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GSAS Admissions and Graduate Education

The GSAS Admissions and Graduate Education working group is tasked with recommending enhancements to the admissions and educational processes.

Harvard is known for its excellence in graduate education, but it is impacted by local, national, and global pressures, including changes in the academic job market (particularly in some fields), changes to the costs and funding sources of graduate stipends, and more. The recent Faculty Study Group report also signaled concerns about graduate education, which require evaluation to arrive at actionable recommendations. Given these pressures, now is the time to reflect on what alterations should be made to graduate education to ensure our students graduate with the potential to serve as intellectual leaders for the 21st century. 

In response, GSAS has launched the GSAS Admissions and Graduate Education (GAGE) Working Group, tasked with recommending enhancements to the admissions and educational processes. Over the course of the 2022–2023 academic year, the GAGE Working Group will first consider advising, teaching, employment outcomes, and institutional finances. The information gathered from these conversations will be used to develop actionable steps in how admissions slots are allocated and to outline what the PhD means in the 21st century. A final report is expected early in the 2023–2024 academic year.

GAGE Working Group Members

Emma Dench, Chair, Dean of GSAS, McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History and of the Classics 

Allen Aloise, Dean for Administration and Finance, GSAS 

Valerie Beilenson, Project Manager, FAS 

Noël Bisson, Dean for Academic Programs, GSAS 

Verena Conley, Visiting Professor of Comparative Literature and of Romance Languages and Literatures 

Bob Coughlin, Dean for Admissions and Financial Aid, GSAS

Victoria D’Souza, Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology 

Ryan Enos, Professor of Government 

Ann Hall, Chief of Staff and Interim Director of Communications, GSAS 

Elizabeth Lunbeck, Professor of the History of Science in Residence 

Catherine McKenna, Margaret Brooks Robinson Professor of Celtic Languages and Literatures; Chair of the Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures 

Kay Kaufman Shelemay, G. Gordon Watts Professor of Music and Professor of African and African American Studies 

Peter Girguis, Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology 

Matthew Liebmann, Peabody Professor of American Archeology and Ethnology 

Charlie Otero, Executive Assistant to the Dean, GSAS 

Sheila Thomas, Dean for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging, Interim Dean of Students, and Special Projects Advisor, GSAS 

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