By SHANNON O. WELLS
Just before the holiday break, Amanda Godley attended a ceremony in Washington, D.C., where Maura McCall, a Pitt School of Nursing graduate student, accept a Distinguished Dissertation Award from the Council of Graduate Schools.
The award, which goes to recent doctoral recipients who have made “significant and original contributions to their fields,” is among the positive recognition and demonstrable successes Godley, now in her third year as Pitt’s vice provost for graduate studies, is seeing — and appreciating — more and more of these days.
The celebration capped off a year in which more than 140 Pitt graduate students won national or international awards or fellowships.
“I’m certainly excited about the increased recognition our graduate students are getting,” Godley said. “We have a lot of graduate students winning awards and national and international fellowships and scholarships. And I think we both see an increase and we have more opportunities now to celebrate the excellence of our graduate students.”
The recent wave of student success is among several positive developments in Pitt’s graduate programs, including an uptick in grant funding and notable enrollment increases, that Godley — who also serves as interim vice provost for undergraduate studies and as a professor in the School of Education — is pleased to share.
“First of all, it’s really hard to believe that it’s been three years,” she said of her graduate program role, “but it is really exciting.”
Thirteen new graduate and professional programs were approved between spring 2022 and spring 2023 semesters, while enrollment has steadily increased from the 10-year period before Godley ran the program, which actually saw a decrease. Enrollment increased 1.6 percent enrollment increase from spring 2022 to spring 2023.
“So we’ve turned that around, and we’re excited to be headed in that direction,” she said. “We’re working really closely with the schools and the deans of the schools across Pitt.”
On top of that encouraging trend, a recent funding award from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Centers for Systemic Change will go toward improving equity and inclusion in Ph.D. programs in STEM learning.
“We’re going to be working with 12 departments across Engineering and Arts and Sciences starting in January, and every department that was eligible for this was excited to be part of it,” Godley said. “So that’s going to be really exciting, and I think we’re really viewing the work we’re doing around equitable admissions and support of underrepresented doctoral students as a model that could be rolled out to more parts of the University.”
Addressing aspirations
Noting this upward trajectory, Interim Provost Joe McCarthy credited Godley’s experience, enthusiasm and creativity with moving the graduate program in an exciting new direction.
“Amanda has a clear vision and is also highly collaborative, which makes for successful leadership,” he said. “I’m pleased to see how the graduate studies team has strategically grown — and how the team has engaged people and programs across campus.
“We have been able to realize new initiatives — Pitt2Pitt, enhanced career exploration and support, including graduate career foundations, among many others — which speak directly to the needs and aspirations of graduate students,” he added.
Aside from the sweat equity she and her team have invested, Godley, who arrived at Pitt in 2002, said a focus on increasing online and hybrid offerings is a key element behind the robust enrollment numbers. Looking at national data, “most schools — our peers — were increasing their enrollments mostly in online programs, graduate programs.”
Godley and her colleagues in the Office of the Provost — including Audra Longert, new associate vice provost for digital education — and the various deans “have really made a concerted effort over the past few years to think about offering more online and hybrid programs, not primarily to increase enrollment, but also because we know it increases access to graduate and professional programs,” she said. “Both help students pursue careers, or advance in their careers, without leaving where they currently live or their current job.”
Online and hybrid options also help with workforce development, both nationally and regionally. “That’s an area we’re really excited about,” she said. For example, the School of Computing and Information’s new online master’s of data science degree is designed to be low cost, with “very few barriers for entry,” and will “contribute to access and affordability as well as workforce development.”
McCarthy added that the Office of the Provost is “deeply engaged” in creating strategies to enable additional development of online options, “especially for graduate students, who frequently need and want additional flexibility as they juggle other personal and professional considerations,” he said. “It is important for us to provide quality options.”
Responding to student needs
In her first year in the role, Godley collaborated with the offices of the provost, chancellor and chief financial officer as well as Senate Council committees to develop a strategic plan for graduate studies.
“We talked to every kind of community member we could around the University and in the community to kind of understand what kind of direction people want graduate studies to go — what they thought were current successes, what more could be done,” she said. “We’re happy to be able to put together everyone’s ideas into a coherent strategic plan. And that’s been really guiding us for the past three years.”
Thinking about new ways to reach prospective students and consulting the schools directly to set different strategies, Godley’s team worked closely with Office of University Communications and Marketing to promote graduate recruitment. “And that’s allowed us to both kind of market and brand Pitt graduate programs as a whole,” she said, “as well as help schools that might be somewhat under-resourced in this area, or need help with something like market analysis.”
More recently, the team has partnered with the Office of Admissions and Financial Aid, which plans to hire graduate and professional student recruiters to work with Godley’s office to further build out “how we support the schools and get the word out about all of our programs, both nationally and internationally.”
The team also is responding to the national move away from just a strictly academic approach — as in “you just take the classes, you get your degree and you’re done,” she said — to incorporate more elements like community building, networking and professional development.
“I think our increase in events and support for graduate and professional students is part of that responsiveness to what today’s graduate and professional students need,” she said.
Affordability, appeal and friendly bus rides
All this positivity and forward momentum doesn’t come without challenges, of course, affordability and ballooning student loan debt among them. “Not just at Pitt, but nationwide,” she said. “So we’re doing a lot of thinking about how you keep access and affordability at the graduate level as well as undergrad. A lot of the financial supports available to undergrads — like subsidized loans, Pell Grants — those don’t exist for graduate and professional students.”
A student pursuing a graduate degree, such as master’s in social work, physical therapy or teacher certification, doesn’t get the same financial support from the federal government as an undergrad does, she explained. The challenge, then, is “How do we make it as (appealing) as we can for folks who are willing to go into these incredible service professions, and do it without a lot of debt?”
Another ongoing challenge that Godley said is gaining broader awareness, involves how to support underrepresented graduate and professional students, including first-generation students. “The good thing is that, as with undergrad, graduate and professional education has also increased in terms of accessibility and the diversity of socio-economic and other backgrounds of the students.
“In response, we need to think about what students need to succeed in our programs, whether that’s academic, whether it’s mentoring … or other things like community building,” she added. “So that’s a really, I think, good challenge.”
Godley, who came to Pitt in after earning her doctoral degree from California State University–Berkeley, admits she didn’t really know “what kind of a city I was moving to.” She liked what she found. “And then over the years (the University and Pittsburgh) have changed in ways that have really been exciting.
“And you know, Pittsburgh has become more and more of a technology hub, culture hub, education and healthcare hub, without losing its character,” she adds. “After growing up in huge cities … I realized it’s really nice when you have a medium city that has this sense of community and culture where strangers talk to each other on the bus.”
Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.
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