Attendance: Catherine Axinn, Pat Beamish, Josephine Bloomfield, Duncan Brown, Carolyn Cardenas, Scott Carson, Lee Cibrowski, Brooke Dagnan, John Day, David Drabold, Judith Edinger, Peter Johnson, David Juedes, Dina Lopez, Christine Mattley, Natalia Matukhno, Chuck McWeeny, David Mould, Michael Mumper, Tootie Overby, Robert Roe, Susan Sarnoff, Katherine Tadlock, Maureen Weissenrieder, Julia Zimmerman. 

Excused: Jerrel Mitchell, Josep Rota, Ginger Weade, Liz Miller.

Guest: President McDavis

Convened: 2:05 pm.  Packets with agenda were distributed and the sign-in sheet was passed around.

1.      President McDavis:

President McDavis said that when he came here and talked with OU faculty he found that the undergraduate programs at OU were well known.  Graduate programs offered by OU have less visibility.  He said that one of the goals he mentioned in his inaugural address about making Ohio University a nationally prominent research university goes hand in hand with excelling at the graduate level academics.  He noted that we must look for programs that are exemplary and promote them.  He also added that we are in the 21^st century and this goal cannot be achieved independently.  This goal requires partnerships among departments; we need to focus on multidisciplinary areas. 

He informed the Council about a meeting conducted by Governor Taft which was attended by other Presidents of universities from Ohio as well.  Governor Taft wants enrollment to increase by 30% in the next ten years.  This is not going to be easy, President McDavis said, because this increase in enrollment will have to be achieved without any new money coming in from the State.  We have to rely on self-help measures.  He said that we can accomplish it by raising money from the private sector, facilitating economic development in South Eastern Ohio, and promoting the development of an entrepreneurial spirit for our academic units. 

President McDavis said that we have to answer the questions: “What do we want to be?” and “Where do we want to go?”  Once we answer those questions, we need a blueprint to help us get to that goal.  One way of identifying what we can do is to develop niches.  We need to figure out where we can excel in research.  We have a good foundation, but we have to be better known for our graduate programs.  This goal is within our reach.  Good planning and dedicated faculty will help us get there.

We also need to ask whether our very decentralized structure is the best structure for us to move ahead with developing our graduate programs.  President McDavis said he did not know the answer to that question but it needed to be asked.

President McDavis then opened the floor for a question and answer session. 

The first question was raised by David Drabold.  He said that most universities that have research money have a major research site in their medical schools.  What about at OU?  The President acknowledged it and said that the commitment to do so exists, but we must link engineering departments and the local hospitals in the region with the medical school.

The second question was raised by Peter Johnson.  He said that identifying niches in the past has not been a very successful endeavor because it gets personal and feels like it would antagonize some people.  The President responded to that concern by stating that we have to start at the unit level to eliminate that.  The decision to identify a niche should not come from top down; it has to happen at the college level, at the faculty level, at the department level.  They can start with one research idea and a little bit of seed money.  Since we do not have a wide research portfolio, we can work towards galvanizing the interests of faculty.  Collaboration, Co-operation and partnership among the academic units are crucial he indicated.

The third question was raised by Maureen Weissenrieder, she asked what role does the President see the Graduate Council playing in helping the President reach his goal?  President McDavis said that the members of Grad Council have a good idea of where excellence exists, and that they can make recommendations to him.  He said he is very open to all kinds of ideas and suggestions.  He said that he is happy that we have a group to think about graduate education. 

The fourth question was raised by Susan Sarnoff.  She said that she appreciates the decentralization that exists at OU, though she said she would not mind seeing a more centralized role to meet research goals.  It could be a unit that would not just expect the faculty to do research, but also support it, like providing more grant writers for faculty research interests. The President supported that idea and said that we must pick up on the advantages of both systems; a centralized administration and that of a decentralized system and come up with a model of our own which serves us best.

