Graduate admissions will now be handled by Student Affairs and will no longer be a part of the Graduate Office.

The Graduate Administration and Student Services office originally handled the admissions into the graduate program. The department wanted to combine the efforts of the two offices said, Steve Kapelke, provost and senior vice president.

“The reason for doing it was simply so we could put more resources at the service of our graduate admissions and graduate student services,” he said.

Kapelke said the office was understaffed for what they were trying to accomplish.

“They did a good job,” he said. “They worked very hard, but it was very difficult for them to keep up the weight of requirements and the weight of the needs of the graduate students, the faculty and staff who attend to the graduate students.”

Keith Cleveland, dean of Graduate Administration Student Services, will now report to the provost’s office for various “special projects,” Kapelke said.

Cleveland said his new job was undefined but will no longer involve the graduate school.

Mark Kelly, vice president of Student Affairs, said this shift was to further the recruitment process and market the graduate offices at Columbia. Those who worked in the Graduate Office will now report to Kelly, and have the resources of his staff.

“This is a decision to provide more integration,” he said. “That one small office of … five full-time staff [members] could not alone support all of the needs of our graduate programs.”

Although it would appear to increase the workload of Student Affairs, Kelly said it’s not about the “stress, but the integration.”

“It’s more about being smart and using the resources that are already here … everyone agreed that we were able to strengthen the process,” he said.

Kelly said the graduate level has “small, highly selective programs.” According to the 2007 Fact Book, the school only admitted 420 of its 922 applicants.

“The goal of all of this is to bring more stature, more resources and more of a spotlight to more of the graduate programs of Columbia,” he said.

Kapelke said our school has always been selective when choosing graduate students.

“If you go into most of our programs we’ve always been pretty selective,” Kapelke said. “Photography [and] film [and video], they have limits to the amount of students they’re going to admit into the program.”

Kelly said Cleveland has put Columbia’s graduate school “on the map” and that merger will aid in the effort.

Debra McGrath, associate vice president of Enrollment Management, will be taking over the responsibility of graduate admissions. She reports to Kelly.

Robert Garcia, director of Graduate Admissions, said the office is the “same as it has always been,” but merging of the offices has been positive.

“It has helped [the office] that we now have easier access to all of the resources Student Affairs had because before we were a little bit more on our own,” he said. “We could always use them, but we’re all under one roof is the main thing.”