GSAS Assignment Procedures

Last revised 8/1/2024

Section IV.D of the Faculty Handbook: Assignment to the Graduate School Faculty

Principal advisors of Ph.D. students must have assignments to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. 

Assignment to the Graduate School faculty is automatic for: 

  • faculty appointed to the tenure-track ladder ranks (lecturer convertible, assistant professor, associate professor on term or with tenure, and professor) in one of the departments in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School of Public Health, or in certain of the departments or sections of the School of Medicine. The tenure track is called the “traditional track” in the Schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health;
  • a faculty member appointed to a tenure-track rank in a professional school who holds a fully joint or secondary appointment in a department in the FAS or SEAS, or in a specified department in the School of Medicine. A fully joint or secondary appointment reflects the appointing department’s determination that a faculty member is fully qualified to teach and advise Ph.D. students in that department.

Assignment to the Graduate School may be requested for:

  • tenure-track faculty in clinical departments in the School of Medicine;
  • tenure-track faculty in other professional schools, including those that have graduate programs leading to the Ph.D. degree: Architecture, Environment, Law, Management, and Nursing; and,
  • ladder faculty in tracks other than the tenure track.

Requests for such assignments must be made by the chair of the faculty member’s home department or their professional school’s dean and must be submitted by the home school’s dean to the Graduate School Dean’s Office. The request must be accompanied by the candidate’s vita, a statement from the faculty member’s dean explaining the grounds for the assignment, and acknowledgment that the faculty member has been consulted in the process. The faculty member seeking the assignment and the dean of the school must agree to the financial arrangement in force in the student’s graduate program. Decisions about faculty assignments to the Graduate School will normally be made twice annually by the Dean of the Graduate School or their designees.