During the 2026-2027 academic year, the Graduate School is committed to taking action on the recommendations in the Future of the PhD Taskforce report. Some of this work will happen internally, while other efforts will require partnerships with faculty and staff in schools, colleges and central units. Our focus is on making considerable progress on high-priority, short-range recommendations while laying the groundwork for progress on others in future years.
The Graduate School will:
- Gather and share information on PhD funding approaches across UW doctoral programs and among our peers. Goal: to document innovations, creative problem-solving and standard practices at the local level that could be scaled up and/or replicated, and to understand the benefits, limitations and tradeoffs of different funding approaches.
2. Partner with other central units to increase the accuracy of PhD student funding data. Goal: to give doctoral programs better insight into the combinations of funding used to support PhD students as they plan cohort sizes, student experiences and other aspects of their programs.
3. Partner with other central units to elevate mentoring and advising resources for faculty and academic leaders. Goal: to ensure meaningful uptake of foundational mentoring practices and improve the consistency and quality of mentoring and advising across programs.
4. Use data-informed practices to guide the Graduate School’s student-facing programming and resources. Goal: to strengthen our connections with students and support community, belonging and professional development.
5. Further our efforts to support the creation and maintenance of high-quality graduate student handbooks at the school and college level. Goal: to promote transparency, consistency and clarity for students about local requirements, processes and procedures.
6. Facilitate local analyses of time-to-degree (TTD) data. Goal: to ensure programs have greater insight into students’ experiences with program requirements, common points of delay in progress toward a degree and opportunities to support steady progress toward degree completion.