Second Annual Graduate Education Summit, November 2025

• 2025 Theme: Championing Graduate Student Success: Building Holistic Support Systems for Research, Career, and Well-Being.
• The Summit featured speakers Dr. Jennifer Sullivan, Dean of The Graduate School and Regents Professor of Physiology at Augusta University, and Dr. Dimitri Mavris, Georgia Tech Distinguished Regents Professor, Aerospace Engineering.
• Roughly 90 Georgia Tech faculty, staff, and administrators participated in sharing best practices, trends in graduate education.

Inaugural Stamps Fellows Program

• Georgia Tech’s premier merit-based doctoral fellowship admitted its inaugural cohort of 8 first-year PhD students in Fall 2025.
• The Stamps Fellows Program provides fellows with a comprehensive financial package worth $480,000 over five years, covering tuition, fees, competitive stipends, and leadership and professional development programming.

Expansion of Career Education for Graduate Students

The Graduate Career Development team has been developing new programs and resources that are tailored to the needs of Master’s and Ph.D. students over the past few years. Overall engagement trends point to sustained growth, with graduate students and postdocs comprising 7,269 of 13,368 event and workshop participants—54% of total attendance—reflecting both heightened demand and the Career Center’s successful efforts to scale graduate‑focused support.

BS/MS Pathways

GPE worked with the Registrar’s Office to create a policy and process to expand the standard BS/MS streamlined program to include pathways that span different disciplines at Georgia Tech and even different universities. The first programs approved were College of Engineering and College of Computing Bachelor’s degrees being coupled with MS in Management.

NSF Innovations in Graduate Education Grant Awarded

Members of the GPE team, Bonnie Ferri, Gaeun (Gwenn) Seo, Jana Stone, as well as David Ballantyne received a $700,000 grant to examine new financial models of supporting graduate students with corporate engagement including increased internships and corporate-sponsorship of student researchers. The research will examine the impact of these different funding models on student academic and career success, on faculty productivity, and on corporate relations.

GPE created the following programs that build a framework to support graduate students from recruitment through graduation in order to improve yield, retention, degree completion, and career outcomes of students and to promote successes of postdocs. The projects active in 2025 are highlighted within the program.

Student Success Program

These projects provide holistic support to promote student success academically and as student employees.

Academic Support Project

• Began development of an advising platform, EAB Navigate, to assist students and academic programs with advising, targeted communications, and tracking degree milestones.

Student Employment Project

• Increased transparency and clarity by developing a comprehensive and cohesive Graduate Student Employment Manual, and instituting a new policy to provide all GTAs and GRAs employment letters specifying the terms and conditions of their employment.

Financial Strategies Program

Financial security is a top priority for students and impacts our ability to recruit and retain top talent.

Graduate Support Funds Project

• The Stipend Policy and the support of the GT Executive Leadership Team resulted in an allocation of an additional $2M to the colleges for graduate student stipends.
• Student Health Insurance Program (SHIP) subsidies for GTAs, GRAs, and full fellowship students were raised from 76% to 85% resulting in a savings of $270/year per student. Full fellowship students were first given this subsidy in the Fall of 2024.

Admissions & Academic Affairs Program

Engaging faculty and staff across departments, colleges, and in the central Graduate Education Office builds a robust ecosystem for graduate student support.

Graduate Student Support Ecosystem Project

• Launched initial design of online resource manual at the New Graduate Director and Coordinator Luncheon - attended by 22 new Graduate Directors and Coordinators – which emphasized role/skill clarity as well as resource access and task prioritization.
• Hosted the 2025 Graduate Education Summit that brought together 90 members of Georgia Tech faculty and staff who support graduate education; 85% of attendee respondents rated the overall experience as excellent or great, citing the importance of ongoing collaboration and initiatives that value graduate students.

Professional Development & Research Support Program

Providing programs to improve professional skills benefits students while in school and in their career outcomes while improving mentoring skills of research advisors and their mentees improves research productivity and the research environment.

Career Readiness @ Tech

• The Georgia Tech Career Center established Career Readiness @ Tech, which equips students with the essential knowledge and skill sets needed to confidently pursue future career opportunities. It has three components – Expand, Expertise, and Engage – designed to empower all students to find personally meaningful careers and enhance their competitiveness in the employment market. This framework can lead to long-term career satisfaction and advancement.

Research Mentoring Workshop Series

• Relaunched the "Impactful Research Mentorship" workshop series and certificate program
• Expanded outreach to “meet faculty where they’re at” resulted in mentoring workshops tailored to the needs of 6 schools and 3 graduate student groups

Prestigious Fellowship Cohort Project

• GPE developed new cohort-based onboarding, socialization opportunities, and professional development programs for the new Doctoral Stamps Fellows Program that are built upon the pillars of the Program: research, leadership, progress, and service. Some of these new professional development programs are slated to be expanded to other fellowship cohorts in the next academic year.

The Postdoctoral Experience

Improving postdoc professional development, community programming, and workshops resulted in 337 participants participating in programming led by the Office of Postdoctoral Services. Programming included:

• Postdoctoral Research Symposium, which featured 23 speakers

Conferences, Presentations and National Engagement

Staff Recognitions

• Georgia Tech Career Center, National Career Development Association – "Serving International Students" Award
• Graduate Career Development Team (Gwenn Seo, Ariel Gladney, Catharine Groover, Christina Hall, and Megan Elrath): Georgia Tech "Embracing All Voices" Staff Award
• Jennifer Collins, 2025 TAICEP Chair Elect
• Patrice Hewitt, 2025 Spirit of Georgia Tech
• Brittani Hill, 2025 Graduate Outreach Award
• Karena Nguyen, elected to National Postdoctoral Association’s Board of Directors
• Nazanin Tork, 2025 GPE Exceptional Performance Award

Acknowledging Years of Service

• Erin Ninesling: 15 Years
• Patrice Hewitt: 10 Years
• Karissa Jones: 5 Years

Internal Promotions

• Bianca Horton, promoted to Admission Information System Coordinator II
• Jana Stone promoted to Principal Academic Professional

New Staff Members

In 2025, GPE welcomed the expansion of numerous staff members in 2025. With each new hire and promotion, we grew stronger.