Photo Courtesy / Eliyas Jeffay
UTSC is generally known as an undergrad-centric campus. The common perception is that UTSC does not promote its graduate programs as much as it does its undergraduate education.
William Gough, vice-dean of graduate education and program development, confidently said that this perception is false.
According to Gough and Rick Halpern, dean and vice-principal (academic), most U of T graduate programs currently operate within a tri-campus system, while all Ph.D. programs do.
“We are not interested in duplicating or replicating what other tri-campus programs do, and we are developing programs that complement the existing ones, and will enhance graduate education overall at the university,” said Halpern, disproving common assumptions about the development of graduate programs at UTSC.
Gough highlighted that “niche programs” in environmental science make UTSC special in graduate education. He added that UTSC has plans to expand smaller graduate programs and establish new programs.
“At present, we are developing a proposal for a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, a master’s in biodiversity and conservation and a Ph.D. in human resources management,” Gough said.
He drew special attention to the clinical psychology program, which is likely to start next September.
Despite the relatively small size and short history of the programs, most UTSC graduate students seem to be satisfied with their choice of both campus and program.
Two Master of Environmental Science students, Vivian Ng and Ambreen Sultana, agreed that they chose UTSC because it has great curriculum and renowned researchers in their field of study. Sultana’s friend, who had already completed the same program, recommended her to apply. Ng said that the program’s exceptional reputation brought her all the way from Saskatchewan.
The task of improving the lives of graduate students at UTSC has already been undertaken. Co-president of Graduate Students’ Association at Scarborough (GSAS), Colin Seepersad, outlined that GSAS holds a variety of events throughout the year, including guest speaker sessions and Christmas charity parties. He emphasized that the group, with 24 passionate executives, works hard to reach everyone and share great experiences.
“Just take that break. Come out and try to make out at least one event this year,” he suggested.
He added that GSAS is also working hard on combining some of their events with St. George and UTM’s graduate student unions to provide better opportunities for all U of T graduate students.
Some comments from friends that go there is that UTSC is high school all over again with all the people they bump into, except everyone is on a more random class schedule.
@Markus: You’re right..but this is only true for the local students. For all others, UTSc is a much more localized version of the bigger St. George Campus. With regards to graduate life, I’ve noticed that I am able to do much more work while working at UTSc than at St. George.
But this is just my opinion…
I believe the purpose of this post is to dispel any notion that the UTSC campus (as opposed to St. George or UTM campus) is strictly an undergraduate campus…rather, there are graduate programs and in turn graduate students as well.
We wanted to raise awareness that graduate programs exist at UTSC and those interested in graduate school should consider UTSC as a viable option. This is especially true considering the new expected enrollment increase for the next few years (from 200 or so to 4000).
What, in particular, did you want more info on?