Build on the School of Medicine’s tradition of excellence by expanding and modernizing our student curricula and providing the requisite financial support to move the medical school toward a debt-free program.
Ensure that our top-rated professional schools continue to build on their renown and further opportunities to pursue interdisciplinary research and education across all schools.
Significantly strengthen doctoral education by making marked advances in our curriculum, recruitment, student experience, and global presence to enhance the outcomes and stature of our graduate programs.
Graduate, medical, and professional education each plays a central role in advancing the research and educational missions of WashU. Excellence in these domains is critical to our reputation as a top-tier university. Reputation, profile, and administration differ among our graduate, medical, and professional education programs, and our approach to these fields must necessarily be attuned to such differences.
The School of Medicine has a proud legacy of excellence, and many leaders in medical research have received training at WashU. We will expand and modernize our medical and health professional student curricula and provide the requisite financial support to move the School of Medicine toward a debt-free program. We will strengthen learner support and develop processes to improve the learning climate. Through innovations in assessment, leveraging of technology and data sciences, we will reenvision education from pre-health, to health professions, to graduate and post-graduate and continuing education, thereby developing learners who are able to create the future of health.
Our professional schools enjoy strong reputations: The Brown School, Olin Business School, and the School of Law boast some of the top professional education programs in the country. While our schools play a driving role in advancing professional education, we as a university are committed to ensuring that these programs continue to build on their renown. We will further opportunities to pursue interdisciplinary research and education across all our schools and strive to make our professional students feel connected to the broader campus community.
There are significant opportunities to strengthen the profile of many graduate programs and enhance doctoral education. Unevenness in the scale, outcomes, and stature of our doctoral programs impacts our broader reputation as a premier research university. We are committed to strengthening our doctoral programs by making marked advances in our curriculum, recruitment, student experience, and global presence. The newly established Doctoral Council will perform rigorous program reviews to align resources to achieve programmatic excellence. Increased program quality — together with competitive financial packages, central and school-level fellowships, new interdisciplinary programs, and newly established global networks — will attract a diverse body of talented students of the highest quality. We will position these students for definitive, lasting impact by creating a robust platform for leadership, mentorship, professional development, and cohort-building through the Liberman Graduate Center. We will further our reputation by leveraging our advances in the above areas to place students in positions of visibility and impact, including an increased number in academic positions at top institutions. Our newly configured model for graduate programs, which relies on close partnerships between the schools and Office of the Provost, will increase our ability to strategically elevate our graduate programming at every level.
WashU’s achievement in research, scholarship, and creative practice is inextricably linked to the profile of our programs in graduate, medical, and professional education. Outstanding faculty attract outstanding students and outstanding students attract outstanding faculty. Through our coordinated suite of initiatives for our students, we will achieve greater excellence in both our research and education missions.