April 1, 2025
The UW Taskforce on the Future of PhD Education is a joint initiative of the Provost and the Graduate School charged with charting innovative and proactive directions for the University of Washington’s PhD programs and PhD students. As an R1 institution with over 4,000 PhD students, the UW has a unique and important role to play in modeling best practices in developing the next generation of leaders, researchers, and innovators while advancing the public good.
In particular, the Taskforce will be focused on three areas: (1) ensuring PhD students get the type of education, training and experiences they need for the current and future job market, including outside academia; (2) ensuring the UW has a vision for PhD education that fits with our RI goals, public mission, and fiscal challenges; and (3) ensuring our graduate students are getting a high quality experience in their programs. As the taskforce does its work, it will identify where there should be flexibility for departments and programs and where there should be common elements in the student experience.
The Taskforce will answer questions such as:
- What is “success” in PhD education at an R1 institution like the UW?
- What metrics should we develop and monitor to assess our success and inform a cycle of continuous improvement?
- How will we ensure our PhD curricula, milestones, co-curricular requirements (e.g. field work, internships), etc. are aligned, relevant, and prepare students for the future (e.g. 2050) not the past or present?
- How might a dissertation be different in the future, and how do we accommodate change or build in flexibility?
- How can we best balance budget constraints, our research and instructional needs, and our duty to prepare future leaders in research, education, and innovation?
- How can we align factors like revenue, costs, job market changes, and cohort size to inform how we deliver PhD education?
- What role should graduate students play in our instructional mission, and what are the goals in having PhD students serve as instructors at any level?
- On what specific areas should we focus our attention to improve and enhance the experience of PhD students, especially to promote
- Excellence in disciplinary training
- Interdisciplinary training
- Responsible research
- Open science and scholarship
- Career and professional development for paths both within and outside academia
- Communication, leadership, and “soft” skills
- Health and wellness
- Sense of community and belonging
- High-quality mentoring by faculty of graduate students and accountability for mentorship successes and failures
- Timely degree completion
- Cohort diversity
- Funding packages
- Applicability to the diversity of the graduate student body
In exploring these issues, the taskforce is encouraged to adopt a practical approach including:
- Adopting solutions that are cost neutral, including through suggested rearrangements of workflows
- Identifying key barriers to adopting recommended solutions
The taskforce will be supported in filling this charge by working groups. The taskforce will identify areas of focus and then select faculty, staff, and students with relevant expertise on the issue. With the input of the working groups, the taskforce will craft a vision for the ideal graduate education experience and make recommendations for short-term and long-term actions.
April 2025: supervisory committee convened
May 2025: working group foci and membership proposed by supervisory committee
Summer 2025: Graduate School creates resources for the task force, distributes an initial set of data identified as useful for decision-making regarding the PhD to colleges/schools, and provides a scan of peer institutions and UW programs for best practices
October/November 2026: Working groups launched
December-March 2026: Working groups begin creating recommendations, identifying barriers, and proposing solutions
April 2026: Preliminary report and related materials produced
May 2026: report and related materials finalized and submitted to the Provost and Dean of the Graduate School
The Steering Committee, led by Joy Williamson-Lott and Daniel Pollack, provides overarching governance and strategic direction for the Ph.D. Taskforce, ensuring alignment with institutional priorities and compliance with university policies. Working Groups are established to address specific thematic areas critical to advancing doctoral education, developing recommendations, and implementing initiatives based on the Steering Committee’s guidance.
Here are the working group charters. If you have feedback for the working groups, please use one of our feedback forms: for non-anonymous feedback or for anonymous feedback.
The image below represents the current membership of each Working Group, including co-leads, contributing members, and student participants.
