Expanded enrollment

DA has concluded that it should prepare for increased enrollment pressure at the graduate level, since astronomy as a discipline is enjoying unprecedented growth in opportunities arising from the development of new international observatories. In particular, as mentioned above Canada has become an important player and investor in these international facilities, which is producing demand for graduate study in Canada. At the same time, we must plan for the orderly replacement of the current generation of astronomers many of whom will retire in the next decade. Equally important is that many graduates with a Ph.D. in astronomy enter other fields involving image processing, such as medical technology, earth resource management, and the computer industry, all of which are areas of growth in science and technology. DA will respond positively to this pressure (we doubled our intake this year), but this will demand a concomitant increase in supervisory capacity.

The average enrollment in astronomy at Toronto during the five year period from 93/94 to 97/98 is 6.6$\pm$2.9 M.Sc. and 23.2$\pm$1.6 Ph.D. students, with a total of 29.8$\pm$1.5. Thus the enrollment has been very stable. This figure will grow to about 34 students by Fall 2000, taking into account the retirement of Kronberg at UTAS, the arrival of Netterfield (0.5 FTE) in February 1999, and the position being filled in Observational Cosmology. Supervisory capacity is about to be augmented temporarily by a three year CLTA (CIAR related) and another 3-5 year CLTA (spousal retention). For the purpose of estimating the sustainable graduate enrollment in 2004, we take into account three further retirements while the complement plan calls for an additional 7.5 FTE (§ 4.1; Table 4). The current average graduate student/graduate faculty ratio is 2.5 if we include only ``active supervisors,'' referring to those in Astronomy and CITA who have supervised one or more astronomy graduate students over the past five years. Assuming this ratio for new faculty, and allowing for the retirements, we project a further increase of about 12 students, producing a sustainable level of about 46 students by 2004. Following current practice, more than one third of these would be foreign students, and half of these foreign students would be US citizens. High demand in the A&A related job market will increase the pool of well qualified applicants, while our ability to recruit will be enhanced by the new faculty drawn here by the quality of the programs in A&A within DA and CITA. (C8R, p. 4: ``The record discussed above provides a clear justification for the roughly 50% increase in the number of graduate students.'')

The rate of graduating students from DA (Ph.D./year) is reported to be average for the Cluster (C8R p. 2). Actually, the rate for DA would have been substantially higher if the cross-appointed CITA graduate faculty, a short-term CLTA, and a member on long-term disability (7 out of 17 total) were not included, since until very recently CITA has focussed most effort on supervising postdoctoral fellows and research associates rather than graduate students. This rate will continue to increase with the recruitment of active young faculty and expansion of the graduate enrollment. Quality as well as quantity is important. Reporting on job placements for our graduates, the reviewers comment (C8R, p. 4) ``This is an outstanding record and is a strong testament to the intellectual strength of the DA graduate program.''