Minutes of the Meeting of December 2, 2002

I.            Minutes of the Meeting

The minutes of the April 23, 2002 meeting were approved.

II.            Approval of Candidates for Degrees – Fall 2002

The candidates for degrees for the Fall 2002 commencement were approved pending completion of all degree requirements.

III.            Election of a Nominating Committee 

The following graduate faculty members were proposed to serve on the Graduate Faculty Nominating Committee.  The committee will convene in the Winter semester and prepare a slate of nominees to serve on next year’s Graduate Council, Doctoral Faculty Selection Committee and Secretary to the Graduate Faculty

Mary Troy, A & S Humanities
Peter Stevens, A & S Math/Physical Sciences
Gary Burger, A & S Social Sciences
Steve Moehrle, Business
Carole Murphy, Education
Louis Lankford, Fine Arts
Bobbie Lee, Nursing
Ralph Garzia, Optometry

Carole Murphy moved to approve and Kathleen Brown seconded the motion.  The Graduate Faculty unanimously approved the slate of the Nominating Committee.  The Graduate School will contact the nominees to verify their willingness to serve.

IV.       Report from the Graduate Council

The Rules and Regulations committee of Graduate Council was asked to review and make some changes to section 3 and 4 of the current regulations.  Dave Klostermann of Continuing Education made this request.

Section 3.3:

Current Wording:  paragraph 1  “Degree credit is allowed for institutes, workshops, clinics, and extension courses only if they are offered by a Missouri public university.” 

Proposed Wording: “Degree credit may be allowed for institutes, workshops, clinics and Continuing Education courses only if they are offered by an appropriately accredited institution of higher education.”

Rationale.  “Extension” is an anachronism and ‘university extension’ is prohibited by Federal law from offering credit courses.  Re: limiting to just ‘Missouri public universities’.  The committee felt it would be more appropriate to change the wording to an accredited institution of higher education.

Discussion:  John Henschke gave the background on why the term “Missouri public university” was used. Some workshops were offered by non-public universities or degree mills and their quality was questionable.  “Missouri public university’ was used to offset this problem. 

Current wording in section 3.3, paragraph 4:  “A student who completes a workshop course while not enrolled in the Graduate School may not subsequently include the course as part of a degree program.  Inclusion of the workshop credit in a graduate program is subject to the approval process inherent in the filing of a degree program.  In instances where workshops are offered on a credit/non-credit or pass/fail basis, such credit may not be applied to a graduate degree.”

Proposed wording.  For those already enrolled in a graduate program, inclusion of the workshop credit is subject to the approval process inherent in the filing of a degree program.  In instances where workshops are taken on a credit/non-credit or pass/fail basis, such credit may not be applied to a graduate degree.”

Rationale:  These (first) two sentences seem to be contradictory.  The first sentence was deleted and the second was revised slightly.  The third sentence changes ‘offered’ to ‘taken’. 

Discussion:  What does the current status have to do with the courses taken?  A friendly amendment was made to revised the proposed wording to state:

FRIENDLY AMENDMENT         

“Inclusion of the workshop credit is subject to the approval process inherent in the filing of a degree program.  In instances where workshops are taken on a credit/non-credit or pass/fail basis, such credit may not be applied to a graduate degree”. 

Current wording:  Paragraph 6. …”Participation in an intensive workshop ordinarily constitutes full-time graduate study.

Proposed Wording:  delete this sentence from the paragraph

Rationale:   Sentence doesn’t make sense.

Section 4.8

Current Wording:  …After initial enrollment, students must enroll for at least one term each calendar year to remain in good standing.  Students not meeting this enrollment requirement will be dropped from the Graduate School and required to re-apply for admission if they subsequently wish to continue…

Proposed Wording:  After initial enrollment, students must enroll for at least one term each calendar year to remain in good standing.  Students not meeting this enrollment requirement will be dropped from the Graduate School and will be required to submit the Request to Re-enroll form.  

Rationale:  Clarification that students admitted under two years may use the request to re-enroll form instead of completing an entirely new graduate school application.

Discussion:  The proposed wording “initial enrollment” seems to contradict the rationale “students admitted”. 

            FRIENDLY AMENDMENT:

After the term of admission, students must enroll for at least one term each calendar year to remain in good standing.  Students not meeting this enrollment requirement will be dropped from the Graduate School and will be required to submit the Request to Re-enroll form. 

Carole Murphy moved and Mary Troy seconded the motion to approve the proposed changes that include the two friendly amendments. Graduate Faculty approved the motion unanimously.

IV.       Dean’s Report

The Dean asked the faculty what is the most parsimonious role for the Graduate School dean.  She asked the group to think about the current role of this office and what changes they might like to see.  Some examples are:  What forms should the dean sign and what should the dean actually review and approve?  Should the graduate faculty and the doctoral faculty remain? What are their functions and are both needed? Does the graduate faculty as a whole need to vote on changes or should the Graduate Council be used as the voting authority on proposed changes to the Rules and Regulations?

Dr. Henschke thought the Doctoral Faculty was a university-wide edict.  Dr Felix could not find any mention of the Doctoral Faculty in the Collected Rules and Regulations.  Dr. Henschke suggested a check of the UM system Academic Affairs web site to make sure there was no such stipulation. 

Other ideas on Doctoral Faculty

*Could the doctoral faculty appointment be tied to the promotion and tenure decision with the renewal being tied to the post-tenure review?

*Could all associate professors and above (tenure/tenure-track) automatically be approved for Doctoral Faculty membership?

*Could assistant professors (tenure/tenure-track) only be appointed to doctoral faculty with an application for doctoral faculty status? Some complications of not normally allowing asst professors doctoral faculty status might be departments who have to rely heavily on them to chair doctoral dissertations.   

*Are there any negative consequences of these suggestions?

*Should the review of doctoral faculty look at sustained research over time or the most current publications?

*Some departments have stopped applying to the Doctoral Faculty for many reasons:  no doctoral program; no release time from assigned duties when taking on additional work with a doctoral student. There is no equity in the workload. 

Dr. Felix asked that the group think about Doctoral Faculty status and then about the Graduate School forms that routinely need her signature.  She also mentioned that one of her staff members (Betsy) set up a database of doctoral students with benchmarks of the forms.  If there were enough staff time, it would be ideal if each student’s record could be updated as the forms were processed. 

Are there any suggestions that Dr. Felix should take back to Graduate Council?  Her idea is that campus-wide rules should be basic but the departments/programs rules should be specific.  Faculty mentioned the problem of having a faculty member from outside the department on a dissertation committee.  Some felt it was difficult to find someone and didn’t provide much input; others felt an outside person brought a lot to the process.  Dr. Felix asked faculty to provide any suggestions/comments to either she or Dr. Ronald Dotzel, chair of the Graduate Council’s Rules and Regulations Committee.

Re: Graduate Faculty meetings – why do we approve the graduation lists? Is it just for formality?  It was suggested that the next meeting of the Graduate Faculty be held either the second or third week of April.

The meeting adjourned at 2:45 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Gwendolyn Y. Turner

Graduate Faculty Secretary

GYT:meh