Dean's Message

Dear Graduate Community,

Welcome to the College of Graduate Studies. Deciding to do a graduate degree is a serious decision. You are giving years of your life to a question that matters, usually while working, often while raising a family, sometimes as the first person in your family to go this far in school.

That last part describes a lot of our students, and it is why I joined SJSU. Changing those trajectories is the whole point of public higher education, and graduate education is the fastest engine of economic mobility. But It is also a lot more than that. You will work alongside faculty in every college on this campus, on questions society needs answered, and that work will change you as much as it changes the world around you. A student who has gone through our programs graduates differently. They understand the world around them better. They learn to ask questions, manage uncertainty, and build something new and useful.

Here at SJSU, we offer more than 120 graduate programs, and that range is intentional. Silicon Valley is part of who we are, but it's not the whole of it. This region needs teachers, nurses, social workers, engineers, scientists and artists, and it needs them to serve, transform, and lead. This region runs on people who studied here.

If you are new here, like me, welcome to San José State. If you have been here a while, thank you for your commitment. I want to meet as many of you as I can, and I want each of you to thrive here at SJSU. 

Crist S. Khachikian
Vice President for Research and Innovation
Dean, College of Graduate Studies