Graduate Council Meeting
Minutes
October 12, 2001
Attendance: Joseph Bernt, Mehmet Celenk, Howard Dewald, Katherine Jellison, Bhavin Mehta, Averell Overby, Paula Popovich, Arvind Singhal, Scott Sparks, Leona Cibrowski, Bobbi Conliffe, Glenn Doston, Josep Rota, Maureen Weissenrieder, Derek Bleyle, Danielle Johnson, Holly Rivers.
Staff: Raymie McKerrow, Katherine Tadlock, Jennifer Francone
Excused: Charles McWeeney
Absent: Harvey Ballard, Marilyn Poeppelmeyer, Edwin Rowland, Edward Yost, Daniel Innis, Roger Radcliff, Julia Zimmerman
Convened: 2:10 P.M.
Chair Bernt did greetings and introductions.
Associate Provost for Graduate Studies Report: An ad hoc committee has been formed by the Interim Provost to look into ways OU might reduce the impact of the General Fee. As of now, stipends are effectively reduced by the payment students make—currently $430 per quarter for full-time students. Also, students must pay for a medical plan whose costs are $490 for domestic students and $648 for international students.
As of the last report, we are down about 4-5% or 100-125 graduate students from this time last year. As soon as the impact of this decrease is known, Dr. McKerrow will pass that information on to the council. Dr. McKerrow will be meeting with programs to explore reasons for specific drops in enrollment. One major concern is that the decrease in fee-paying students is greater than the drop in enrollment. This may have serious implications on the budget. Most of the enrollment drop is at the masters level due to cyclical programs and therefore will not affect the 85% doctor enrollment requirement for state subsidy. This is not a statewide problem. This could affect the number or OGS stipends available to departments and how flexible the Graduate Studies office can be for exceptions.
The second item in the new presidential mission statement relates to masters and doctoral education. Dr. McKerrow will be meeting with programs to see what creative approaches might be used in delivering existing and new master’s programs as well as to examine ways to enhance the university’s doctoral programs. With respect to the latter, Dr. McKerrow and others will be taking a hard look at how to prioritize efforts in improving existing doctoral programs as well as beginning new programs.
Regents Advisor Committee on Graduate Studies (RACGS) has approved three off-campus OhioUniversity programs (Counselor Education at the Southern campus, Political Science at Pickerington, and Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at Ironton and Chillicothe). Hearing and Speech Sciences is working on the full development plan for the Doctor of Audio logy to submit to RACGS.
The Office of Graduate Studies is offering recruitment grant and stipend enhancement grant opportunities again this year. The Office of Graduate Studies will be awarding approximately $50,000 in one time only monies for recruitment and $200,000 in base stipend enhancement. The deadline dates for the grant opportunities are October 12 for the recruitment grant and November 5 for the stipend enhancement. This award may not be available next academic year.
There was a complicated issue about graduate stipend checks that arose in part due to the new Oracle system, and in part due to signed student contracts coming in later than the September 10 deadline that was published last Winter/Spring. The Graduate Appointments office worked out a progressive payment plan with Payroll (otherwise students would not have been paid until November 1). Dr. McKerrow plans to meet with Payroll to discuss ways to avoid the issues that arose earlier this month.
Dr. McKerrow would like Graduate Council to consider the following issues.
There are several credit hour issues that need to be addressed. The first is a 50 credit hour master’s rule. There is a belief that a policy related to master’s thesis/non-thesis programs exists, but it is not written as such in the catalog. In essence, the policy requires that in those cases where master’s thesis programs require 45 credits, the non-thesis option requires an extra five credits for either a seminar paper, project, or other task. The second is the 135 credit hour PhD rule. This issue is should this be the minimum credits for doctoral degree. If so, it should be stated as such in the catalog. The third is the twelve hour transfer rule. First, is this sufficient at the master’s level or should the transfer be based on a percentage of hours in a degree program (e.g., 70 hour master’s program vs. 45 hr. program). Second, should there be a parallel rule governing transfer hours at the doctoral level. With respect to master’s programs, exceptions to the twelve hour rule have been made in some individual instances, and as part of a consortia agreement. With respect to the PhD, should there be a limit such as 1/3 of Doctoral hours may be transferred in.
Another issue to discuss is students with a doctorate in one field from OhioUniversity currently can be admitted for a second doctoral degree. It is unclear whether there is a clear policy against such practice were the degree in a same or similar field. Should OhioUniversity have a policy that permits, discourages, excludes or otherwise governs admission to a second doctoral program? Currently the language is ambiguous regarding this issue.
There is a 1986 policy on graduate faculty status on the web site http://www.ohiou.edu/policy/18-004.html , and a 1989 memo from then Provost Bruning confirming the dissolution of a Graduate Faculty designation. One question is which policy is in force (or should be). Options in tackling this issue range from confirming Bruning’s memo as current policy to establishing a new set of criteria for graduate teaching/advising. In the original policy, the Associate Provost for Graduate Studies was to keep a list of all graduate faculty. Currently, each college establishes its own guidelines for who qualifies as graduate faculty. Because of this, criteria may vary greatly from college to college.
