Graduate Council Meeting Minutes
April 11, 2008
Attendance: Catherine Axinn, Dominic Barbato, Joseph Bernt, John Day, Judith Edinger, Howard Dewald, JoAnn Dugan, Kamile Geist, Jennifer Horner, Aimee Howley, David Juedes, Hans Kruse, Christine Mattley, Brian McCarthy, David Mould, Chester Pach, Mike Prudich, Animesh Rathore, Josep Rota, William Shambora, Robert Staron, Katherine Tadlock, Wanda Weinberg, and Peter Wickman.
Excused: Andrew Escobedo, Tim Heckman, Jody Lamb, Greg Lusk, and Yinjiao Xu.
Convened: The meeting was convened at 2:10 pm.
1. Approval of Minutes of the March meeting
The minutes from the March 14th, 2008 meeting were approved as written. In response to the minutes, Joe Rota observed that more domestic students than international students receive financial aid. He added that it is a misconception that international students receive more aid than domestic students.
2. Chair’s Report (David Juedes)
A. Task Force on Centers of Excellence in Graduate and Professional Education: David Juedes informed members of the Graduate Council that the email with links to the draft of the guidelines for the self-studies, a draft of the associated rubric, and the survey was sent earlier this week. He added that the Task Force will review the results of the survey and will make appropriate changes to both the self-study guidelines and the evaluation criteria. He added that the self-studies will be due sometime in the fall. David said that OSU has already completed the self-studies and recommendations have been made. He informed members that today’s packet includes an article published in the Columbus Dispatch that discusses the OSU report.
Chester asked if the Task Force had looked at the self-study format that OSU used. David said that they had seen an earlier study of doctoral programs at OSU, but he did not know whether that was the one used to conduct the self-studies this time. Chester added that if it has taken the Task Force six months to put together the guidelines, the departments should have enough time to complete the studies as well. Aimee asked if the Chancellor had identified a time frame for these studies to be completed by all universities. She added that the Deans were told that December 31, 2008 was the deadline for the completion of the self-studies, including the under graduate component. Hans said that the end of the calendar year is when the completed studies are expected.
B. Graduate College: David told members that a print out of the final draft report of the Task Force is included in today’s packet. Sergio Ulloa will give this report to the Provost sometime next week, he added.
C. Online Courses: David informed members that UCC is working on a set of guiding principles for online education at Ohio University. He said that there will be a new instruction code for online courses. Under the current proposal, approval of online courses will go through UCC. A course that is currently taught traditionally may be offered as an online course once a course change form is approved by UCC. Under such a system, a course could be offered both online and through traditional approaches during the same quarter.
3. Remarks by Katie Tadlock
A. Ph.D. in Civil Engineering: Katie informed members that the proposal for the Ph.D. in Civil Engineering was approved at the last RACGS meeting and now it will be forwarded to the Board of Trustees for their approval.
B. Reducing the General Fee: Katie informed members that in the current Vision Ohio implementation plan, rebalancing the general fee and tuition is a priority. The total footprint of the amount paid by students will not change, but it addresses concerns about the kinds of things funded by the general fee. The general fee will be reduced by about $75-80 and the tuition will increase by the same amount. The general fee will be around $513 per quarter now. The increase in tuition is not a concern for students holding appointments, since that will be waived per their contract. This requires about $269,000 in additional funding for existing tuition waivers to support the endeavor.
C. Graduate Tuition Waivers: Katie informed members that at this point in time no new funds are expected to be added to that pool. And that it is okay to assume a status quo regarding the graduate tuition waiver allocations for Colleges. She added that Dr. Bose might have some other ideas for graduate tuition waivers for future years, but that would be discussed later.
D. Application Update: Katie informed members that graduate applications remain up by 7% and admits are up by 2%. Katie also said that per the preliminary report put forth by CGS, international applications have increased by 3% nationally. So, we are higher than the national average for that statistic. She added that currently undergraduate admits are down, based on the number of housing deposits paid.
E. Graduate Studies/Research and Sponsored Programs Transition Team: Katie informed members that the Provost has appointed a transition team comprised of staff from both units to identify potential areas for collaboration, synergy, and efficiency. This is in preparation for the upcoming merger of the two units. The report is due to the Provost in mid June.
