responsibilities—students in many departments are the lead teacher of courses, but are not recognized in conversations about faculty interests and concerns
lack of recognition of existing interdisciplinary opportunities
lack of support for travel expenditures
dwindling governmental support
lesser known school
cost-benefit ratio of a graduate degree
competition with UK