Spring 2008

Graduate students number 270, enrollment growing

Growth in the College of Technology’s graduate program is much more by design than by happenstance. Over the course of the college’s and University’s five-year strategic plan, graduate student enrollment in the college has increased 73 percent from 156 students in 2001-02 to 270 students this year. And about 68 of these students are pursuing a doctorate in comparison to eight students in 2001-02.

Graduate students represent all eight departments and take courses on campus and in alternative delivery programs such as the Weekend Master’s Degree, BCM Distance Master’s Degree, and Rolls-Royce Master’s Degree. In addition, seven students in the college have fellowships, with yearly stipends for the students exceeding $130,000.

Gary Bertoline, assistant dean for graduate studies in the college, says the fact that the college is attracting more students is no accident.

“Growing graduate studies is part of our strategic plan,” he says. “Expanding the graduate program goes hand in hand with the recent growth in the amount of research dollars coming into the college. As the amount of funding for research projects increases, the more we need graduate students to help run the studies and direct the research. At the same time, it provides an invaluable learning experience for students that will benefit them later in their careers.”

Melissa Dark, assistant dean of research for the college, says the amount of sponsored research is on the rise. In June 2003, the college’s research totaled $908,985. By June 2007, the college’s sponsored research funding had more than tripled to $3 million.

There are several reasons the graduate program has enrolled more students in recent years. Bertoline says, about a decade ago, graduate enrollment remained steady at 30 to 40 students. But as the area of technology has changed, so have the course offerings.

One major addition has been in the area of cyberforensics. Marcus Rogers, Rick Mislan and Jim Goldman, faculty members in the Department of Computer and Information Technology, supervise the Purdue Cyber Forensics Lab, which serves not just as a teaching center for students but also as a resource for national and international law enforcement officers and other investigators. The work there includes research on how to retrieve information from cell phones and other digital devices in a criminal investigation and the development of software that helps first responders deal with crimes involving digital pictures.

The research done at the Cyber Forensics Lab at Purdue is groundbreaking in many areas, and very few other researchers are doing similar work. That, combined with technology’s growing impact on everyday life, is helping drive the college graduate program’s growth, Bertoline says.

“There are very few universities with a technology graduate program in the United States,” he says. “We’re not science, we’re not engineering, and we’re not management. We are very unique and serve a niche. As technology becomes more central to our lives, more and more students will be drawn toward the subject matter.”

Though there are other colleges of technology in the country, Purdue’s is one of the few in the Midwest and one of a select few with a graduate program. Purdue is also one of a handful of universities with doctoral programs in technology.

The college has also increased the amount of funding available for graduate fellowships, which helps in recruitment. Several faculty members are working on a proposal for a National Science Foundation grant called S-STEM (Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) that would pump even more dollars into fellowships. The $600,000 grant would fund about 20 to 30 master’s and doctoral students for the next five years.

Bertoline says, in addition, the college has decreased its response time to applicants, especially the best qualified applicants, to make sure Purdue doesn’t lose them. Also, the number of 600-level courses has grown, areas of specialization are regularly reviewed, and a student advisory committee seeks input and has each student who finishes the program complete an exit survey to assess the quality of the education they received.

With the growth, there has been a corresponding expansion in the breadth and depth of research. The College of Technology now attracts students from around the world, many of whom are receiving highly competitive fellowships and who are researching areas ranging from micromachining to biometrics.

For example, Ryan Pedela, a graduate student in computer graphics technology, developed a new algorithm that analyzes mass spectrometry data for the purposes of cancer biomarker detection in blood. This method, developed in collaboration with CGT Assistant Professor Bedrich Benes and Jiri Adamec of the Bindley Bioscience Center, allows for a more accurate and much quicker way to detect cancer biomarkers. Pedela says his software can detect biomarkers in weeks, much faster than the six months to a year that current software takes.

In 2007, John Blood, a doctoral student studying the issue of technology transfer with Michael Dyrenfurth in industrial technology, was the first Purdue student to be awarded a Science, Mathematics and Research for Transformation (SMART) fellowship from the Department of Defense. These scholars receive an annual stipend, full tuition and related educational fees, and a book allowance.

Matthew Kiley, a computer and information technology graduate student who is on a National Science Foundation fellowship called the Federal Cyber Service Scholarship for Service, is studying under Marcus Rogers. He has published a paper on the kinds of criminal evidence that can be stored in portable music devices and how best to preserve a person’s privacy rights when retrieving and searching for such information.

“In the last few years, the program has really grown and has provided me with so many opportunities,” he says. “This is an area that not many other universities are studying, and my experience here will give me a great advantage when I go out into the workforce.”

Bertoline believes a big change in the coming years will result in even greater growth in graduate studies. The College of Technology currently administers its graduate programs collegewide, which means that none of the departments has its own graduate program. A student graduating with a master’s degree in organizational leadership and supervision would receive a master’s degree in technology, not in OLS. But plans are in the works to give each department control over graduate programs.

“Putting curriculum at the department level will streamline the system, increase the accountability, and ultimately result in each department and professor having greater ownership, which will help them recruit more students,” Bertoline says.

The resulting growth will benefit not just graduate students, but all students in the college.

“You can’t have a strong undergraduate program without a strong graduate program,” Bertoline says. “Strong graduate programs expose undergraduates to increased research opportunities. The more graduate students we have, the easier it will be to offer these opportunities.”

- Kim Medaris