GRADUATE COUNCIL

Minutes of the Meeting

August 22, 2003

Dr. Judith Walker de Felix convened the Council at 1:30 p.m. Members in attendance were: Cody Ding, Alice Hall, Bill Kyle, Sandra Lindquist, Therese Macan, Carol Peck, Nancy Shields, Richard Wright and John Blake for Zuleyma Tang-Martinez. Members absent were: Joseph Carroll, Wes Harris, Mary Beth Mohrmann, Rajiv Sabherwal, Eduardo Silva, Shiying Zhao.

I. Election of Secretary/Vice Chairperson

Therese Macan was elected unanimously to serve as Secretary/Vice Chairperson.

II. Committee Membership

Dr. Felix described each of the committee’s roles and noted that the chair of each committee should be a member of Graduate Council.

Dr. Felix asked Council to be on one of the following committees and solicit nominees from their units to fill the open positions:

Admissions and Scholarship

Humanities: ____________________

Math/Natural Sciences: ____________________

Social Sciences: Richard Wright

Education: Cody Ding

Fine Arts & Communication: ____________________

Business: ____________________

Nursing ____________________

Optometry: Carol Peck, CHAIR

Curriculum and Instruction

Humanities: ____________________

Math/Natural Sciences: John Blake(Fall only)

Social Sciences: ____________________

Education: ____________________

Fine Arts & Communication: Alice Hall

Business: ____________________

Nursing ____________________

Optometry: ____________________

Program Development

Humanities: ____________________

Math/Natural Sciences: ____________________

Social Sciences: Therese Macan

Education: Bill Kyle

Fine Arts & Communication: ____________________

Business: ____________________

Nursing: ____________________

Optometry: ____________________

Rules and Regulations

Humanities: ____________________

Math/Natural Sciences: ____________________

Social Sciences: Nancy Shields

Education: ____________________

Fine Arts & Communication: ____________________

Business: ____________________

Nursing: Sandra Lindquist

Optometry: ____________________

Dr. Felix will contact those Graduate Council members who could not attend today and ask them to choose a committee assignment. A more complete list will then be e-mailed to Council with a request for nominees.

III. Minutes

The minutes of the April 4, 2003 meeting were approved with one typographical change in paragraph 2 of the Dean’s Report.

IV. Dean’s Report

Dr. Felix distributed the meeting schedule for 2003-04. Normally, meetings will be held on the third Friday of the month with the exception of December and April. The date of December 12 was chosen over the 19th so it would not conflict with the end of the semester. April 2 was chosen to accommodate the last meeting of the Faculty Senate C & I meeting.

Information was distributed on Dr. Felix’s proposed Graduate School projects for this year.

Tuition Remission Guidelines (handout). Last year, Graduate Council suggested placing a 9-hour cap on tuition payments for GTAs/GRAs. It was hoped that this would alleviate a deficit in tuition spending. After Dr. Felix met with Drs. Krueger, Arshadi, and Durham to discuss this year’s deficit, the Chancellor agreed to provide the Graduate School with an additional $750,000 in funding. It is anticipated that a portion of that additional funding would cover data port charges for eligible GTAs. The Graduate School is working with the College of Arts and Sciences to determine how many ports might be needed in each department. Each eligible data port covered would cost $585 per year. Dr. Blake noted that the outside reviewer for the Department of Biology’s five-year review found the number of data ports for students to be lacking.

Some further discussion around the 9-hour cap ensued. Dr. Kyle noted that an international student was forced to drop one of his courses due to the 9-hour limit. This will lengthen the time to finish the degree and could cost more in the long run. Dr. Felix has already granted some exceptions to this policy and stated that faculty should request exceptions when they believe it is warranted. Later in the year, Dr. Felix will provide Council with figures on tuition spending and it will then be determined whether the 9-hour cap will remain for the second half of the year. Equivalency hours given for GTA/GRA workload does help with tuition remission

Graduate School Timelines and Changes in Forms (handout). Dr. Felix introduced Betsy Sampson, academic evaluator of the Graduate School, and asked her to discuss deadlines and course change forms. Deadlines for Fall 2003 graduation were distributed along with some revised forms. The M-4 “Application for Graduation” has been changed. It will now comply with FERPA since the student must complete the form and mark if his/her name may be listed in the commencement booklet. The Graduate School will verify that the correct degree program and emphasis area are listed and will also use the form to notify the department and student why a student was removed from the graduation list.

