Departmental Self Review - UCLA Academic Senate

quantity of data during fieldwork, the department developed an innovative internalcompetition for a year-long Post-fieldwork Data Analysis Fellowship. The funding for thiscompetition is provided by the UCLA Graduate Division Quality of Graduate EducationProgram, itself a competitive program that departments must apply to every year. 1 Studentshave to be nominated for the Data Analysis Fellowship by their faculty mentors. All nominatedstudents are then evaluated by the Awards Committee based on merit and an assessment of theprobability that the student will be able to complete and file their dissertation within two years.Students are expected to complete their data analysis within one year and then apply for theprestigious Dissertation Year Fellowship offered by Graduate Division. By all measures thisinnovative program has been a success: In the 3 years since we have been offering the Post­Fieldwork Data Analysis Fellowship we have made 9 awards (from a total of 15 applicants). All9 of these students have gone on to immediately receive Dissertation Year Fellowships. Four of5 dissertations in award years 2004-05 and 2005-06 were completed in one year plus onequarter, only two were completed within the year. While it is too early to be certain, there areindications that time to degree may be improving among the students that receive the Post­Fieldwork Data Analysis Fellowship.3.4. Time to degreeConsistent with the expectations of the previous review, however, time to degree for our entiregraduate student body has not improved during the current review period. The necessity ofconducting anthropological fieldwork may mean that there is a limit to how fast PhD researchcan be completed. The median time to degree for all students filing their PhDs during thereview period was 7.5 years (mean = 7.7 years) (Figure 4). This is compared with a median of 7.3years in 1995-96. However, we note that the median time to degree for Anthropology PhDstudents nationally is 9.6 years placing our students closer in line with the Social Sciences as awhole (median = 7.8) (NSF Science Resource Statistics 2006. Time to Degree of U.S. DoctoralRecipients). The time that it takes for students to advance to candidacy (ATC) has improved(current review period: median = 4.33 years; mean 4.75 years). For those students entering theprogram since 1998-99, 66% (35 of 53) advanced to candidacy within the expected four-yeartime frame. Nearly 75% (39 of 53) advanced within four years plus one academic quarter.1 Graduate Division restructured the Quality of Graduate Education initiative to be a non-competitiveline item in departmental allocations effective 2008-09.16