Initiatives
Graduate Student Initiative
Columbia’s graduate school is one of the oldest and most distinguished graduate schools in the United States and is a cornerstone of the Arts and Sciences. With a campus in New York City, in close proximity to many of the great cultural and economic institutions in the country, it is an ideal place to pursue graduate education. The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) administers a rich array of Masters Programs as well as a wide range of Ph.D. programs.
Some Masters Programs are pre-professional, as in the School of the Arts and the School of International and Public Affairs; others combine the best of Columbia’s undergraduate program with the rigor and professionalism of our doctoral programs. For example, the Liberal Studies Masters Programs provide high-level introductions to disciplinary study, in fields such as East Asian Languages and Cultures and English, to interdisciplinary programs such as Philosophical Foundations of Physics and Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences to programs that offer immediate added-value in a profession, such as the M.A.s in Biotechnology and Mathematical Finance.
The Graduate School also offers the Ph.D. degree, which begins with several years of coursework to prepare students for writing their dissertation, a substantial piece of independent research. The doctoral degree can be pursued in the traditional disciplines within the social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences divisions as well as some in interdisciplinary research areas. In order to support our graduate students, we have embarked on a number of programs most importantly enhanced financial support for our doctoral students and improved teaching resources for all graduate student instructors who teach at Columbia.
We place a very high priority on providing our Ph.D. students with adequate funding support. Ninety-nine percent of students in years one through five, the years covered by multi-year support, receive full funding from a variety of sources. Full funding consists of a full-tuition fellowship, coverage of the health service fee and the basic medical insurance offered through Columbia, as well as a nine-month stipend. The Graduate School has substantially enhanced University funding of graduate students. Over the past decade, stipends have increased 74% (35% over the rate of inflation). On average, 95% of entering students receive five-year multi-year awards or, if they are awarded advanced standing, four-year multi-year awards.
In addition, one of the key elements of a graduate education is learning to teach. In order to provide support for our graduate student instructors, the GSAS Teaching Center was begun in 1999 to provide support for Teaching Fellows. The Center’s mission is to enhance the teaching skills of our graduate students and to support their professional development as researchers and scholars.
The Teaching Center supports many activities, including offering an orientation for new Teaching Fellows at the start of each academic year; providing workshops to train graduate students in methods of teaching excellence; organizing campus-wide teaching conferences and seminar speakers; improving teaching by providing feedback through observations, videotaping, confidential consultations, and advice on mid-semester evaluations; serving as a resource center for books and videos on college teaching; providing resources and programs for career development, including writing and presentation skills and development of a teaching portfolio; and developing resources for graduate students, including print and Web-based materials.
We are dedicated to developing a culture that values excellence in teaching as well as research, and to stimulating dialogue and collaboration among the faculty and graduate students involved in undergraduate education at Columbia.