The fifth question was raised by Natalia Matukhno.  She said that it was hard to find good research classes for graduate students.  The President responded by saying that this is an area where Grad Council can be very helpful.  It can identify areas and classes from various departments.  Duncan also responded to that saying that in some Colleges decisions have been made to cut a graduate research class when a similar course was being offered in a different department.  The intent was to free up a faculty member to teach more undergraduate courses.  President McDavis said that we have to strike a clear balance with the undergraduate and the graduate education so that there is not a “subtle” or “not so subtle” pressure on faculty to teach one class instead of the other.  He added that when he came to OU, he was talking about growth.  Then he realized that there would not be any money coming in from the state for this new growth, so he said, he slowed down on it a bit.  But he said he is now all about growth again.  It has to be planned growth and the three areas where we can grow to create a “win-win” situation is to get more out of state students, more graduate students, more international students (they contribute to the above two).  He added that Columbus would want to see us grow in domestic undergraduate enrollment, but we are not really likely to grow that much in that direction.  We are more of a regional university; we need to be a national university.  

The next comment was made by Susan Sarnoff.  She said that some niches that we have had are some of our programs that serve local communities.  We also offer good services on campus for students with disabilities.  But these things are not promoted.  The President said that, people respond to what they perceive.  They hear about our excellent undergraduate programs and we get students for them.  

President McDavis also said that to be a research university we need to have a research budget in triple digits.  We have to double our research budget.  He also said that we have to identify some peers as well.  He added that he hoped that he had laid to rest the comparison of OU to Miami University.  He said Miami is a research intensive university, and we are a research extensive university. 

David Drabold commented that we definitely have to target excellence, but we also need to make some allocation for increasing the standard of some of our lesser known programs.  President McDavis agreed and said that he too feels we should build on strength.  He said that a “rising tide lifts all boats”, so if we can garner national attention on some programs, that will bring attention to all other programs.  Everyone should be rewarded for excellence, it could be excellence in research or in teaching.  We have the College of Osteopathic Medicine, it can carry some other departments along with it.  We cannot get to the top without the College of Osteopathic Medicine taking the challenge, and they are up to it.  They can get lots of outside funding for research, especially through partnerships.

Carolyn Cardenas raised the next question.  She asked how we would assess quality.  She observed that President McDavis had repeatedly said that the number of research dollars they attracted was a way to measure the success of a program.  She then asked how we would find a ruler  to measure excellence in programs that do not have access to the same resources.  For example, NEA is currently underfunded, unlike NIH, and that Fine Arts, consequently, could not raise millions of dollars in research funding as could the sciences.  President McDavis said that money is not the only metric that would define how well a department is doing.  Each unit will provide a metric which will be discipline specific.  Research dollars are important but they are not everything.  We are ranked 98^th among all U.S. doctoral granting universities by the U.S. News and World Report, and we have to identify where we want to be in the next ten years and how that will translate for all our units.  It is not a one size fits all. 

Duncan Brown raised concern over the fact that we have high non-resident tuition and we do not have reciprocity with other states.  President McDavis said that he is aware of this problem and is considering possible solutions.  He also said that he is very concerned about the increase in fees and that at OU we have a fee for everything.  He said that when we are decentralized, each unit can charge fees.  He informed the members of Grad Council that the Board of Trustees has said that they would not be likely to agree to any more unplanned blanket increases in fees.

Tootie Overby raised the issue of money being diverted from academic units to administration.  The President said he is not in favor of pitting administration against academics.  We are one university.  He said we have to conceptually agree to redistribute money.  He said that unless there is pain, there won’t be much in terms of redress from the legislators.  He said that he has not received a single complaint regarding the tuition hike from any students or parents.  When our budget is cut, we still find ways to do what we do.  But there is no indication of the pain it has caused to still achieve these goals.  This conveys to the legislators that we really did not need the money in the first place.  Another comment he made was that, if we have budget cuts, let us not run to protect our own units, let us all work together.

2. Chair’s Report:

a.       November Minutes: Minutes from November: No changes were recommended in the November minutes, they were passed.

b.      February Meeting: February meeting will be in this same room.  The other meeting that was going to take place in this room has been cancelled so the room is available for the Grad Council meeting.

c.       Conflict of Interest Reviews: Duncan Brown reported that he, and Joe Bernt (the previous Chair of Graduate Council), had met with the Professional Relations Committee of Faculty Senate to review the language in the Faculty Handbook on Conflicts of Interest.  He was pleased that the PRC committee has picked up very quickly on the problems that we have discussed so far. 

d.      Roles of Committees: Duncan also said that he will send an email to all members to remind the committee chairs regarding the self-description of the roles of each committee.  He added that it will be interesting to see if there are any gaps or overlaps in the functions each committee performs.

