The Office of Doctoral Student Affairs

The Office of Doctoral Student Affairs

Mission Statement

The Office of Doctoral Student Affairs at the School of Information supports our PhD students  in achieving their academic goals by facilitating recruitment, enrollment, academic success/retention, and graduation.

The Team

• The Office of Doctoral Student Affairs reports up through the Associate Dean for Faculty and provides direct support for the doctoral program. This includes doctoral program initiatives and support, doctoral program admissions, doctoral student funding and records tracking, and doctoral student progression. 

• The PhD program staff can be contacted at umsi.phdprogram@umich.edu for questions from instructors, advisors, or students.

Doctoral Student Admissions Process

UMSI has a decentralized process for admitting doctoral students. Detailed information about this process can be found in the Doctoral Admissions Process.

Funding

Incoming doctoral students are guaranteed academic year funding (tuition and stipend) and summer funding for the duration of their time in the program, provided they are making satisfactory progress towards the degree. Students receive year-round health benefits.

UMSI is committed to building and supporting an outstanding doctoral program and provides several subsidies and incentives to encourage faculty to support doctoral students. 

Graduate Student Mentoring

Mentoring is an essential part of the doctoral student process. The Rackham guidelines mentoring and advising note: “Research shows that both students and faculty benefit when graduate students are involved in effective mentoring and advising relationships. " For more on this, see Rackham’s publication, “How to Mentor Graduate Students: A Guide for Faculty” . 

Rackham recommends that a formal contract with doctoral students be put in place. The PhD Program Team, in collaboration with the Research Office and the Doctoral Committee, has created a template you can use to begin creating your mentoring plan. You are not required to use all parts of this template – please customize it by removing or adding sections to suit your specific needs and goals. Please see the Rackham's Faculty Committee on Mentoring (aka the MORE committee - Mentoring Others Results in Excellence ) web page for additional information and examples and templates.