Morgan State University Receives ETS®/CGS Award for Innovation in Promoting Success in Graduate Education
CGS Contact: Kelley Karnes
602-791-8278 / kkarnes@cgs.nche.edu
Washington, DC – Today the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) and ETS presented Morgan State University with the 2022 ETS/CGS Award for Innovation in Promoting Success in Graduate Education: From Admission through Completion. Mark Garrison, Dean of the School of Graduate Studies at Morgan State University accepted the co-sponsored award during an awards ceremony held at the CGS 62nd Annual Meeting in San Francisco.
The ETS/CGS Award for Innovation in Promoting Success in Graduate Education recognizes promising, innovative proposals to enhance student success and degree completion at the master’s and doctoral levels while promoting inclusiveness. The winning institution is selected on the strength of its proposal to meet the award’s goals and to serve as a model for other schools. The winner receives a two-year, $20,000 matching grant.
The School of Graduate Studies at Morgan State University’s initiative, Teaching Assistant Project (TAP), was designed to balance the experience of doctoral students while building critical professional development in instruction. This program has several innovative features intended to provide a progressive development from novice to proficient instructional skills, to foster a community of learners and coaches, and to ensure the development of a personal teaching philosophy informed by the science of learning that fully embraces inclusion and diversity.
TAP is designed as an instructional curriculum built on a series of four courses that, while providing a robust immersion in techniques and skills necessary for instruction in higher education, also emphasizes their commitment to principled, reflective teaching centered on inclusion and diversity. The first two courses will be required of TAs, with the opportunity to acquire a certificate by completing all four.
The School of Graduate Studies at Morgan State enthusiastically accepted the 2022 Award for Innovation in Promoting Success in Graduate Education: From Admissions through Completion.
“Our proposal reflects our commitment to student success through thorough and innovative preparation for the contemporary workplace of many of our graduates, higher education itself. The program will prepare graduates for instructional demands that are ever-changing and increasingly challenging,” Garrison said. “The award supports a rigorous approach to training doctoral students in higher education instruction with exposure to the science of learning and immersion in the diversity and inclusion values held dear by Morgan’s faculty. Our students will achieve proficiency as instructors and have demonstrated those skills in the classroom.”
CGS’s President, Suzanne Ortega, noted that the project has the potential for replication at other CGS member institutions. “This project will provide CGS members with a new approach to better supporting teaching assistants and providing professional development for graduate students,” Ortega said. “We are so grateful to ETS for their support in recognizing this innovative way to promote best practices among graduate schools.”
“Morgan State’s innovative initiative is an important contribution to improving graduate education for students now and in the future,” said Alberto Acereda, Associate Vice President of Global Higher Education at ETS. “The institution has long maintained student success as a pillar in all that they do which is directly aligned with the spirit of this award and a priority that ETS strongly supports.”
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About CGS
The Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) is an organization of approximately 500 institutions of higher education in the United States and Canada engaged in graduate education, research, and the preparation of candidates for advanced degrees. The organization’s mission is to improve and advance graduate education, which it accomplishes through advocacy in the federal policy arena, research, and the development and dissemination of best practices.
About ETS
At ETS, we advance quality and equity in education for people worldwide by creating assessments based on rigorous research. ETS serves individuals, educational institutions and government agencies by providing customized solutions for teacher certification, English language learning, and elementary, secondary and postsecondary education, and by conducting education research, analysis and policy studies. Founded as a nonprofit in 1947, ETS develops, administers and scores more than 50 million tests annually — including the TOEFL® and TOEIC® tests, the GRE® tests and The Praxis Series® assessments — in more than 180 countries, at over 9,000 locations worldwide. www.ets.org