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DEANS Q&A

Barbara Knuth

Dean Barbara Knuth at hooding ceremony with Deondra Rose

Barbara A. Knuth, vice provost and dean of the Graduate School, hoods Deondra Rose, Ph.D. '12, at the Ph.D. hooding ceremony during Commencement Weekend 2012.

What are you most proud of in your first term as dean?

I'm most proud of the effort we've undertaken to improve the Graduate School's capacity to support graduate and professional students. We've redesigned how we deliver services to [them]. We created the Office of Inclusion and Professional Development, which is providing a broad, very robust and comprehensive set of programming activities to support graduate students' academic success while they're here, and to foster a set of transferrable skills that will help them when they begin their careers. We've revamped our Office of Graduate Student Life to better support the whole person with a stronger focus on mental health and well-being, personal financial management, and family and partner support.

We also joined a National Science Foundation initiative, the Center for the Integration of Research Teaching and Learning, a network of 22 universities across the United States that focuses on future faculty development in the STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] disciplines – ultimately with the goal of enhancing undergraduate education in the STEM disciplines by improving how future faculty integrate their research and teaching into one cohesive approach using evidence-based teaching and assessment.

What is one thing most people outside the Graduate School don't know or realize about it?

The Graduate School's size and scope. I don't think most people recognize that we actually oversee nearly every degree program on the Ithaca campus and the Cornell Tech campus that's not the first degree offered by the school. For example, the MBA is the first degree offered by Johnson, but any Ph.D. students who work with Johnson faculty are actually Graduate School students. The Graduate School confers 18 different research and professional degrees – there is no other unit that confers that many – across nearly 100 graduate fields.

Barbara Knuth with Tata Scholars

Knuth with students at the 2012 Tata Scholars reception. See larger image

What's the biggest obstacle to success for graduate education right now?

Funding; that's probably not a surprise. Certainly what's happening with the federal budget is worrisome in the sense that a significant proportion of our graduate students are supported on research assistantships from external grants, particularly Ph.D. students in the STEM disciplines.

An aspirational goal for the Graduate School is to have funding available to support all of our Ph.D. students with a first-year fellowship. We have about 500 first-year Ph.D. students, and enough first-year fellowships for about half that number, so it will take considerable resources to meet our goal.

What was one of your expectations about the job that proved untrue?

I didn't expect to have the opportunity for as much interaction with the graduate faculty as I actually have. The faculty who are directors of graduate studies throughout these 100 fields and the faculty who are elected to our general committee (the governance body of the Graduate School) have been quite collaborative, very eager to engage in policy and program discussions with the Graduate School to support their graduate students.

For example, we asked each of the graduate fields within the last year to undertake a fairly comprehensive project to explicitly identify a set of learning outcomes for their students in each degree program and to develop assessment plans to help evaluate how students are achieving those learning outcomes. Most fields took that on in an enthusiastic and committed way, and have already identified improvements in their programs as a result of this information.

How do you balance your roles as a vice provost, dean and researcher?

With a lot of support from my husband, my daughters and my executive assistant. On the research side, the support of my research team, which includes two doctoral students and several research staff, has been invaluable.

One of the reasons I've been able to keep my research program going is due to a phenomenal group of faculty in natural resources who have been working together for a number of years. The group is called the Human Dimensions Research Unit, and we focus collectively on understanding human behaviors and attitudes toward the environment. We collaborate; we pool our resources. This partnership has made it possible to continue my research, continue mentoring students, and work with interesting research colleagues while I have these very busy administrative jobs.

How would you describe the importance of the developing Cornell Tech campus to the future of graduate education?

The Cornell Tech campus raises the visibility of graduate education at Cornell, particularly because a good portion of graduate education – not just at the tech campus but at our campus as well – is really focused on addressing societal issues. One of the hallmarks of Cornell Tech is the partnership between industry and academics.

That partnership between academic and nonacademic – in their case industry – is very similar to what we do across much of graduate education at the Graduate School, which is to partner academic with nonacademic in diverse ways, with students focusing their studies by working with agricultural communities, rural developing communities and urban communities across the world, bringing our graduate student research to bear on the problems that these different places and different groups of people are experiencing.

The Dean

Barbara A. Knuth, vice provost and dean of the Graduate School, and professor of natural resource policy and management; as vice provost, she oversees undergraduate admissions, financial aid and student employment

At Cornell since 1986

Vice provost since April 2010; dean since July 2010

Area of expertise: Human dimensions of natural resource policy and management

The Cornell Graduate School

Population: 1,800 faculty affiliated with nearly 100 graduate fields; 5,200 graduate and professional students

Major areas of future emphasis: increased internationalization of the graduate and professional student body; enhancing infrastructure for graduate education in support of Cornell's strategic priorities

Endowment: $76.9 million (as of February 2013)

Cornell now campaign goals: $100 million for graduate fellowships and professional school scholarships and $182 million for undergraduate financial aid are universitywide goals

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