Dean's Message
Graduate School Strategic Plan
2009–2014 Graduate School Strategic Plan
Introduction: Vision Statement
The mission of the Graduate School is to support the overall mission of Buffalo State at the graduate level, including a commitment to access, transformative experiences, and high quality education. The Graduate School seeks to make significant contributions to students’ professional and intellectual growth by providing a challenging and supportive environment that integrates advanced study and scholarship/research and that asks students to exert leadership in their chosen profession.
Because of its commitment to access, the Graduate School:
- Supports flexible admissions practices—offering students various ways to prove their ability to succeed and evaluating students through a comprehensive review process.
- Promotes supportive advising throughout a student’s graduate education.
- Promotes collegial practices toward students outside the major.
- Promotes flexible scheduling, including the use of weekend, summer, distance, and hybrid courses.
To assure transformational experiences, the Graduate School:
- Promotes the use of beginning/initial courses as immersion into graduate study and purposeful initiation into a graduate program.
- Supports mentoring for sophisticated research and writing.
- Promotes purposeful mentoring into professions or advanced course of study.
- Supports capstone/culminating experiences that demonstrate significant accomplishment.
To maintain and improve quality, the Graduate School:
- Supports unified/coherent programs of study.
- Promotes the assessment of student learning and accomplishment.
- Advocates for the recruiting, hiring, and ongoing professional development of qualified faculty who are committed to the goals of graduate education at Buffalo State College.
- Promotes continual support of current quality programs that attract students to Buffalo State College.
- Promotes the development of new programs that will bring distinction and new populations of students to campus. The development of new programs is aided by collegial, cross-campus relationships, a nimble approval process, and support from administration, and the Graduate School is committed to advocating for all three.