Luis Falcon outlined the increased spending on scholarships and on marketing, among other measures, that have built a substantial growth in Northeastern’s graduate student population.
The university brings in nearly 1,500 new graduate students each fall across the board, not counting those at the School of Professional and Continuing Studies, he said. Overall applications will number more than 9,000 this year, up from 5,000 just three admissions cycles ago, Falcon said.
The vice provost for graduate education laid out for the Faculty Senate some of the measures the university has taken, and will take, to continue the climb, including a growth in financial aid for graduate students and more online recruitment and database mining for prospects.
Provost Ahmed Abdelal said the university four years ago had predicted graduate student growth of 2 percent a year. However, the average in recent years, he said, has been 6 to 7 percent.
Senators support online course evaluations
A new online course evaluation system is “a better instrument” for students to share their thoughts, according to James Fox, Lipman Family Professor of criminal justice.
Fox led a committee that recently tested the new evaluation system, dubbed TRACE, and urged the Faculty Senate to support its adoption across the board. Senators agreed overwhelmingly.
The online system, he said, has “many, many more qualitative questions” and gives students more opportunity to add their opinions. Because it’s filled out by computer and not, as in the longstanding course evaluation system, by pencil in a classroom, “students tend to type away,” Fox said.
It will also allow faculty more immediate access to their evaluations; while the wait could take months, for hand compilations of the current TCEs, TRACE results will be available online as soon as teachers turn in the final course grades.
Steve Lavenberg of the Student Senate told his faculty counterparts, “We’re very excited to see it.”
Faculty urged the systems’ implementation for the end of the current semester.