GRADUATE COUNCIL

Minutes of the Meeting

December 12, 2003

The meeting was called to order by Dean Judith Walker de Felix at 1:30 p.m. Members in attendance were: Joe Carroll, Cody Ding, Alice Hall, Wes Harris, Bill Kyle, Sandra Lindquist, Therese Macan, Nancy Shields, Eduardo Silva, Zuleyma Tang-Martinez, Richard Wright. Members absent were: Carol Peck, Mary Beth Mohrmann, Shiying Zhao.

I. Minutes

Dr. Cody Ding moved to accept and Dr. Nancy Shields seconded the motion to approve the minutes of the November 21, 2003 meeting. Council approved the minutes unanimously.

II. Committee Reports

Rules and Regulations – Sandra Lindquist

The committee reviewed the sections of the rules and regulations on graduate faculty, support of graduate students and grades. These sections were rewritten by the dean as “policies”. The committee’s job was to review the revisions to make sure the changes were merely of an editorial nature and therefore would not require Graduate Faculty approval. The committee supports the proposed changes in the document and has only a few questions for Council’s input.

Section 2.1 states “The Graduate Faculty shall consist of all tenured and tenure-track faculty.” The committee suggested adding “….as well as full-time faculty that hold a doctoral degree and have been approved by their academic unit.”

This idea emanated from the College of Optometry that hires Clinicians. Some may be appropriate advisors for their students working on contact lens studies but aren’t eligible under the current rules and regulations.

Comments:

*this suggestion would allow units to decide and take the responsibility/oversight away from Graduate Council

*we should keep statistics on the number of non-regular faculty admitted to the Graduate Faculty

*if there is no oversight on faculty appointments, relaxation could move into place and units could be pressured to bring in lecturers instead of tenure-track faculty.

*can we support graduate training if we continue to hire non-adjunct faculty?

Council members will discuss this with their faculty and provide feedback at the January meeting.

Section 4.1.1. New proposed sentence “The GI may not continue in university employment after completing degree requirements.” It was suggested that the wording be changed to read: “A student may not continue in university employment as a GI after graduating”.

Section 4.4. Addition of “Non-academic appointments are not eligible for tuition remission”.

Comment: Is this a change in policy? No, it merely clarifies that non-academic appointments are not eligible for tuition remission.

Section 7.5. The committee suggested deleting the reworked sentence: “A student who remains on probation for more than one calendar year will be dismissed, unless the dean of the Graduate School approves an exceptional request for continuation.” This sentence reflects a change to make sure students in all departments are placed on probation when warranted. The probation would be automatic unless the Director of Graduate Studies notifies the Graduate School differently. Concerns came up that some students are on and off probation over the course of their program. Should the probation be during a calendar year? The suggested wording for the underlined sentence should read:

“A student who is on probation for more than two semesters during their program of study will be dismissed, unless the dean of the Graduate School approves an exceptional request for continuation. “

PeopleSoft will make it possible to generate letters automatically for students whose GPA falls below a 3.00. It is important that the Graduate Program Directors are copied on these letters. The students should be informed of this policy and its effective date. This item will need Graduate Faculty approval.

Nursing Equivalency. The committee reviewed a request for a change in the equivalency hours for nursing courses. Currently, students are given two equivalency hours for enrollment in the Advanced Practice Nursing courses. Each course has 250 hours of practice. The college requests seven equivalency hours for the 250 practice hours. In summer, the equivalency would be four hours. Members would like to know what the actual hours worked would be and why they would not register for other courses while enrolled in one of these courses. After discussion, Council tabled the issue until Dr. Peggy Ellis can respond to Council’s concerns.

III. Other business

The Dean created a web site on curriculum course and proposal preparation. She will e-mail the web address to Council and would like their feedback.

There are 49 course proposals pending for review. Since they arrived too late to review this month, they will be given to Dr. Wes Harris, chair of the committee for the winter semester.

Workload Policy. The Curriculum and Instruction committee is working on the workload policy. Dean Burkholder suggested to the committee that a general policy might be more workable. Graduate Council members will discuss this issue with their colleagues. Some topics of discussion:

*Mentoring graduate students is not part of service in the ATP process.

*Is your faculty in favor of a workload policy?

*What should the workload policy include?

*Should the policy come from the Graduate School, the Faculty Senate, or the Deans offices?

*Should the policy be part of the annual report – i.e. credit given for mentoring graduate students.

Chancellor’s Action Plan

The dean distributed the draft of the Chancellor’s UMSL Action Plan and asked what role Council should play. Suggestions were:

Priority1, “Strengthen internships, especially in areas not traditionally used”.

Comments: The dean attended the Council of Graduate Schools meeting. The trend is toward “preparing future professionals” as we are working more with students in industry. Several universities’ Career Services staff work with the Graduate School staff to place graduate students in off-campus clerkships and internships. Although our campus registers students in formal courses for internships and clerkships, the faculty member receives no credit for overseeing them.

Why does the Chancellor’s statement say “not traditionally used? Council felt this statement should be stricken from the sentence. It would be better to state “Facilitate or enhance internships.”

If programs haven’t thought about internships, it might be useful to talk about their possibilities and whether or not it would be good for their students.

Priority #3. “Selectively add a doctoral program every year (on average).

Comments: The Ph.D. Applied Mathematics is currently under audit. Either it could be cut or a Ph.D. in Computer Science could be added. The problem is that it would take an additional four faculty members to offer the PhD in Computer Science. We could look at the needs, jobs, faculty needed to offer any new doctoral programs. Where does the responsibility lie for new programs – the Dean or the Graduate Council. Should there be more interdisciplinary offerings? A question arose about the Ph.D. Metropolitan Studies. It is nearing approval at the system level and it is expected that a governing structure will be put into place to keep the program interdisciplinary.

“Increase the number of doctoral degrees granted by seven annually.”

Comments:

Departments should come up with a formula for awarding credit for workload activities. Perhaps this should be part of the Chancellor’s plan.

Convert workload into course equivalency.

Promote Co-PI grant applications.

Attend training sessions to learn how to write successful McNair grants.

Write tuition/training grants.

Hire grant writers to help PIs submit successful grants.

“Increase funding for TAs/RAs.”

Comments: The campus’ development campaign hopes to increase scholarship money for TA funding in order to augment the varying salaries across disciplines.

Off-campus internships: company would pay student for part-time work and pay their tuition.

The Dean shared her wish list with the Chancellor:

* Space in the MSC for the Graduate School

* Assistant Dean of the Graduate School

* Recruiting budget which would be geared to graduate students

* Graduate student lounge space

* Faculty Orientation geared toward building interdisciplinary programs.

The dean asked how departments view interdisciplinary faculty members. Some said joint appointments held by faculty have caused tensions. The faculty member feels or is seen as less important. There is a problem with recognition of work and professional advancement.

The meeting adjourned at 3:25 p.m.

Sincerely,

Therese Macan

Vice-Chairperson and Secretary

TM:meh