Advanced degrees are increasingly important for career success, and we continue to see our faculty increase support for graduate students. Today, I want to highlight some new resources to help you design and implement new graduate programs, especially fully online or low-residency programs on our extended campuses. We want to launch more programs for working professionals that can help midcareer workers land their next promotion or change careers completely.
These resources and services, designed jointly by the Graduate School and the Office of Instruction, are geared towards helping you quickly identify opportunities and then design and launch innovative programs that are likely to substantially increase graduate enrollment. Eligible programs can be fully online, use a low-residency format, or use our facilities in Gwinnett or Griffin. We encourage innovative ideas and formats, such as high-demand interdisciplinary degree offerings, online and/or low-residency extensions of existing graduate programs, and graduate certificates that may be stackable toward a degree.
To help increase our graduate school offerings and create innovative programs that meet the needs of an ever-changing workforce, we now offer the following resources:
- We have the capability to conduct market studies for proposed programs designed for working-adults. Such analyses can identify potential demand, competing programs and other relevant information to gauge opportunities and risks.
- Successful programs need a business-plan, including estimates of initial costs for development, technology, marketing, enrollment projections, and administrative costs. You may also need to develop a proposal for approval from our faculty governance committees and possibly the USG Board of Regents. These tasks can be daunting, but we can assist with each of these steps to ensure that new programs are successfully launched.
- As you think about implementing a new program, you will need to identify the technology, format, curricular design, and pedagogy that are ideally suited for your intended audience. Programs for adult learners must be designed to consider their unique needs. We can help you think through these issues and design your programs in a way that best position your students for success.
- Finally, the development of new programs generally needs new funding in their initial few years. Departments are often unable to launch new programs as they lack the resources to initially fund them. The Office of Instruction and the Graduate School will make funds available to departments, if their proposed program is judged to have a high potential for success. Programs supported through these efforts will also get “credit hour funding” at an accelerated pace, so that these programs become financially sustainable as soon as possible.
If you have an idea for a potentially successful graduate program, we want to help you every step of the way. Whether you simply want to brainstorm about ideas, refine something you have already developed, research the market, design the program, identify start-up funding, or more, please contact Assistant VP for Academic Affairs, Laura Crawley for your initial consultation. Dr. Crawley will serve as the primary point of contact for this program and can assist you with everything you may need for this effort.
We are constantly striving to improve instruction at UGA. We’ll be launching more initiatives this fall to improve the student experience to better prepare future leaders. As always, if you have any questions or ideas you would like to share, please send me a note at [email protected].
Sincerely,
Rahul Shrivastav
Vice President for Instruction