The M-1 “Program for Master’s Degree” has been revised to include a page of instructions. It also allows a student who is receiving both the Master’s and a graduate certificate simultaneously to use just one M-1 form. There is more space to handle the curricular designation and the four digit course numbers.

The doctoral forms have also been revised. The D8 and D6 have been combined as well as the D7 and D10 in an attempt to streamline procedures. An announcement of these changes was distributed to the Graduate Program Directors. The revised D7 and D8 are available on the Graduate School web site.

Course Renumbering (handout). Dr. Felix distributed the current Bulletin section on course numbers as it relates to graduate credit. The Bulletin does not match the graduate rules and regulations. When renumbering, some departments simply changed 300-level courses to 3000-level courses. The Graduate School policy states that 3000-level courses are not normally for graduate credit although one course outside of a student’s degree program may be taken for graduate credit. There is also a problem with awarding graduate credit for students in the 2+3 BA/MA programs. Dr. Kyle noted that science education students in the Ph.D. Education program take ¼ of their course work in the sciences, many of which may be 3000-level courses. What was easy to accomplish in the old scheme of course numbering/graduate credit is now confusing. Dr. Felix is proposing a quick fix for problems this year by waiving the 3000-level rule for Master’s Degrees so long as the course is not in the student’s major field. She will ask the Rules and Regulations committee to review the situation for a permanent solution.

Require Students – not staff members -- to complete application for graduation. Departments that require students to complete the requisite forms themselves to graduate are generally more successful in meeting deadlines with correct information than those in which a staff person submits the names to the Graduate School.

Pilot an automatic probation. Current rules state that individual units place students on academic probation. However, some units fail to do so. That prevents the Graduate School from dismissing poor performing students. Dr. Felix proposes that the procedure for probation be made automatic. To pilot this, the Graduate School will ask the Registrar to send a list of students who should be on probation to Graduate Program Directors and the Graduate Dean. The Graduate Program Director should notify the Graduate School if they do not want their student placed on probation and make arrangements to provide extra support for students. One week after the notice, the Graduate Dean will send probation letters to students who are not given exceptions by their programs.

Move from Rules to Policies. Current Rules and Regulations contain several outdated or overly restrictive procedures that require several steps to revise. By separating procedures from policies, the Graduate School proposes to be able to update the procedures without changing policies. A Task Force is needed to review the draft. The content of the current Rules and proposed policies was distributed.

Add grade, “In Progress” for theses/dissertations. A proposal has been put forward to distinguish a true DL grade from a thesis/dissertation that is in progress. The IP (in progress) grade will be given each semester until the student graduates as long as the student is making progress. The IP grade remains on the transcript. The final grade will then be awarded upon successful completion of the degree for the number of credit hours for which the student is registered during that last semester. Changing from the DL to the IP grade will alleviate completing change of grade forms for all semesters in which the DL was awarded. Dr. Stake suggested that other courses might also fit into the IP situation, such as internships, which are taken over two semesters. Someone wondered if an NP “No Progress” should be established as well.

Clean up outdated rules. For example, eliminate the requirement that non-graduate departments have their graduate-level courses reauthorized every two years. Eliminate the graduate regulation on grade appeal, as there is now a university-wide grade appeal process. Eliminate the Summer Research Fellowship information, as there is no longer money to fund the program.

Study first semester admission procedures. The Graduate School needs to study ways to allow quick admissions for students wishing to take courses for one semester while gaining full admission to a graduate program. Views from Graduate Program Directors and Graduate Council members ranged from no admission without departmental review to an open admission approach for up to 6 hours. Another possibility is post-baccalaureate admission except that category cannot be used for graduate credit. The Graduate School is using batch admission for grant participants where applicants are teachers who must have earned a bachelor’s degree. The applications come in a packet and are admitted in batch to a particular course.

Review the representation on Graduate Council and Graduate Faculty. Previously the representation was determined by the number of graduate faculty in each college and also by divisions within the College of Arts and Sciences. With the changes and additions in colleges, we need to review our current election procedures.

Other items:

Dr. Glassman asked Council to reconsider requesting all transcripts from foreign institutions. This poses a problem for international students who sometimes can only get one official document.

Dr. Gordon Anderson asked Council to determine if taking ESL courses benefited the students.

Dr. Felix distributed a volunteer sign up sheet for task forces who will work on projects this year. Anyone interested in serving on the task force should e-mail her.

The meeting adjourned at 3:20 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Therese Macan

Secretary and Vice-Chairperson

TM:meh