GRADUATE CATALOG • 2010-2011

Building upon the college’s tradition of teaching excellence, graduate education at Cedar Crest aspires to provide students with the expertise, judgment, vision, and inspiration to participate actively and responsibly within the diverse communities and dynamic knowledge networks wherein their professional lives will unfold. Institutionally, this commitment rests upon four values which serve as the foundation for the college’s philosophy of graduate education:
Scholarship: Graduate programs should ensure that students master the theoretical perspectives, methodological techniques, and professional practices essential to the production of knowledge within their disciplines. This includes exposing students to an expanded definition of scholarship which moves beyond the traditional emphasis upon discovery to include the integration, application and dissemination of knowledge within and across disciplines.
Innovation: Graduate programs should ensure that students recognize the role that creativity, and the entrepreneurial spirit more generally, plays as a catalyst for the advancement of knowledge. While programs should acknowledge the value of risk-taking as an inherent element of scholarly practice, students also should learn that professional conduct must be tempered by an ethic of responsibility for the communities within which they live, work and learn.

Collaboration: Graduate programs should ensure that students understand how the revolution in information technology is profoundly altering the nature of professional practice by empowering epistemic communities from around the world to respond to issues of local, national and global significance. Programs should equip students with the communications and technological skills needed to collaborate within the context of transnational and interdisciplinary networks that serve as sites for the production, application and dissemination of knowledge.

Professionalism: Graduate programs should impress upon students that graduate school itself is but the prelude to a lifetime of ongoing professional development. Faculty should convey this message by modeling professional practices within the context of an active research agenda and other forms of scholarly activity which contribute to the production, dissemination and application of knowledge within and across disciplines. Similarly, the college should demonstrate its commitment to educational leadership by providing academic programs, faculty, and the graduate community more generally, with the institutional support needed to sustain high levels of academic achievement in the face of evolving professional, societal, and global standards.

Graduate Programs

Master of Education
Master of Science in Forensic Science
Master of Science in Nursing