Strategic Plan
Mission
The mission of the IPFW Office for Graduate Studies is to facilitate offering a range of distinctive graduate programs, especially targeted professional master's degree programs, important to the social, economic, cultural, and intellectual life of northeastern Indiana.
Vision
IPFW will fulfill its roles as a comprehensive, public university and the largest provider of higher education in northeastern Indiana through strategic visioning and accountability for graduate education services. Through commissions and collaborations with other campuses and organizations, including civic and corporate, IPFW will assess and respond to the graduate education needs of vital social, economic, cultural, and intellectual institutions and communities throughout the region.
Its programs will be of demonstrated quality and recognized nationally for the marriage of practical and liberal education, especially education that develops professional expertise based upon the cultivation of the skills of discovery and synthesis that support problem-solving and innovation. To achieve this status, graduate programs at IPFW will be known for challenging, active-learning curricula which are based in research and field experience; a community of creative, motivated students and faculty; student and faculty involvement in research supported by grants and contracts; and rigorous program evaluation that includes professional placement and success of graduates.
Graduates will be prepared to fulfill individual and collective responsibilities and goals and will model advancements in production, services, and professional practice in the industrial, corporate, social service, civic, educational and other sectors of society.
Graduate Goals and Strategies with Performance Indicators
Realization of IPFW's graduate mission requires leadership based upon strategic visioning of northeastern Indiana's needs for a graduate-educated citizenry and workforce, wise stewardship of the institution's human, physical and financial resources in behalf of delivering outstanding programs, and significant administrative restructuring. The goals and strategies that follow, derived from an analysis of the current status of graduate studies at IPFW, amplify these ideas.
Goal I:
Provide a set of graduate programs that sustains vital social, economic, cultural, and intellectual institutions and communities in northeastern Indiana.
IPFW's status as a comprehensive, public university and the largest provider of education in northeastern Indiana carries the responsibility to monitor northeastern Indiana's post-baccalaureate educational needs and to advocate those needs within Indiana University, Purdue University and the state of Indiana. While the number of IPFW site-specific programs approved by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education will likely increase, public interest may require that the set not be limited to master's degree programs. Moreover, balancing quality, need and cost factors will likely require collaborations with other campuses and organizations, both civic and corporate, and new policies in such areas as transfer of credit and residency as well as the development of innovative delivery systems.
Goal II:
Actively manage enrollment to graduate critical numbers of highly qualified students.
To attain communities of creative, motivated students in such numbers that the graduate programs will significantly benefit northeastern Indiana requires enrollment management plans.
Goal III:
Achieve national recognition as a center for graduate programs that fulfill the region's needs for persons with scholarly and professional expertise.
Analysis of the internal situation done as part of this planning process generated the formulation of strategies related to curriculum and instruction, support of students, support of faculty, development of facilities, and program review and evaluation that are necessary to achieve excellence as a graduate center with an emphasis upon distinctive graduate programs, especially targeted professional master's degree programs, grounded in northeastern Indiana's specific needs for post-baccalaureate scholarly and professional expertise.
Goal IV:
Restructure the academic administration of graduate programs to effect accountability.
Five graduate schools are operational at IPFW: the Purdue University Graduate School, the Indiana University Graduate School, the Indiana University School of Education graduate school, the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Studies graduate school, and the IPFW School of Business and Management Sciences graduate school. Graduate academic regulations, like the undergraduate regulations, need to be unified and authority needs to be conferred for centralizing academic administration. In addition, the steward-department concept upon which the administration of Purdue University programs is based has, contrary to intention, diffused accountability and is incongruent with the size, competence, and maturity of graduate faculty at the regional campuses. The greater attention that the Office of Academic Affairs at IPFW has given to the administration of graduate programs recently has led to the conclusion that responsibility for graduate programs in both Indiana University and Purdue University missions is too diffuse. Further, that administrative restructuring at system, campus, and school-department levels is necessary to achieve appropriate levels of accountability.
260-481-IPFW
Jobs
Pandemic
Contact
Maps