University Invests to Enhance Doctoral Programs

The University of Cincinnati’s Graduate School is reinvesting $1.6 million of enhancement funds into some of its doctoral programs, and is currently accepting proposals to support additional doctoral programs.

“Graduate education is a vitally important part of UC’s mission as a comprehensive and top-ranked public research university. Excellence in doctoral programs requires investment, and that is exactly what this funding represents – an investment in areas of strength that can become even stronger and more competitive,” says President Santa J. Ono.

Enhancement funds were awarded based upon the program’s ability to show how increased funding would result in greater graduate faculty and student research productivity, recruitment and retention of the nation’s top students, and its ability to leverage external funding.

The doctoral programs granted enhancement funds include Chemistry, Criminal Justice, English and Comparative Literature, Environmental Engineering, Molecular and Development Biology, Neuroscience, and Systems Biology.

“We look forward to wisely expending the funds to further enhance the education and training experiences of our graduate students and to augment faculty recruitment and research productivity,” says Kim Seroogy, director of the neuroscience graduate program.

In addition to bolstering faculty productivity, these enhancement funds will provide programs a competitive advantage over their competition in attracting the nation’s leading doctoral students. “We will be able to offer three new fellowships to incoming, and fifth-year funding for continuing, graduate students – features of the enhancement that will give our program a cutting edge over our closest competitors,” says Jay Twomey, department head of English and Comparative Literature.

The Graduate School is also providing an opportunity for other doctoral programs to obtain enhancement funds through a request for proposal (RFP) process. A total of $200,000 will be available for programs seeking to enhance their doctoral programs. Up to $40,000 will be awarded to each winning proposal.

“We plan to continue facilitating these RFP processes each year to ensure we are supporting the future of our doctoral programs,” says Interim Senior VP for Academic Affairs and Provost Lawrence J. Johnson. Programs will be required to show how an enhancement of funds will lead to greater faculty and student research productivity, and higher quality of learning for students. Programs will be required to submit their proposals to Interim Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate School Robert Zierolf by March 25.