BY DAVID MAMARIL HOROWITZ

david.horowitz@bgdailynews.com

 

A pathway has opened for Western Kentucky University to — pending approval from the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education — offer PhD programs.

The recently approved Senate Bill 77 establishes a framework for comprehensive universities to establish doctoral programs, said State Sen. Matt Deneen, R-Elizabethtown. It puts in place an application process where these universities — if they meet certain retention, graduation and monetary criteria — may propose a program for authorization from CPE. Gov. Andy Beshear signed it into law last week; it goes into effect in July.

WKU meets the criteria to propose a research doctoral program — and it plans to propose a data science research doctorate to CPE, said Jennifer Smith, WKU’s assistant vice president of government and external relations.

The university has already laid much of the groundwork: It announced the creation of an undergraduate data science program in December. Also pertinent that month, the state Senate had directed CPE to contract with an independent third party to study a host of proposals concerning university offerings statewide — and among those, WKU proposed a data science research doctorate program that the third party, Deloitte, conducted a study on.

The ability to create PhDs opens a path for WKU to become a Carnegie-classified Research II (“R2”) university — a top university priority under WKU President Timothy Caboni’s presidency. Carnegie Classification requires “R2” universities to spend at least $5 million on research and confer, at minimum, 20 doctoral research degrees on average annually.

Caboni has said that acquiring the classification would change the university — from the faculty it can attract, to the companies it can partner with, to the research funding it can pursue, to WKU’s ability to be a hub for innovation and creativity.

The bill’s framework for offering doctorates, overall, applies to institutions that both do and don’t require additional General Fund appropriation for a proposed program, Deneen said.

That said, there’s an element of division within the framework: Universities that require additional General Fund appropriation for a program they’re proposing must make their case to CPE for a recommendation and ultimately acquire budget approval from the General Assembly to move forward and submit a proposal.

WKU wouldn’t require a general fund appropriation for the data science PhD it’s aiming to offer, Smith said.

“Since (the bill) was just signed recently, and since it doesn’t go into effect until the end of June, the university is still working on next steps required to seek approval for additional doctoral programs,” the university said. “We will share more information broadly when it becomes available.”

The bill lays out numerous required elements for CPE’s analysis of proposals — elements universities would take into consideration before proposing a program: a program’s alignment with the university’s mission and goals, the state or regional need the program seeks to fill, student demand and more.

“I believe that the intention of the language there is to allow for those areas that are seeing workforce development to have that incorporated in their application process because we see a lot of workforce development shortages around the Commonwealth” … , Deneen said. “There are workforce shortage areas that we need further education in and we need people enrolling in our universities to get those certifications to be able to fill those needs …

“Whatever the case may be, whether it be in agriculture or industrial workforce areas or healthcare or education or wherever that is, I think this bill allows the flexibility for those comprehensive universities to determine where their interest is, where they’re seeing numbers growing by their enrollments, to address the needs and the issues that each school has.”

Smith added that WKU wants to be able to provide the programs that are needed to benefit the economy and workforce of Kentucky.

Timeline

It’s a little premature for WKU to give a timeline for a data science PhD until it’s known what CPE’s process will be for looking at proposals, Smith said.

Travis Powell, CPE’s senior vice president and General Counsel, said he expects CPE will need to have a process in place fairly quickly. Qualifying universities that submitted a doctoral program proposal for review as part of December’s Deloitte study may want to have those proposals considered for the next biennial budget.

“We already have some processes in place — we’ll probably tweak or adjust them a bit for these new PhD programs,” Powell said.

If CPE needs to add an element to its research doctoral program process, the council can do so — but generally speaking, Powell said, CPE already has processes in place for higher education programs.

Separate from PhD programs, an overlooked aspect of the new law is that it’ll also give smaller universities and colleges the ability to have a voice on the Education Professional Standards Board, Deneen said.

The law has had one of the governor’s EPSB appointments to be the “chief academic officer of an independent not-for-profit college or university” — but smaller institutions may not have that position, Deneen said. The new law expands that language to include heads of their education departments as people who could serve on the board, he said.

“I felt like it was important to make sure that they maintained a seat on this board and a presence on this board (…).”