 
2.      Michael Mumper:

a.       Graduate Recruitment Fund: $105,000 was distributed to more than 30 departments.  There were many interesting ideas that came through in these proposals.  After a brief follow-up with everyone, a report will be submitted which will then be shared with all the Grad Chairs so that everyone can benefit from this pool of ideas.

b.      Stipend Enhancement Fund: $200,000 was distributed in Stipend enhancement funds by early December. 

c.       International Recruitment Update: Karla Schneider is in Malaysia.  Usha Matta will be in India next month.

d.      Enrollment: Michael referred to the handout in the package that indicated that applications are 40% higher this year at this point in the year than last year.  We will know later in the year what the actual increase or decrease was.  The increase may have been due, at least in part, to quicker processing of applications.

Katie Tadlock:

Katie introduced the two brochures that were attached with the package that was distributed to all the members.  Both these brochures contain information about Graduate Fellowships.  One is for students and one for Grad Chairs.  She informed the Council that these brochures will be sent out to all Grad Chairs and will also be available at OGS for students to pick up. 

3.      Admissions Requirements Committee: Two no conflict of interest reviews were presented and passed.  Josie Bloomfield said that she has been working with Katie Tadlock to work on the wording in the forms so that the key information can be elicited without causing confusion.  She said that in most cases they found that the student had more or better information than the academic advisor and/or administrative supervisor. 

4.      Policy and Regulations Committee: David Drabold thanked the committee and Maureen Weissenrieder for their work on the issue of identifying a fee for continuous registration.  The basic idea that this fee stems from is that the students who leave when they are close to completion of their programs is neither good for the department nor for the students themselves.  Catherine Axinn noted that it was an interesting choice to have Lifelong Learning as the fee recipient and not the parent department of the student.  She noted that even if the student is not physically present in Athens, he/she might still be receiving help from their advisor via email.  The reason for picking Lifelong Learning was because it enjoys more flexibility than most other departments in terms of fee collection.  However, the intent was not that Lifelong Learning would retain all of the fees collected. 

Julia Zimmerman noted that if a student is not registered they cannot use the library facilities.  She recommended this policy to Graduate Council because it would help resolve this problem. There was discussion about how much do students actually pay if they register for one quarter and are not really receiving any services in that quarter.  Duncan Brown noted that international students pay a lot more for relatively minor services.  There is variation in funding at the department level, students can be funded for one to four years.  David Drabold asked if there was a general policy about when a student is dropped from a program.  Katie Tadlock said that it is not an automatic drop, the Office of Graduate Studies takes that action when the department asks for it.  Judith Edinger said that the College of Osteopathic Medicine has a leave of absence policy which she would share with the members. 

Carolyn Cardenas expressed concern about part-time students and the fact that there are a lot of Public School Teachers who take one class a quarter.  She asked if there would be a grace period before a student would be dropped from the program.  Katie Tadlock said that in researching policies of other institutions the expectation of minimum registration holds till the final stage when a thesis, project, or dissertation may be undertaken.  Based on our peer institutions this minimum registration requirement is often three semester hours, which would be one class per year.  There was some discussion on how to keep track of all the students.  There is no way to find them if they do not keep in touch.  Robert Roe said that an advantage of this policy is that the onus of staying in contact would be with the student.  Katie also added that three out of ten schools have a similar policy to ours, but the majority of the schools have a minimum registration policy in place.  Duncan asked Katie if she could find some of the “language” from the policy used by these schools to help us formulate our own minimum registration policy.  There was also discussion about whether a student needs to register in the quarter he/she will be participating in commencement.  If that is the only university activity a student is participating in then it might not be necessary to require students to register for one hour to enable them to “walk”.

The meeting was adjourned at 4:00 pm. Next Meeting on February 11, 2005 at 2:00 pm in the Governance Room, Walter Hall.