SRP IMPLEMENTATION PLAN PRIORITY PROJECTS
2023 SRP Progress Report
A detailed summary of the progress we made on SRP Priority Projects in 2023.
SFU Strategic Research Plan (SRP) Priority Project
Supporting Research Graduate Students
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Challenge
Graduate students are key drivers of research activity in an institution. Vancouver is an attractive destination, but the high cost of living presents a challenge to our graduate students.
Action
Working closely with the provost, the dean of graduate and postdoctoral studies, SFU Advancement and with graduate students (through the Graduate Student Society), we will study ways to shift our limited resources to better support research graduate students. This includes study of tuition waivers, scholarships and bursaries. We will also work with SFU Advancement, provincial and federal funding agencies to grow resources available for graduate student support both for existing graduate students and to grow our research graduate student body. Within a year, we will set a university-wide minimum funding level for PhD students.
Project Goals
- Consult on minimum funding for research master’s students link
- Encourage and support more, higher-quality scholarship applications link
- Enhance supports for high-quality supervision link
- Provide research-oriented supports and workshops for students link
- Create/update plan for Graduate Student Housing at the university link
- Create a dashboard/integrated system to track graduate student funding link
Updates
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April 2024
A program-level supervisory policy will be reviewed in summer 2024.
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March 2024
Three supervisor workshops were held in March 2024. Workshop plan for the remainder of the year is under development.
Updates
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April 2024
A workshop in the form of a roundtable discussion with SFU faculty members who serve as journal editors held in April 2024 for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Workshop plan for the remainder of the year is under development.
Updates
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April 2024
Discussions are ongoing with IT services to create a system by Fall 2024 that can generate reports for student funding for different programs. A more dynamic tracking system will be developed by end of 2024.
Key Achievements
Examine all support mechanisms (e.g., scholarships, bursaries, tuition, housing) for graduate students
Updates
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2023
In June 2023, the Board of Governors approved a $5,400 scholarship for eligible PhD students entering programs in fall 2023 and those in the first four years of their program. This is the PhD Research Scholarship.
Set a university-wide minimum funding level for PhD students by the end of 2023
Updates
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2023
A minimum funding policy (annual funding of at least $28,000 for 12 terms) that applies to all research PhD students was approved by the Senate as a graduate general regulation in December 2023. Programs will develop their own funding policies that align with the university-wide policy. These will be approved by Graduate Program Committees and Graduate Studies.