GPD News + Info » Graduate Enrollment Planning

Graduate Enrollment Planning

Graduate Enrollment Management (GEM) efforts are coordinated at UNC Charlotte by a collaborative work group whose mission is to develop and communicate well-planned strategies to proactively shape graduate enrollment in an effort to meet established enrollment goals.  Such strategies are informed by data collection and analysis, in alignment with the Strategic Plan, to produce measurable improvements in areas such as recruitment, admissions, retention, funding, and graduation.  The system developed to help support graduate enrollment management at the program, department and college level is GPDNet.

2024-2025 GEM Work Group Members

  • Reggie Silver, Associate Dean, Belk College of Business (Amy Riter, proxy)
  • Blaine Brownell, Director of the School of Architecture, College of Arts + Architecture (interim)
  • Shanti Kulkarni, Interim Associate Dean, College of Health and Human Services
  • Brigid , Associate Dean, Lee College of Engineering
  • Brigid Mullany, Associate Dean, College of Engineering
  • Scott Kissau, Associate Dean, College of Education
  • Beth Whitaker, Associate Dean, College of Humanities & Earth and Social Sciences
  • Matt Parrow, Associate Dean, Klein College of Science
  • William Tolone, Associate Dean, College of Computing and Informatics
  • Tarek Elshayeb, Director, International Student and Scholar Office
  • Johnna Watson, Associate Dean, The Graduate School (*Chair)
  • Katherine Hall-Hertel, Associate Dean, The Graduate School

Graduate Enrollment Report
The Graduate School’s long-range enrollment report was developed over the course of the 2013/14 academic year in cooperation with UNC Charlotte’s colleges and an outside research company, Eduventures.

In summary:

  • 137 graduate programs prepared 5 and 10 year enrollment plans with target, safety, and stretch goals. These enrollment goals were rolled up into college goals (reviewed and approved by the deans) and University goals (reviewed and endorsed by the Graduate School).
  • The 5 year target goal is 6,303 students and the 10 year goal is 7,217 students.  Most of the enrollment increase is based on expanding capacity of existing degree programs although new programs and modes of delivery were considered.
  • The colleges were asked to identify broad categories of resources necessary to support the increase in enrollment. The addition of new faculty was identified as the top priority followed by graduate student support funding, then physical facilities (e.g., classrooms, labs, office and research space), and finally new staff.
  • The primary recommendation in this report is to use the enrollment plans as a foundation for integrating graduate education into the University’s long-range strategic plan and annual reporting. Further there is a recommendation to develop and implement an incentive-based budget process that includes practices and procedures to allocate resources to strategically support the growth of graduate education as well as monitor progress toward reaching the enrollment goals on an annual basis.

Download the report.

Links to Helpful External Sites