Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Academics

2-4 Project

In April of 2006, Dean Butler invited all departments to evaluate the effectiveness of their Ph.D. programs, concentrating on years two through four. Approved by the Graduate School Executive Committee, the project encouraged departments to examine how the program structure in these critical years might be revised to better help students move through their studies more effectively. For further details, please refer to the full text of the original announcement of the project.

The project required that departments appoint a committee to design, oversee and implement the review. An important part of the review process involved meeting with students separately, by cohort and/or subfield, and then as a total group, to learn what the students thought did and did not work in the program. Students were also invited to fill out an online survey regarding their programs.

The full departmental faculty of each program was to meet to discuss the student feedback and to determine what revisions, if any, they would make in years two through four of their graduate programs. By December of 2006, they were to submit to the Graduate School reports that would be available to their students and which are collected below by division. The Graduate School has prepared divisional summaries of these reports, available via the links at right.