4. New Business
A. Planning and Strategy Committee (Hans Kruse):
i. Discussion of documents related to Graduate Education: Hans said that the role of Graduate Council seems to be about the same as it was noted in the previous draft. He said that he has sent some edits to Sergio, and that the Task Force is planning to submit the document to the Provost on Monday. He encouraged members to send feedback to Sergio. David added that if members feel that something does not seem right and needs to be corrected, then they should send their comments to Sergio. He said that we are an integral part of graduate education and we can have our voices heard by providing feedback.
B. Graduate Student Affairs and Fellowships Committee (William Shambora): William informed members that the committee received 21 applications. He said that three of those were from the Center for International Studies and that it would have been appropriate to have had only one from the Center. This put the burden of selecting one out of the three on the committee. He added that for the future, this recommendation might be made to the Center. In response to Chester’s question about the stipend amount, Katie said that she is hoping that the Office of Graduate Studies (?) will be able to underwrite the general fee for all the recipients. She also said that this year the number of applications was higher than it has ever been in the past. Typically 15 to 17 applications have been received in the past.
Graduate Council approved the recommendations made by the committee regarding the Named Fellowships.
C. Curriculum Committee (Chris Mattley):
i. Overview of Second MSW Cohort: Katie informed members that the Ohio Board of Regents has already been informed about this. Graduate Council voted in favor of approving the delivery of the existing MSW program in Cohort format at Ohio University-Zanesville’s Cambridge Satellite.
D. Student Health Insurance (Dominic Barbato): Dominic informed members that the Graduate Student Senate is in the process of renegotiating the Health Insurance Plan. A few of the items that are under discussion are increasing the outpatient drug coverage from the current limit of $1000 to higher values and increasing the coverage for catastrophic illness from $50,000 to $100,000 annually. He said that the students are locked in with the current plan for the next academic year as well, but for the future years a different plan can be worked out.
Dominic said that some members of the Geography department at Penn State University calculated the living wages for all parts of the country and based on that, the living wage for Athens is $14,002 per year. He said that at this point in time, only 140 graduate students receive that much. Chester said that he applauds these efforts. He presented an example of the quality of health care available at Hudson. He said that one of the students from his department was involved in an accident. He went to Hudson, where they did an X-ray and told him that it was a sprain. When he went home to Canada and had another X-ray he was told that he had a fracture. Upon his return he went for follow up back to Hudson and he was told that the X-ray machine was broken, and no referral was given to him either. Chester said that the hopes that the increase in the premiums will be used appropriately for providing better health care at Hudson.
Graduate Council moves to strongly recommend bearing in mind the competitiveness of the graduate programs to provide additional support to Graduate Assistants in the form of fee waivers for health insurance. David Juedes will draft the resolution to send to the Provost.
E. Reasons for not accepting admission offers at OU: There was a general discussion about the question of whether stipends for graduate students at Ohio University were competitive in comparison to our peers in the state and nationally. Joe Bernt said that it would be helpful to conduct a survey of graduate chairs to identify and list reasons noted by admitted students who decline admission offers. He said even anecdotal information will be helpful. Chester agreed that it would be helpful to have that kind of information, but also stated that usually this kind of information is not forthcoming when admissions are declined. Animesh said that if a department requires that the acceptance or denial be communicated in writing, then that might increase the chances of getting this information. David Juedes said that the stipend at one of the schools in his discipline is $30,000 a year.
Peter said that sometimes it is hard to determine the financial footprint, since the scholarship packets have so many other fees and insurance charges associated with them. Dominic added that this problem is compounded by the fact that some students have a half or three-quarter assistantship. Catherine said that data akin to this was a part of the GERB proposals, so it can be gleaned from those documents. The comparative data was compiled by researching competitive programs. Chester added that some of this data will be a part of the self-studies that the programs will be conducting. David said that the national bodies for most disciplines usually have such data.
Dominic said that today, 5 pm is the deadline for submission of outstanding faculty award. He said that so far 31 applications nominating 26 faculty members have been received.
The meeting was adjourned at 3:25 pm. The next meeting is on May 9th, 2008 in the Governance room in Walter Hall from 2 to 4 pm.
