The Role of Graduate Education at WWU: Your Views

First, I did not read the entire thing. Second I am a freshman so my feelings on the matter, may be a bit diffrent than people who have attended western. Third I intend to prusue a computer science degree to either a masters or PHD level, and I thought my feelings on the future of Western would be relavent.

My reasons for choosing western (as compared to UW, where many of my friends are heading) were the following:

• The Western staff are more friendly, and more focused on helping me get an education. (Simply calling the same office to ask the same question showed this, but it was in evrey conversation)
• The class sizes at Western are smaller, meaning that I get to actually meet and get to know evrey one in my class. (75 to 250)
• It's cheaper.

The reason I am explaing this is that I think Western has a great formula right there to be a great school. And at the moment all I am worrying about is 100 and 200 level classes for my major (I took running start and almost all my GURs are out of the way) and at that level Western has a much better selection of classes concerining my major than UW. But at 300 level Western and UW are about equal, and at 400 and 500 level UW has many more classes than Western does by far (again, for my major). This is by all means fine with me because I can get a great bachelor education here at Western, and finish off at UW.

I guess what I am saying is that if Western expands it's graduate program I would like to see it keep it's current state of offering a great and varied bachelors education.

There is a huge market (read-unmet demand for the citizens of Washington and the Western United States in general) for a third tier law school in the Northwest, as the similarly ranking institutions would be found in flyover country.  This could potentially be a cash cow for the University if administered properly, and would not be difficult to set up.  Traditional WWU values of envirnomental consideration and social concern, as well as cross-border studies could easily apply as well.