There is a policy (http://www.ohiou.edu/policy/22-001.html ) that governs the process for posthumous awarding of degrees at the bachelors and associates degree levels. Dr. McKerrow has been asked to develop guidelines for awarding graduate degrees posthumously since there is currently no policy.
An issue has been raised regarding the current requirement that any student taking graduate courses must be fully matriculated. The issue is that this may discourage otherwise potential enrollment in courses to meet licensure requirements, etc. Whether current non-degree requirements are responsive enough to this issue, or whether other procedures should be developed to manage such enrollment is an item for discussion.
A number of programs use 100/500, 300/500, and 400/500 ‘bridge’ courses for simultaneous teaching at the undergraduate and graduate level. The extent to which this may compromise quality at the masters or PhD level is an open question. During the recent review process, this issue has been raised by outside reviewers. The reason for 100/500 and some of the 300/500 level courses are for skills courses that are not program requirements (e.g., foreign language courses). Most of the 400/500 courses came about due to graduate programs growing out of undergraduate programs. The numbers are not pure numbers. There is currently no policy on the number of bridge courses a graduate student can take.
As the number of off-campus programs grows, workload may be a faculty senate and/or grad council issue. Dr. McKerrow would like to look into compensation options for off-campus and distance programs.
With the first round completed and a second round underway, the issue that remains to be discussed is: “what happens once the review is completed?” More specifically, what should be the Graduate Council role, once the reviews are completed, in seeing that recommendations for support, etc. are addressed. Another question is how the programs are to receive increased resources. Graduate Council has the ability to follow up on recommendations that it made by requesting an additional review. Departments use the review in order to request additional monies for improvements. Because Graduate Council has no budget, it cannot offer any financial assistance. It was recommended that Graduate Council goes through the review process one more time, and then establish a review policy for Graduate Council.
The policy in place specifies that programs can determine conditions beyond a one-quarter ‘college’ approval for readmission. The policy does not specifically address how long a student is permitted to remain in “readmit” status beyond the expiration date for a Masters or Doctoral program. Should there be more precise language governing the length of time or a recommendation that a time limit be established and agreed to by the student?
Continuous graduate enrollment and the issue of differential fee structure for students who only need to complete their thesis or dissertation. Drs. McKerrow and Tadlock have talked about allowing students who have finished their program of study and left campus while continuing to work on their degree requirements to register for “continuous enrollment” under a different fee structure than that currently required by 1-2 credits. Should there be a different arrangement than now exists for “continuous enrollment” (e.g., students might pay $50-$75 fee per quarter between leaving the program and graduating). This policy is not in effect throughout campus. The fee would only be for students finishing their graduate degrees. Dr. McKerrow has not looked into the budgetary impact of such a fee. Also, they could change the requirement to one hour for everyone.
The language in our catalog regarding TOEFL requirements may need to be more specific with respect to whether departments wish to require a TOEFL in all cases from international students whose native language is not English. In addition, some institutions scale TOEFL and admission, in granting conditional admission only to students with TOEFL scores (or writing scores) below a certain level. A concern is what happens if a student takes the TOEFL once they arrive and the score is low. Also, there is a concern about the reliability of external scores. Students have a passing external score and then come to campus and take the test again and need to take courses.
Dr. Rota brought up a concern about international student admissions. With the current political climate, it is becoming more difficult for students to get visas in a timely manner or at all. Dr. Rota would like Graduate Council to look into ways of attracting international students. The U.S. government is trying to implement a computer database in order to track international students. If this does get implemented, it could add months to the visa process. Also, consulates have either been closing or restricting visas. The earlier departments can make admission decisions and forward the appropriate paperwork, the better the chances are that international students will be able to attend. Most international students who are late admits will not be able to attend OhioUniversity. This current situation may increase the number of transfer students because international students may go to the first school that admits them and then transfer once they are here.
Director of Graduate Student Services Report: Dr. Katherine Tadlock introduced herself and explained her duties. She does the international transcript evaluations for graduate students. She receives between 2500-4500 international transcripts each year. Also, Dr. Tadlock handles the conflict of interest determination and paperwork. Conflict of interest is when an Ohio University employee takes courses or is a department that they work in or with or they have a particular position title (e.g., associate provost, vice president). Most employees are not considered to be a conflict of interest. Dr. Tadlock is trying some new procedures in order to expedite the process. She is attempting to catch conflict of interest applications and send the paperwork out at that time. Drs. Tadlock and McKerrow do the initial review before sending the information to Graduate Council. Dr. Tadlock also handles the named fellows. Dr. Tadlock handed out preliminary dates for winter graduate contracts. The first check for winter quarter is issued January 1. As soon the dates are finalized, Graduate Studies will send them to departments. Dr. Tadlock is not aware of how removing the late fee for preregistration has affected registration trends. She encourages departments to have their students register as soon as possible. The advantages are that courses may not be dropped if they get enough students and that contract assignments can be determined earlier.
Chair’s Report: Chair Bernt handed out Graduate Council member list and committee assignments. He also created an ad hoc committee to look into graduate student rights. Currently, Graduate Council is short one faculty member. Chair Bernt would like to see more fluid conversation this year in addition to committee reports.
Adjourned: 3:38 P.M.
