Mission & Vision

“Knowledge today…leads to the cures of tomorrow”

The College of Graduate Studies' mission is to educate a diverse community of scientists at the masters, doctoral, and postdoctoral levels and to foster the discovery of new knowledge in a premier academic environment. Our goal is to provide our trainees with foundational and discipline-specific knowledge, as well as an immersion in research, through both curricular and experiential learning. We also aim to develop our trainees' skills in critical thinking and effective communication, and to emphasize the importance of scientific rigor and the ethical pursuit of research. Another important facet of our mission is to provide ongoing professional development and guidance that prepares our trainees to navigate and succeed in the landscape of career opportunities that awaits them.

Goals

A strong research enterprise is one of the central pillars of MUSC’s identity and strategic plan. For MUSC’s research portfolio, most of the actual experimentation is performed by our Ph.D trainees, our MS students, and our postdoctoral scholars and fellows. These hard-working scientists provide creativity and intellectual insight as well as their dedication and commitment. Our faculty’s ability to publish and to obtain grant funding depends upon these CGS trainees.

The nation’s ability to sustain an ongoing biomedical research enterprise - encompassing a broad range of disciplines from molecular studies to clinical research, from structural biology to genomics, from drug discovery to epidemiology - requires that we train the next generation of scientists. CGS’ Masters and Ph.D programs are dedicated to providing training in foundational and discipline-specific content, in research ethics and critical thinking, in the scientific method and in effective communication. Our students engage in apprenticeship research training, mentored by highly successful members of our faculty and supported by state-of-the-art research facilities.

Work to Ensure That the Biomedical Workforce of Tomorrow Looks Like Our Community & Our Nation (Diversity & Inclusion).

Our nation deserves a biomedical workforce that is diverse and inclusive and benefits from the perspectives and passions of people from different genders, ethnic groups, and socio-economic backgrounds. CGS works diligently to recruit a diverse group of trainees and to provide initiatives and a cultural context that sustains these recruits and maximizes their likelihood of success and retention.