Question

Hi Deans,

I was wondering if you would be able to share how many Ask a Dean questions you receive and what proportion have been published?

Thanks and all the best,

Devoted Ask a Dean Reader

Response

Dear “Devoted Ask a Dean Reader,”

We appreciate the Ask a Dean questions because we love hearing what’s on students’ minds. We also see from the click-through rates in our newsletter that it’s one of the most popular features of Graduate Announcements. The Graduate School leadership team strives to answer all questions quickly but there are some that fall outside our own expertise so, in those cases, we solicit answers from another source. The only real screening we do is to verify that the writer is actually a current Graduate School student.

I’ve reviewed our tracking sheet for “Ask a Dean” questions and find that there have been 34 questions submitted since the start of the Fall 2021 term. 

• 14 questions have been published with answers in the Ask a Dean section of Graduate Announcements.
• Four questions have pending answers and will be published shortly. We sometimes need time to gather information. 
• 11 of the questions were about specific or evolving COVID policies (daily check, surveillance testing, distancing, hybrid classes). Many of those questions were addressed in a subsequent university communication before the next newsletter so we didn’t also publish them as an Ask a Dean response. Several of the questions were moot by the time we received them because a university policy had changed.
• A number of the submitted questions were duplicates so we only answered them once. For example we received six nearly identical questions about stipend increases, two questions about parking, and two questions about pre-enrollment for PE classes.
• Several questions were answered privately because the question was either very personal or misdirected (for example, a student asking about scheduling her A exam probably intended to email the student service office).

A repository of all published “Ask a Dean” messages can be found on the Graduate School’s website.

Sincerely,

Jason

Jason Kahabka
Associate Dean for Administration