Their quality truly matters, not only to the reputation of the university but to the return the people of Illinois realize on their investment. Excellent undergraduate students are essential to the quality of the institution. They stimulate and challenge faculty, which redounds to the benefit of the entire community. But beyond that, a large fraction of students' learning comes from their interactions with other students. It benefits students enormously if the caliber of their peers is as consistently high as we can achieve.
Graduate students occupy a central place in the university as a community of scholars.
Graduate education is one of our primary teaching responsibilities, and superior graduate students are essential to sustaining the high quality of research and of undergraduate instruction. In both these aspects of our mission, our success depends to a substantial degree on our ability to attract, sustain, and educate, to the best of their capacities, the very best graduate students. Talented staff and academic professional personnel both on and off campus provide support to faculty, students and citizens throughout the state. They are in many ways the glue that holds the campus together. We shall do our best to provide a working environment that enables members of this important group of colleagues to contribute their diverse strengths and intellectual resources to the academic community.