GRADUATE COUNCIL
Minutes of the Meeting
Dr. Judith Walker de Felix called the meeting to order at
I. Minutes
The minutes of
the
II. Committee Reports
Admissions and Scholarship – Terry Jones
The committee was asked to review several items and polled the Graduate Program Directors. The results follow.
Admission Categories: Reduce the numbers of admission categories from 7 to 3. Comments ranged from “retain the current categories” to “reduce it to 3 categories”. The three categories would be “matriculated – regular”, “matriculated – provisional”, and “non-matriculated”. There was no overwhelming preference.
Transcripts. Should the current policy of requiring all transcripts of applicants continue or should there be a change in policy? Suggestions were: keep as is; request transcripts from all universities that awarded a degree; request transcripts from the baccalaureate granting university and any graduate credit; let programs decide which transcripts are necessary.
GRE Analytical Writing Score. Comments ranged from ‘yes it is a helpful score’ to neutral on the issue.
The committee has not yet seen the results of the survey. Council asked Dr. Jones to convene a meeting of the committee to discuss the results. Dr. Felix suggested that the word ‘matriculated’ in the admission categories either be deleted or be replaced with something less confusing.
Curriculum and Instruction Committee – Sally Ebest
The Committee reviewed the following course proposals and recommends their approval:
Hist 304/3004 United States History: The Civil War Era, 1860-1900 (change title)
Hist 307/3007 United States Labor History (add)
Hist 309/3009
Hist 348/3092
Hist 350 The People’s Century I (drop)
Hist 351/3094
Hist 371/3201 History
of
Hist 372/3202 History of Latin American since 1808 (change title)
Hist 385/3303 African Diaspora to 1800 (change title)
Hist 409/6100
Art/Art His 334/3334 Contemporary Art Education: Craft and Theory (drop)
Phys 345/5345 Nonlinear Dynamics and Stochastic Processes (add)
Soc 490 Supervised Research (change prerequisite)
Econ 368 Geospatial Economic Analysis (add)
Council accepted the committee’s report to approval all course proposals except Econ 368. If all signatures are required from departments which would be affected by the proposal, then Dr. Felix will e-mail Council for a vote on whether or not to accept the proposal and forward it to the Senate C & I. Council approved History 409 pending verification whether the credit hours should be “3 or 5” or “3 to 5”.
The C & I committee will invite Denise Mussman to their next meeting to discuss ESL courses. It was suggested that because international students only have two years to complete a Master’s degree, they don’t want to take ESL courses and slow down their progress. The committee suggested offering ESL courses in the summer as a way to help out the students. Suggestions were to offer courses on the American classroom and on English and teaching techniques.
Program Development – Eduardo Silva
The committee reviewed the proposed change in degree requirements for the PhD. in Applied Mathematics. The change would reduce the number of qualifying exams from 4 to 3. Council accepted the committee’s report.
Rules and Regulations
Dr. Dotzel’s schedule hasn’t permitted him to convene the committee. He agreed with Dr. Felix that a co-chair might be helpful. Dr. Sandra Lindquist offered to co-chair the committee for Winter 2003.
Dean’s
Report
GRE. A number of GRE scores from international
students in
Application Statistics. For Winter 2003 as
of
Premium Tuition. The Board of Curators now has more specific rules on determining graduate fees. The fees are now called ‘supplemental’ fees. The existing supplemental fees would not be in place but would be incorporated into the new fee structure. This plan would only affect graduate courses, not the professional courses such as the Optometry and the MBA on-line programs that have their own fee structures in place. The Office of Institutional Research will study what each course costs. Council was concerned that if the structure was based on cost, course costs would change when it was taught by a full professor or an adjunct. Some Council members felt the program would only work if the fee differential were based on program, not on individual courses in a program. This new policy could decimate some programs by costing more; in turn, that could drastically reduce its number of students. Terry Jones moved and Eduardo Silva seconded that Council go on record to oppose the recommendation that the premium fees be determined on a course-by-course basis. Council approved the motion unanimously.
Calendar. The dean distributed a calendar of events
from February – May that listed Graduate Council meetings, student graduation
deadlines and graduate business information sessions to recruit new students. The dean would like the
The Spring Graduate Faculty meeting is scheduled for
April 14. It is expected to be held at
Doctoral Faculty. Currently doctoral faculty must apply and be
reappointed every five years. One
suggestion was to have department chairs automatically recommend approval based
on the faculty member’s ATP review. Another point of view mentioned that the
ATP process might not be pertinent to the doctoral faculty appointment
information. Terry Jones gave some background on the creation of the doctoral
faculty in the early 1970s. The rationale
for having a doctoral faculty no longer exists.
A suggestion was to delete the doctoral faculty status from the Graduate
School Rules and Regulations. Dr. Peck suggested that Council get input from
the Graduate Program Directors. If the
doctoral faculty were abolished, how would you know faculty members’
credentials were acceptable if there was no CV on file? Dr. Brown noted that when she polled the
The Dean noted that three members of the Doctoral Faculty Selection Committee have taken early retirement. It was suggested that notification of appointment and re-appointment to the doctoral faculty be postponed until after the February Graduate Council meeting.
There being no other business, the meeting
adjourned.
Respectfully submitted,
Carol Peck
Vice-Chairperson and Secretary
CP:meh