Welcome from the President
Dear CSGS members:
The theme of the 2010 Annual Meeting is "Transforming Theory into Action" and continues a discussion that we have been having about how to successfully create diverse, interdisciplinary, global environments that emphasize quality and cooperation in graduate education and to prepare our students for environments they will face now and in the future. Over the years, we have focused on these themes to strengthen the economic competitiveness of our nation by asking graduate education to change.
To effectively change we must know what success looks like when we achieve it and we must determine strategies for realizing the success we say that we want. Our goals include: to become more inclusive and diverse, to educate and conduct research in an interdisciplinary way, to become more global in our curriculum and our preparation of students, to cooperate with employers and other stakeholders to strengthen our nation's economy and its competitiveness and to continue to emphasize quality. These goals are important and to achieve them often requires input from the entire campus and the off-campus community, as well as from graduate deans.
To promote a broader level of active engagement and participation of the CSGS membership at our annual meeting, we have made three important changes to the structure of the annual meeting. First, we have incorporated suggestions from the membership at the last CSGS meeting for special workshops that specifically deal with problems that occur on our campuses. This has resulted in the scheduling of a special workshop for smaller institutions and special workshops focused on budget issues to share ideas of some best practices as we respond to these problems. Second, we have increased the amount of active engagement by incorporating round table discussions following plenaries so that best practices with regard to the above mentioned goals can be gathered, synthesized, and then made available on our website for further discussion and analysis. This active dissemination is important to the exchange of ideas and the promotion of best practices that we are trying to achieve. Third, we have organized the annual meeting such that external partners (employers, legislators, and others) can attend for one day and contribute to two of the goals – our ability to partner and cooperate with employers and our ability to maintain quality in difficult budget times.
During this time of economic hardship, we know that travel budgets are reduced and that it is difficult to find the funds needed to travel to an Annual Meeting. I hope that the experiences and creative ideas that are shared during our annual meeting and then posted on our website will improve graduate education in our region. I encourage you to share with your colleagues your ideas and best practices. Together we can improve what we do on our own campuses and can help to educate others about graduate education and its role in strengthening the nation's competitiveness. I look forward to seeing you at the annual meeting February 25-28 in Savannah. Thank you for participating in the CSGS and for contributing your ideas to improve the graduate community.
Patricia Bishop
President, CSGS
Vice Provost and Dean,
College of Graduate Studies
University of Central Florida
