Graduate School Scholar Awards for 2008
RE: Distribution of Graduate School Scholar Awards ($2000/yr for two years with $1000/yr match from College/Unit).
Listed below are the specifics aimed to significantly enhance our faculty’s efforts to recruit and retain outstanding graduate, especially Ph.D., students at WSU. It is intended to benefit every College.
Rationale
In the past two years, the Graduate School has significantly expanded its financial support for incoming students via this mechanism. However, these increased expenditures have not resulted in quantitative changes in the recruitment of Ph.D. students. To remain competitive with other quality institutions, it is imperative that financial offers be made to excellent students early, before they are committed elsewhere. This is especially true for domestic students, and strong preference will be given to domestic students in this program.
To compete successfully, each unit should review their applicants as they come in, identify the most promising Ph.D. candidates, and prepare assistantship offers. Under this revision, Colleges will not receive a pre-determined allocation, as in the past. The Graduate School, over the next two years, will introduce and implement a sophisticated communication plan designed to place higher quality student applications in front of units faster than before. The revision of policy for Graduate School Scholar Awards is part of this overarching plan.
The Graduate School expects to allocate more total monies for these Scholar Awards in 2008/2009 than we have in the past. The amount each College receives will be directly proportionate to how effectively they manage their units and drive the early offers to outstanding students.
When graduate students arrive for the first semester, the Graduate School will provide each Graduate School Scholar $1,000 per semester for 4 academic semesters, with the department or College providing a match of $500 per semester for 4 academic semesters. Continuation of this award is contingent upon the scholar maintaining a 3.0 GPA and satisfactory academic progress.
Procedure
- Each unit should establish internal procedures to identify outstanding prospects in the applicant pool as applications are received.
- Units should prepare letters of offer to these students, stating the amount of assistantship support, Graduate School Scholar Award, tuition waiver, and health insurance (so that the total award is evident to the student).
- The student must be accepted by the Graduate School.
- The prepared letters will be forwarded to Paul Weed in the Graduate School. The departmental administrator may submit this letter via email to Paul Weed with the name of the student, WSU ID, GPA, and degree seeking. We will provide a notice of acceptance/denial within 24 hours upon student admission.
- The Graduate School will approve these as soon as possible (we anticipate a 24-48 hour turn around, assuming the student has been admitted to the Graduate School).
- The offer will be mailed by the nominating unit.
- The Graduate School will hold the Award until receipt of an offer of acceptance by the student.
- Once a student is approved, the Award may not be allocated to a different student without following 2a – 2g. In other words, if the first student rejects the offer, then we start over. The unit is not allowed to move to the next student on their internal list.