Dr. George Walker
Dr. George Walker joined Florida International University in 2006, where he is Senior Vice President for Research Development and Graduate Education and Dean of the University Graduate School. From 2001 to 2006, he served as Senior Scholar and Director of Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate at The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Dr. Walker is a theoretical nuclear physicist who obtained his undergraduate degree at Wesleyan University, his graduate education at Case Western University and his post-doctoral education at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Stanford University. For many years, he was Vice President for Research and Dean of the Graduate School at Indiana University, where he was twice honored by students with the “Outstanding Contributions to Graduate Education” award and by his peers through election as a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Dr. Walker is a member of the National Advisory Board of the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning, as well as the National Advisory Board of the National Survey of Student Engagement. He served as president of the Association of Graduate Schools of the Association of American Universities and Chair of the Board of the Council of Graduate Schools. The book he recently edited along with Chris M. Golde, Envisioning the Future of Doctoral Education, is a collection of essays commissioned for the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate. The question posed to the essayists in this volume was, “If you could start de novo, what would be the best way to structure doctoral education in your field to prepare stewards of the discipline?” The authors of the essays are respected thinkers, researchers, and scholars who are experienced with and thoughtful about doctoral education. Dr. Walker’s presentation will challenge the audience to evoke a new perspective on their goals for the future of doctoral education provided at their institutions. (http://osra.fiu.edu/staff/walker.htm & http://www.carnegiefoundation.org)