Mission Statement
The mission of The University Graduate School is to promote and support excellence in graduate education for individual students, faculty, departments, and the university as a whole.
In accomplishing this mission, The University Graduate School values integrity, collaboration, efficiency, innovation, and inclusiveness in all that it does. These values are central to the school's role in encouraging a creative environment for scholarship and research, teaching and learning. The University Graduate School is a recognized leader in developing new concepts and best practices for graduate education. It assists departments in recruiting, supporting, retaining, and graduating outstanding scholars. Through its connections with national higher education organizations, it serves as a resource in forging the future directions of graduate education.
The University Graduate School administers graduate programs on five different campuses of the Indiana University system. Members of The University Graduate School faculty ultimately determine standards of admission, set the general requirements for degrees, pass upon the specific requirements of programs, approve courses for graduate credit, and certify candidates for degrees. These functions are executed by the Graduate Council and the dean and administrative staff. More specifically, The University Graduate School faculty serve on advisory and research committees for doctoral students, direct master's theses and doctoral dissertations, and elect members of the Graduate Council.
The Graduate Council, which represents professional as well as arts and sciences departments, meets monthly during the academic year. In addition to the functions delegated to it by the faculty of The University Graduate School, it serves as an executive advisory body to the dean and administrative staff on policy matters. It receives the reports of the school's standing faculty committees (i.e. Curriculum, Awards, Graduate Faculty Membership, and Graduate Initiatives); it acts upon recommendations for changes in admission, the curriculum, degree requirements, and procedures for the administration of student programs; it receives and acts upon the recommendations of ad hoc committees appointed by the dean; it gives advice on ways to improve the quality of graduate work; and it seeks ways to coordinate the programs of The University Graduate School with other graduate programs in the university.
In addition, the deans and staff of The University Graduate School monitor (through an elaborate database) over a hundred indicators of the quality of individual graduate programs, and (through the Recorders) the quality of master's and doctoral degrees granted. A variety of fellowship and recruiting programs are designed to attract outstanding students, and mentoring and Preparing Future Faculty programs, both within the departments and centralized in The University Graduate School, ensure that these students are integrated into their academic programs and prepared for the full range of professional responsibilities they will encounter in their careers.
If you have any questions, please contact The University Graduate School office at grdschl@indiana.edu or (812) 855-9343. The University Graduate School is located in Kirkwood 111 on the Bloomington campus of Indiana University.
