Departmental Coordinators have the primary responsibility of conveying the concerns of their respective departments and programs to the Executive Committee for advice and consent. They also have primary responsibility for local recordkeeping and monitoring of students in their respective programs concerning progress, advisors and financial aid. Students should normally first consult their Departmental Coordinator on problems or policies they may have.

At the University of Pennsylvania, the organizations responsible for graduate instruction and degrees are groups of faculty called Graduate Groups. In many cases, such as history and mathematics, the graduate group has a counterpart department. Other graduate groups do not have a traditional counterpart department or school. Instead, they are composed of appropriate faculty from a variety of existing departments and schools with the aim of enhancing the interdisciplinary nature of the field of study.

The Graduate Group of Managerial Science and Applied Economics covers all doctoral education in the Wharton School and offers programs in accounting, finance, health care systems, insurance and risk management, management, marketing, operations and information management, public policy and management, real estate and statistics.