Graduate Faculty Meeting

April 14, 2003

The meeting was called to order at 4:10 p.m.

I. Minutes

The minutes of the December 2, 2002 meeting were approved.

II. Candidates for Degrees

Dr. Felix noted that the agenda routinely includes the names of potential master’s and doctoral candidates for graduation at the May and August commencements. She asked if anyone knew the history of submitting names to the Graduate Faculty for approval. Since none came forward, Faculty voted to eliminate this from the Graduate Faculty Agenda. The Graduate School will continue to verify graduates and send final semester graduation lists to the Graduate Program Directors.

III. Graduate Faculty Nominating Committee – Mary Troy

Dr. Troy distributed a listing of potential nominees to serve on next year’s Graduate Council. Those nominees are:

Education: Kathleen Brown

Bill Kyle

Stephen Sherblom (ONE OPEN SLOT)

Social Sciences: Therese Macan

Richard Wright

Nancy Shields (THREE OPEN SLOTS)

Math/Natural

Sciences: Wesley Harris (ONE OPEN SLOT)

Business: Rajiv Sabherwal

Mary Beth Mohrman (TWO OPEN SLOTS)

Humanities: Joseph Carroll (ONE OPEN SLOT)

Since there were no other nominations from the floor, the list of nominees to serve on the Graduate Council was approved. Since there is only a run-off for a position form the College of Education, the Graduate School will send a ballot to find a winner. A generic e-mail will be sent to the Graduate Faculty listing the composition of the 2003-04 Graduate Council.

Election of a Secretary to the Graduate Faculty. The committee had no nominee for this position. Therefore, Paul Speck was nominated and elected unanimously as Graduate Faculty Secretary for 2003-04.

IV. Graduate Council Report

Graduate Council is recommending changes to the Graduate School Rules and Regulations After some lively discussion of the changes, Graduate Faculty moved to vote on each issue individually. These will be broken down below and show the voting as it occurred. Any items not approved would be distributed to the Graduate Faculty by the Graduate Dean for an e-mail vote.

CHANGE A. Purpose: Omit references to ‘matriculated’ and ‘non-matriculated’ students in an effort to make the admissions process more understandable to potential applicants.

Graduate Faculty approved the change unanimously. The affected section will now read:

4.2 Categories of Admission:

To receive graduate credit for a course at the University of Missouri-St. Louis students must have been admitted to the Graduate School under one of the categories specified for admission:

1. Graduate Certificate or Degree-seeking

2. Non-degree seeking

CHANGE B. Purpose: Maintain the current categories of Degree and Non-degree seeking but require applicants for Graduate Certificates to become Degree-seeking since students follow a prescribed course of study. (Note: Some units currently require Degree status). This change will also put current practice into policy.

Graduate Faculty approved the change unanimously. The affected section will now read:

4.2.1. Graduate Certificate or Degree-Seeking Student

Students who wish to take courses to obtain a degree or graduate certificate are normally admitted if the undergraduate G.P.A. and major field G.P.A. are both 2.75 or above. A department or school may establish additional or more restrictive standards of admission for a particular program.

Because they follow an established curriculum, students in Graduate Certificate programs have the same admission requirements as Degree-seeking students. Graduate Certificate Students may transfer up to 18 hours of work on a Graduate Certificate Program Plan to a Master’s or Doctoral Program Plan, if the department granting the degree approves the transfer.

CHANGE C. Purpose: Maintain the current categories within Degree-seeking including restricted and provisional, but, rather than highlighting exceptions in the Rules, make them categories that the unit and graduate dean can assign. (NOTE: Currently some students believe that they can apply for provisional or restricted status.)

Suggested wording:

A student who seems qualified for admission to the Graduate School but has not submitted all materials required for admission (official transcripts, test scores, etc.), may be admitted provisionally. The courses in which a student enrolls will apply in the regular way to a degree or certificate program. A student may enroll provisionally for one semester or summer term only. When all admission materials have been received, the student will prepare a Request for Change from Provisional to Regular or Restricted Status form. The department will review the additional material before finally recommending Regular or Restricted admission or denial.

Graduate Faculty discussed this issue in depth. The section for provisional admission was reviewed and friendly amendments were made to improve the wording. Since no wording seemed to fit, Faculty voted to postpone discussion of this topic and not include it in a mail ballot to faculty.

CHANGE D. Purpose: Omit references to post-docs since they rarely take classes and could apply through normal procedures.

Graduate Faculty approved the change unanimously. References were deleted from non-matriculated student category and final paragraph from section 4.2.2.

CHANGE E. Purpose: Omit provision that allows students to apply as Non-degree for programs that are not yet approved to avoid the possibility of unintended promises of future program.

Partial sentence referring to this in section 4.2.2, paragraph 3 is deleted. Graduate Faculty approved the change unanimously.

CHANGE F. Purpose: Edit the directions for changing from Provisional to Regular status that the student, not Graduate Admissions, completes the paperwork with departmental assistance and approval.

Appropriate changes made to section 4.2.1. Graduate Faculty approved the change unanimously

CHANGE G. Purpose: Change the minimum TOEFL score for international students from 500 to 550. (NOTE: 550 is the minimum at all other UM campuses).

