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Q & A/Contacts

Contact Information

If you have a question about the NRC Assessment Survey, or require further information regarding your program's participation, a listserv has been established for just that purpose. Please send your question or comment to:

ucdnrcsurvey@ucdavis.edu

You may also contact the project's technical staff directly:

Yuhang Shi, (530) 752-9303, yuhshi@ucdavis.edu

Q & A

Why should we participate in this survey?

The NRC Assessment is the most comprehensive assessment of research-based doctorate programs in the United States. Information from this survey is used by goverment agencies and private foundations when reviewing grant requests. It is a useful source of information both for prospective new faculty and for prospective new students.

In the most recent NRC Assessment Survey (1995), UC Davis did not compare very well, what has been done about that?

Since the publication of the 1995 NRC Survey, there has been a growing awareness at NRC on the value of interdicisplinary programs, such as the graduete groups at UC Davis. In 2002, when NRC was beginning to "gear-up" for this survey, Charlotte Kuh, the Study Director, visited UC Davis to learn more about the graduate group concept and the commitment to interdisciplinary graduate study. As a result, the NRC Taxonomy of Fields is considerably more detailed and more of our programs will be well-represented. This time as well, there will be a greater emphasis on the use of quantitative data and less on reputational information.

Are professional doctorates included?

No, the focus of this study is the research-based doctorate programs. Professional doctoral programs, as well as those academic programs geared toward professionals in the field, will not be participating.

Who decides where UC Davis programs will fall within the NRC taxonomy?

This is a decision made by each participating program. In July, 2006, Dean Gibeling sent an e-mail inviting graduate programs to participate in the NRC Assessment. A suggested placement in the taxonomy was provided as a part of that invitation. Programs were asked to review and confirm this placement and indicate what secondary fields they may wish to be placed in.

If the program questionnaire will be Web-based, how will programs be able to verify that the data is correct or not?

The Office of Graduate Studies will have available, for any program that requires it, the "raw data" from Banner, DaFIS and PPS which was used to develop the summary data submitted to NRC for the Assessment Survey. This data, along with the decision rules, can be made available to you.

Last Updated: February 13, 2008