Graduate Faculty at a Glance

The Graduate Faculty population of each college/school offering graduate programs is calculated annually on October 31 to determine the proportional representation of each unit to the Graduate Council. The following statistics present an overview of the landscape of Graduate Faculty membership across the University from the last analysis on October 31, 2023.

The Graduate Faculty at Penn State consists of members from varied faculty roles including tenure-line faculty, teaching faculty, research faculty, and ARL faculty.

Tenure-Line: 2,619
Non-Tenure-Line: 479
Total: 3,098

Graduate degree programs at Penn State are categorized as either research degrees (Ph.D, M.A., and M.S.) focused on developing a student’s ability to expand the frontiers of knowledge through production of creative scholarly products or professional degrees (all other graduate degree types) focused on developing a student’s ability to generate creative approaches for improved professional practice. To align with the various policies around these degree types, Graduate Faculty membership is tracked for who contributes to research and professional degrees. Many faculty members contribute to both degree types.

Research Degree Programs Only: 1,685
Professional Degree Programs Only: 307
Both Research and Professional: 1,106

Each Graduate Faculty member is affiliated with a college that offers graduate degree programs for the purposes of determining proportional representation to the Graduate Council. In cases where a Graduate Faculty member's primary appointment is outside of a college offering graduate programs, they are affiliated with the college that nominated them.