Stony Brook University’s Graduate School has received a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to strengthen doctoral education across seven STEM programs, with a focus on removing barriers to student success, improving mentoring and creating new pathways into graduate education.
The grant, awarded through the Sloan Centers for Systemic Change initiative, will support efforts to examine the graduate student experience from recruitment and admissions through mentoring, professional development and degree completion, using data to identify ways Stony Brook can better support doctoral students.
“The Sloan Foundation connected with us after recognizing the work we were doing with holistic admissions and mentor training,” said Celia Marshik, dean of the Graduate School and vice provost for graduate and professional education. “This grant will be transformative for the Graduate School and will allow us to further remove barriers and create access for doctoral students across seven programs from the College of Arts and Sciences, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences.”
The programs participating over the one year award period are biochemistry and structural biology, chemistry, geosciences and molecular and cellular biology in the College of Arts and Sciences; marine, atmospheric, and sustainability sciences in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences; and mechanical engineering and electrical and computer engineering in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
Stony Brook will implement the gradSERU self-study survey across the seven programs, examining admissions, financial support, mentoring, program climate and obstacles to completing a degree. The Graduate School will also analyze five years of retention and completion data and graduate application data to explore whether qualified applicants may have been overlooked within existing admissions processes. Findings from these analyses will help participating programs develop their own action plan.
The initiative will also look beyond admissions at what happens after doctoral students arrive at Stony Brook. Plans include a multi-layered mentoring framework, community-building and professional development programs and specialized wellness support, all aimed at helping students build a stronger sense of belonging. The Graduate School will also pilot a low-credit course designed to provide mentoring and professional development.
Each of the seven programs will identify a faculty champion who will receive specialized training and serve on the program’s admissions committee. The grant provides a stipend for each faculty champion.
The project will also strengthen recruitment and create new pathways into Stony Brook STEM doctoral programs from local minority-serving institutions, primarily undergraduate institutions and CUNY campuses, building on existing initiatives and guided by a steering committee of campus and external stakeholders.
The Graduate School will evaluate the new approaches to determine which are working and could be expanded across the university. The initiative will also establish a process for nominating and selecting potential Sloan Scholars, should Stony Brook be funded for a second phase of the work. The insights gained through this grant will directly inform the Graduate School’s efforts to better support graduate students, advancing a significant priority and furthering its mission to promote graduate student success outcomes.
“Being a recipient of this grant recognizes the strength of our graduate programs and our commitment to improving the systems that shape the graduate student experience,” said Elizabeth Boon, associate dean for strategic initiatives in the Graduate School and professor in the Department of Chemistry. “Our focus is to use the funding support to work across programs with faculty and students to identify and address barriers to student success. Our priorities will be to implement evidence-based approaches that strengthen mentoring, belonging, professional development, and improve degree completion.”
Founded in 1934 by industrialist Alfred P. Sloan Jr., the Sloan Foundation is a not-for-profit grantmaking institution that supports high-quality, impartial scientific research, fosters a diverse scientific workforce and promotes the health of the institutions of scientific endeavor.
— Beth Squire
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