President Allen Addresses Graduate Education Issues

UNI President Ben Allen invited the members of the Graduate Student Advisory Board (GSAB) for a special luncheon with him, his wife Pat Allen, UNI Interim Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs James Lubeker, and Graduate College Dean Susan Koch.

“To my knowledge, this is the first time that graduate students have been invited to a luncheon at the UNI President’s Home,” stated Graduate College Dean Susan Koch. “It gave our graduate students a forum with President Allen to discuss issues that are important to graduate education.”

President Allen discussed his views on graduate education and answered questions from the graduate students attending. Below are excerpts from President Allen at the luncheon.

The Graduate Experience

“The graduate experience is different than that of undergraduates. Other than being with my wife Pat, the happiest moments of my life were when I was earning my PhD at the University of Illinois. In graduate college, I focused on new insights in economics and really learned the material. Most importantly, graduate college was an opportunity to add to the knowledge base in my discipline. Here at UNI, I want you to feel excited, supported, and capable of adding to your discipline.”

Strengthening Programs

“I feel we have a strong graduate program. It is my goal to focus more on areas that are historical strengths of the university and to provide the faculty and resources needed. You hear me talk about strengthening our undergraduate programs, but I believe that you can’t have a good undergraduate program without a strong graduate program. This not only provides a quality graduate education, but enhances our undergraduate program by attracting better faculty to UNI and enriching the undergraduate experience.”

 

Reviewing Current Programs

“To ensure that our graduate programs are of the highest quality, we need to review the programs offered and make certain that we are, in fact, offering graduate programs central to this university. This may mean adding some programs that we currently are not offering but should be and eliminating some programs that we currently are offering but perhaps should not be.”

“Our Board of Regents has sat down with the presidents of the three major Iowa universities and discussed our strengths. By working with the University of Iowa and Iowa State, we can determine which of our graduate programs we should enhance and which should be dropped. Of course, there will be overlap in our programs, but our goal is to provide the state of Iowa a network of colleges that provides the minimum amount of ‘unnecessary’ duplication. On the other hand, we will not drop programs that are not provided elsewhere and create a gap.”

President Allen ended the luncheon by stating, “I’d like to thank you for being at UNI. As graduate students, you are the intellectual horsepower here. Your accomplishments make us proud and enrich our university now and in the future.”