| Working Group | Name | Group Status | Member Status | Unit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Academic & Research Excellence | Angel Fettig | Lead | Faculty | Education |
| Academic & Research Excellence | Martine De Cock | Lead | Faculty | Engineering & Tech, UWT |
| Academic & Research Excellence | Carolyn Baylor | Member | Faculty | Medicine |
| Academic & Research Excellence | LeiLani Nishime | Member | Faculty | Communication |
| Academic & Research Excellence | Jade Orr | Member | Faculty | Built Environment |
| Academic & Research Excellence | Ellen Gregoire | Member | Staff | Political Science |
| Academic & Research Excellence | Minh Vo | Member | Staff | Public Health |
| Academic & Research Excellence | Mayumi Willgerodt | Ad hoc member | Faculty | Grad School; SOM |
| Career & Professional Development | Brandon Guthrie | Lead | Faculty | Global Health |
| Career & Professional Development | Becky Corriell | Lead | Staff | Public Policy |
| Career & Professional Development | Gerald Seidler | Member | Faculty | Physics |
| Career & Professional Development | Juhua Hu | Member | Faculty | Engineering & Tech, UWT |
| Career & Professional Development | Stefka Mihaylova | Member | Faculty | Drama |
| Career & Professional Development | Mark Scheuerell | Member | Faculty | Environment |
| Career & Professional Development | Rachel Arteaga | Member | Staff | Simpson Center |
| Career & Professional Development | Jessica Roberto | Member | Staff | Business |
| Career & Professional Development | Briana Randall | Ad hoc member | Staff | Career & Internship Center |
| Career & Professional Development | Jaye Sablan | Ad hoc member | Staff | Grad School |
| Career & Professional Development | Alexandros Peltekis | Floating | Student | Chemistry |
| Community & Belonging | Maya Smith | Lead | Faculty | French & Italian Studies |
| Community & Belonging | Christine Noyes-Williams | Lead | Staff | iSchool |
| Community & Belonging | Corey Garza | Member | Faculty | Environment |
| Community & Belonging | Sarah Iribarren | Member | Faculty | Nursing |
| Community & Belonging | Jessica Werk | Member | Faculty | Astronomy |
| Community & Belonging | Joe Eckert | Member | Staff | Engineering |
| Community & Belonging | Ziyan Bai | Ad hoc member | Staff | CIRCLE |
| Community & Belonging | Kalei Kanuha | Ad hoc member | Faculty | Social Work |
| Funding | Patricia Kramer | Lead | Faculty | Anthropology |
| Funding | Marta Scatena | Lead | Faculty | Bioengineering |
| Funding | Bing Brunton | Member | Faculty | Biology |
| Funding | John Gennari | Member | Faculty | Medicine |
| Funding | Rona Levy | Member | Faculty | Social Work |
| Funding | Amy Orsborn | Member | Faculty | Engineering |
| Funding | Candice Rai | Member | Faculty | English |
| Funding | Ken Rice | Member | Faculty | Biostatistics |
| Funding | Trina Sterry | Member | Staff | Public Health |
| Funding | Helene Obradovich | Ad hoc member | Staff | Grad School |
| Mentoring & Advising | Payman Arabshahi | Lead | Faculty | Engineering |
| Mentoring & Advising | Chelsea Wood | Lead | Faculty | Environment |
| Mentoring & Advising | Alex Anderson | Member | Faculty | Built Environment |
| Mentoring & Advising | Douglas Ishii | Member | Faculty | English |
| Mentoring & Advising | Bill Mahoney | Member | Faculty | Medicine |
| Mentoring & Advising | Wanda Pratt | Member | Faculty | iSchool |
| Mentoring & Advising | Elizabeth Sanders | Member | Faculty | Education |
| Mentoring & Advising | Emily Bernet | Member | Staff | Public Health |
| Mentoring & Advising | Sarah Garner | Member | Staff | Mathematics |
The PhD Taskforce Town Hall Series provides a space for the UW community to stay informed, share feedback, and engage in conversations about the future of PhD education. These monthly webinars aim to foster transparency, highlight progress from working groups, and invite diverse perspectives from faculty, staff, and students to help shape inclusive, forward-thinking solutions that enhance the PhD experience across disciplines.
Join the co-chairs for monthly live webinars to learn more and share feedback. All sessions are held via Microsoft Teams (NetID required).
Access to the slides and videos requires a UW NetID. If you experience difficulties accessing these files, please contact Adele Zhang at adelez@uw.edu for assistance.
Town Halls
- October 8, 2025: Oct 8th video | Oct 8th slides (PDF)
- November 3, 2025: Nov 3rd video | Nov 3rd slides (PDF)
- December 1, 2025: Dec 1st video | Dec 1st slides (PDF)
- January 12, 2026: Jan 12th video | Jan 12th slides (PDF)
- February 2, 2026: Feb 2nd video | Feb 2nd slides (PDF)
- March 2, 2026: March 2nd video | March 2nd slides (PDF)
- April 13, 2026: April 13th video | April 13th slides (PDF)
- May 4, 2026 May 4th video | May 4th slides (PDF)
Student Engagement Series
The Taskforce co-chairs hosted two student engagement sessions in February. To create a comfortable environment for open dialogue, these sessions were not recorded. However, you may view the presentation slides, PhD Taskforce Student Engagement, from the sessions.
Reports
Interested in other taskforce reports? See below for a sample.
- University of California (UC) – Future of Doctoral Programs Report (Feb 2025)
- Boston University – Taskforce Report on the Future of PhD Education (Dec 2023)
- UCLA – Joint Task Force Report on Graduate Programs and Student Support (Dec 2023)
- Indiana University Bloomington (IUB) – 2030 Graduate Student Success Pillar (2022)
- Brown University – Task Force on Doctoral Education Final Report (Oct 2022)
- University of Texas at Austin – Graduate Education Task Force Report (Dec 2019)
- University of Chicago – Committee on Graduate Education Report (Mar 2019)
- Princeton University – Task Force on the Future of the Graduate School Final Report (Aug 2015)
Books
Interested in how the revisioning of the PhD is being discussed? Take a look at:
- The New PhD (2021)