There was discussion on why the score had to be raised. Why couldn’t it remain at 500 and allow departments to specify a higher score if necessary? If student comes to our university with government funding, we would admit even if they had a lower TOEFL score. Some felt that the TOEFL score was not a good indicator of spoken language but rather of the number of ESL courses taken. Others felt the TOEFL and GRE verbal scores could be used as a shortcut to reviewing applications. The Dean stated that 550 is the minimum on the other UM campuses and that we are low as compared to other research universities. Dr. Spilling noted that they’ve found the country of origin more predictive of success rather than the TOEFL score. They have had success with students from Thailand and China. Other comments ranged from “if we set our standards low, then we are asking the student to assume the risk of failure” to “We should be consistent with other universities. If applicants fall below the TOEFL minimum of 550, then a special case for admission could be made to the Graduate Dean.” Some thought percentiles in each field would be helpful to determine success. Dr. Richardson noted that, based on Dr. Spilling’s remarks, it’s not the score or percentile, but rather what country the student comes from, that could indicate success. Dr. Long asked how one could determine what an “English-speaking country” meant, such as Canada – part English, part French. Dr. Brown said that while at Maryville University, faculty noticed international students would be admitted at their university with a lower TOEFL score. Once admitted, they would then move on to another University. After much discussion, Dr. Felix offered to hold a separate forum to discuss this issue. The Faculty concurred and agreed this issue should not be included on the mail/electronic ballot.

CHANGE H. Purpose: Add normally before requirements to allow units and/or the graduate dean more flexibility to make decisions based on individual profiles rather than absolute rules.

Changes would affect wording in 4.2.1, paragraph one relating to degree-seeking and graduate certificate admission and paragraph 8 relating to doctoral admission.

Graduate Faculty approved the change unanimously

In addition to specific changes there were some housekeeping items or grammatical changes that were proposed (see handout of section 4.1; 4.2.1. relating to restricted status.) Those were approved without comment.

CHANGE selection of Graduate Faculty Nominating Committee. Council recommended a change in the wording so that a change wouldn’t be required each time a new college was established. A friendly amendment was submitted to the Council’s wording that spells out each of the current colleges and then adds wording borrowed from the Faculty By-Laws “…and other such units that may be formed’. Since this section also contains possible deletion of the Doctoral Faculty Selection Committee, the item was not voted on until a ruling was made on the status of the Doctoral Faculty.

(EXCEPRT FROM THE FACULTY BY-LAWS): a. Committee on Committees -- The Committee shall consist of one elected faculty Senator from each of the following units: Humanities, Natural Sciences/Mathematics, Social Sciences, Business Administration, Education, Nursing, Optometry, and such parallel units as may be created from time to time.

CHANGE TO ELMINATE THE DOCTORAL FACULTY

Purpose: Eliminate doctoral faculty as a campus wide requirement and move doctoral dissertation supervision to the unit level. Dr. Felix said the other three campuses of the UM system no longer have doctoral faculty at the campus level. Only Columbia has a few departments that still have doctoral faculty status. Dean Schmitz gave some background on the creation of the doctoral faculty. Dr. Zarucchi stated that each department should define criteria needed to be a member of the doctoral faculty. As a former chair of the Doctoral Faculty Selection Committee, she noted that over the years, the committee had a few cases where faculty were approved by their respective departments and dean but were not approved by the campus committee or the graduate dean. Since the applicant had no publications, the Committee denied doctoral faculty status and suggested the faculty member be mentored and reapply once there was a better record.

Some felt that lack of doctoral faculty status was used, on occasion, as a punishment. Dr. Wright was incredulous that any department would hire a faculty member without the ability to chair a dissertation committee. He also believed it was a waste of time to fill out the form and suggested only submitting a vita for consideration. Dr Cristiani felt that the decision on qualifications for doctoral faculty should be made at the department level and not campus-wide committee level. She felt it was demeaning and inappropriate to have a committee tell a department that one of their faculty was unfit to serve on the doctoral faculty. Dr. Long moved to put the issue to a mail ballot of the entire graduate faculty. The Graduate Faculty approved the motion unanimously.

Section 9.10. Change to the wording of the Dissertation Committee

The Faculty felt reviewing changes to section 9.10 was premature and should wait until a decision is made on the status of the doctoral faculty. Graduate Faculty tabled the issue.

VI. Dean’s Report

The Graduate School will be hosting its first Graduate Study Information Fair on Monday, April 21 from 5:00 – 6:30 p.m. on the third floor of the Millennium Student Center. There will be mini sessions on career counseling, financial aid and exhibits of student and faculty research along with information on all of our graduate programs.

Dr. Felix thanked members of this year’s Graduate Council for their hard work. There is still plenty of work to be done. One pending item is a suggestion to remove the procedures from the Rules and Regulations, and leave in the policies. Any feedback on this suggestion would be appreciated and should be directed to Dr. Felix.

There being no other business the meeting adjourned at 5:25 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Gwen Turner

Secretary to the Graduate Faculty