The UNH Graduate School has over 100 programs on campus, according to Assistant Dean Dovev Levine. In those programs, he said that there are about “150 to maybe 175 students” doing accelerated master’s programs during their senior undergraduate year.
Levine hosted a Graduate School information session where he said over 50 students attended, leaving no seat empty on Thursday afternoon, Nov. 3 in the Memorial Union Building (MUB). Levine said that this session was to answer general questions about the grad school and encourage students to look into the accelerated master’s program.
Later, on Friday, Nov. 18, Levine was interviewed about additional questions concerning the grad school and its accelerated program, and also his favorite parts of the job.
Serving as assistant dean since January 2016, Levine describes himself as a “Jack-of-all-trades” for the grad school. According to the university’s website, his responsibilities include “coordinating the admissions process, marketing for the Graduate School, recruitment, dealing with petitions and a variety of student-related items.”
“I handle admissions,” Levine said. “I also handle a lot of the student based issues as well. So I do things like working with students on petitions for exceptions to policy in their grad program. I work on things like helping students to get their thesis ready as far as the formatting goes. I work with programs to help set the policy for their grad programs and over all grad school process and all the points in between. So basically anything to do with grad school education, I’m usually fairly involved with.”
Levine, who has been with the UNH Graduate School since 2003, said he did his undergrad at UNH in ancient history and went on to do his PhD in natural resources and earth sciences. As someone who continued on to graduate school at the same school where he got his undergraduate degree, Levine said that he thinks participating in an accelerated master’s program is an excellent option for students who know what career direction they want to take.
“In fact, of all of our grad students over time, 33 percent got their bachelors at UNH. So that’s actually the biggest source for our own grad students. That speaks to the fact that a lot of students make that choice. I think it’s a good choice to stay on for their masters or PhD,” he said.
The Graduate School’s accelerated master’s program offers several advantages to senior undergraduate students including eligibility to take up to 12 graduate level credits toward a master’s degree prior to receiving a bachelor’s degree during senior year. There is no additional tuition cost and courses may be taken for graduate-only or dual credit, according to the website. Restrictions include that courses must be at 800/900 level, must be passed with at least a B- and students must maintain a GPA of 3.2 or better.
“It’s a considerable amount of our overall grad population that actually comes to our grad program by the way of the accelerated master’s program. So it’s great way to save time, obviously because if you do three classes and get those done, then that means you’re getting –most masters programs are about 10 classes– so you’re getting almost a third of them done while you’re still a senior,” Levine said.
Levine said that if students chose to go elsewhere for graduate school, accelerated master’s program credits may or may not transfer, depending on the school and its higher education program. He said that it is important to also note that not every master’s program offers the accelerated option, with the UNH Graduate School having about 20 master’s programs that do allow for it.
Applying is also easy for students. Just go to the UNH Graduate School website and find the apply button. “Typically it’s a couple weeks once the application is complete and the program receives it,” Levine said. “It’s not very long.”
“The thing to keep in mind about grad school is that it’s always important to know what career you want to get into,” he said, following by encouraging students to participate in real world experience within a profession, whether it be by internship or job shadows, he said to simply pursue things that will “compliment [students’] classroom and research opportunities.”
Levine said that he absolutely thinks that more UNH senior undergraduates should be taking advantage of the accelerated master’s program.
“We have a host of really highly ranked programs and research centers, and the faculty are really fantastic. There are a lot of professors here who are doing some amazing stuff and I think a lot of students would be really well advised to check out these opportunities and see if they want to do some more in this area,” he said. “And the grad school is here to help.”
