CHALLENGES OF COORDINATING A GRADUATE PROGRAM

REPORTING AN EXPERIENCE

Abstract

The responsibility of coordinating a Graduate Program is growing proportionally to the increasing demands of society and requirements of funding agencies. Graduate Programs need to ensure the qualified production of thesis and dissertations, integrate with the undergraduate course (when linked to an educational institution) and invest in university extension actions. However, the professional who takes over the coordination of graduate programs does not always have a manager profile and is often chosen for his or her skills as professor and researcher. The result is the lack of planning, and “on demand” management, as requested by the funding agencies and/or the central administration itself. In this sense, this document reports an experience where the tools of quality management were adopted in the organization of the coordination processes of a Graduate Program. Although the strategy cannot be adopted for all activities, it was observed that the main routines and difficulties could be mapped and programmed, facilitating the coordinator’s work. Among the advantages is the transparency of the processes for all professors of the program, and the facilitation of the management, with the reduction of the coordination’s workload.