Goal Five: Graduate Training

Individual and Collective Excellence

Honor our legacy as the nation’s first research university by developing ambitious reforms so that every graduate student and postdoctoral fellow receives an experience that is rigorous, innovative, and tailored to their career aspirations.

As at our founding, we will be the place that dares to transform—with courage and determination—graduate education. We will:

Initiate across-university commission aimed at the renewal and reimagination of PhD education and training at Johns Hopkins.
Create purposeful and mentored educational and professional pathways for our graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.
Make our graduate and postdoctoral programs an area of priority for funding and experimentation.

The #100 Alumni Voices Project at the Imagine Center collects stories from a diverse group of Johns Hopkins doctoral alumni who share their unique personal and professional journeys.

Read the Complete Goal

Peabody LAUNCHPad helps students and recent alumni forge satisfying, successful careers by providing comprehensive life design services, such as pinpointing artistic and professional objectives, building career skills, and launching entrepreneurial ventures.

Why this goal is important

Across our listening sessions, we heard from graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty alike of the need to reconsider many of the core precepts of our graduate programs, particularly in relation to PhD education. In this area, participants pointed to the need for stipends and financial aid that are competitive with those of our peers, uneven experiences in the quality of faculty mentorship and guidance, lengthy rates of time to degree completion in many programs, and barriers to the creation of innovative approaches to graduate training that are responsive to the myriad professional aspirations of our students. These concerns are not unique to Hopkins—they echo through the national discourse about the state of graduate education. But we can, and must, be the university that addresses these concerns with fierce resolve and delivers solutions.

Download The Ten for One Strategic Framework

Time and again, we have demonstrated that when we strive and dream together, we can expand the horizons of knowledge and impact the world in extraordinary and indelible ways. Now is our chance to do so again. This strategic framework sets out ten new goals for Johns Hopkins University through 2030 under four organizing pillars: One University, Individual and Collective Excellence, Knowledge and Impact, and Community Partnership and Economic Opportunity for Baltimore and the other communities of which we are a part. We look forward with great anticipation to all that lies ahead and all that we will achieve together—as One University.