Wojtek Chodzko-Zajko

Dean, Graduate College, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)

Wojtek Chodzko‑Zajko earned a bachelor’s degree in Education from the University of London and a Ph.D. degree in Kinesiology from Purdue University. Chodzko-Zajko’s primary research interests are in the area of aging and health. He is the Shahid and Ann Carlson Khan Endowed Professor of Applied Health Sciences and Dean of the Graduate College at the University of Illinois.

In his role as Dean of the Graduate College, Chodzko-Zajko leads campus efforts in setting policies, defining standards, and enabling excellence in graduate programs, graduate research, and graduate student life. With graduate programs in more than 100 disciplinary areas, the Graduate College at the University of Illinois fosters a vibrant campus community of scholars. Graduate students and faculty at Illinois enjoy an intellectual environment that reaches across the Arts, Sciences, Humanities, Social Sciences, and Engineering to create, challenge, and transform knowledge.

In his professional life, Chodzko‑Zajko remains active in the dissemination of information about healthy aging through his work on several major professional advisory boards. He served on the World Health Organization committee that developed the WHO Guidelines for Physical Activity among Older Persons. Chodzko-Zajko was the Principal Investigator for a series of projects charged with developing a national strategy for promoting healthy aging in the USA. The National Blueprint: Increasing Physical Activity among Adults Age 50 and Older serves as a guide for multiple organizations, associations, and agencies, to inform and support their planning work related to increasing physical activity among America's aging population. Chodzko-Zajko chaired the writing group that authored the American College of Sports Medicine’s Position Stand on Physical Activity and Exercise for Older Adults. He currently serves on the Executive Committee of the AAU Association of Graduate Schools and on the Board of Directors of the GRE.

Chodzko-Zajko was the founding Editor of the Journal of Aging and Physical Activity from 1992-2002. He served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the American Council on Exercise and is a Past-President of the American Kinesiology Association.

The Future of the PhD at the Research University

In this presentation, Chodzko-Zajko will argue that excellence in graduate education in all disciplines is a prerequisite for achieving the goals of a global research university. Recruiting and retaining the best and brightest graduate students to work alongside outstanding faculty and staff is essential if universities are to realize their mission of enhancing the lives of people across the nation, and around the world.

To attract outstanding students, who reflect the diversity of the world, universities must develop sustainable funding models for graduate education, fair and transparent admissions processes; and clearly defined goals and processes related to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. In today’s rapidly changing higher education landscape, graduate programs must adapt to meet the needs of students and society. This can be achieved in a number of ways: by supporting departments in the development of self-supporting professional graduate degrees; through the development of new online degrees and certificates; and by preparing students for a wide variety of career options.

Throughout this presentation Dean Chodzko-Zajko will provide examples of how these issues are being addressed at research institutions across the United States. He will also draw parallels between efforts common in the USA when compared with those of international institutions.

Karina Prasad

Head, Office of Postdoctoral Affairs, University of Cambridge

Karina has spent more than 20 years as a senior project manager for the Charity and Higher education sectors both in the USA and UK. These included a leading national Children’s charity in the US and Age Concern (Now AgeUK) here in the UK.

Following a number of years working with graduate matters and programmes related to clinical academics, Karina is now the Head of the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs (OPdA), at the University of Cambridge. Previously Karina spent eight years at the University’s Clinical School of Medicine where she set up and ran the Clinical Academic Training Office.

Karina is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Art, a Professional By-Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge and holds positions on numerous Cambridge University committees including human resources, researcher development, entrepreneurship and leadership development, volunteering, and equality and diversity matters related to gender. Karina also engages widely with national and international organisations related to early career research staff.

Karina holds a first degree in Political Science.

Post PhD – How Universities Can Better Support Their PhD Students and Graduates

This session will provide a brief history of UK PhD growth over the last two decades, its key national drivers and the impact on institutions and academic job prospects. This session will look at how the UK developed a national agenda to support the development of novel programmes (Doctoral training programmes and Clinical Academic Pathways) aimed at preparing graduate students for careers in academia and beyond, with an overall aim of equipping students with expanded skill sets, encouraging comprehensive career planning (including best use of novel skills), independent thought including novel research ideas and develop a market for enterprise and innovation amongst its graduate community.

Randall Nadeau（那原道）

Executive Director, Foundation for Scholarly Exchange (Fulbright Taiwan)

Randall Nadeau has served as Executive Director of the Foundation for Scholarly Exchange since August of this year, after a 25-year career as a department and program chair at Trinity University, Texas. As a scholar with three books and numerous research papers on East Asian cultural traditions, he has been a visiting professor at Lingnan University (Hong Kong), Rikkyo University (Tokyo), and Tunghai University (Taiwan, where he was a Fulbright Senior Scholar). Nadeau has consulted widely on liberal arts education and curricular design.

The Foundation for Scholarly Exchange (Fulbright Taiwan) has sent over 1,600 Taiwan students and scholars to the United States and welcomed over 1,600 American students and scholars to Taiwan over the course of its 60-year history. This year, FSE is sponsoring over 200 grantees, including students, scholars, Foreign Language Teaching Assistants (in the United States), and English Teaching Assistants (in Taiwan). Worldwide, Fulbright provides support to students and scholars in over 150 countries.

Trends in US–Taiwan Higher Education

In this presentation, Nadeau will describe latest trends in higher education at the doctoral level in the United States, in Taiwan, and in bilateral relations between the two education systems. In earlier generations, the United States was the preferred destination for Taiwan students seeking a Ph.D. degree, but numbers have fallen for a variety of reasons: tuition costs rising faster than the rate of inflation, a more competitive international marketplace, perceptions of an unwelcoming social and cultural environment, downward demographic trends, and de-incentivization of higher education degrees at home in Taiwan. At the same time, in recent years U.S. undergraduate enrollments from Taiwan have risen, and short-term study in Taiwan and the United States is becoming more popular.

A healthy education economy requires the circulation of educational talent: a healthy flow of undergraduate students to graduate school, and from graduate school to professorships as vacancies become available due to retirement and natural attrition. In Taiwan, this healthy flow has been disrupted as demographic and economic trends lead to the merging or closing of institutions of higher education, fewer openings for scholars and professors, falling population numbers of students in the graduate student cohort, and tightening higher education budgets.

What are the solutions? Taiwan should capitalize on its superb higher education facilities to attract students at the graduate level from Southeast Asia, China, Europe, and North America. In order to do so, doctoral programs must internationalize by offering both M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in English and responding to global higher education trends. Taiwan can still maintain its rightful place as both a source and a destination for doctoral degrees, and restore the healthy flow of talent circulation at elite educational levels.