Mutual Roles and Responsibilities for Faculty and Graduate Students
At the University of Minnesota, graduate students serve many roles vital to the university: as students, employees, junior colleagues, and members of the university community. Across these various functions, graduate students have the right to expect that their responsibilities in other roles will be respected.
A key aspect of graduate education is the process of transition from students to scholars in training to junior scholars. However, graduate students, in any stage of their experience at the university, have basic rights in each of their roles.
The purpose of this website is to:
- Introduce new students and faculty to the culture of respect mutually agreed upon among current university members
- Establish a set of norms and expectations shared between graduate students and university faculty and staff
- Serve as a conversation starter between students and faculty/staff in discussions of expectations or in addressing alleged transgressions, and, if necessary, serve as a point of reference for identifying grievances
- Explicate policies relevant to graduate student education and link to them
- Serve as a reference tool for University students, faculty, and staff in locating and navigating these policies and practices
- Engender discussion around areas where current policy is lacking by creating agreed-upon guidelines and encourage the creation of new policy