Attendance: James Archibald, Catherine Axinn, Sergiu Aizicovici, Rathindra Bose, Gary Chleboun, John Day Howard Dewald, Judith Edinger, Andrew Escobedo, Kamile Geist, Keith Gilland, Jennifer Hines, Jennifer Horner, David Juedes, Hans Kruse, Jody Lamb, Jan Maxwell, Brian McCarthy, David Mould, Jim Rankin, William Shambora, Robert Staron, and Katherine Tadlock

Excused: Joseph Bernt, JoAnn Dugan, Annette Graham, Aimee Howley, Stephan Oechsle, Gary Weckman, Dan Weiner, and Peter Wickman.

Convened: The meeting was convened at 2:10 pm.

1.     Approval of Minutes of the March meeting

The minutes from the March 13^th, 2009 meeting were approved.

2.     Chair’s Report (David Juedes)

1. Membership Updates: David informed members that Willem Roosenburg has resigned from his position on the Graduate Council and that Sergiu Aizicovici from the department of Mathematics will be replacing Willem.  He said that he has invited Daniel Weiner to attend all meetings of the Graduate Council until his official status on the Graduate Council is resolved.  He added that he has not heard whether the resolution from the last meeting has been approved. 

David said that earlier in the year he misinterpreted the policy on the Graduate Student Contract Grievance Board and that he mistakenly appointed members to the Board who were not members of the Graduate Council.   Furthermore, he mentioned that it was discovered that the policy appears in two different places (the Faculty Handbook and the University Policies and Procedures Manual), with each one being slightly different.  David mentioned that Jennifer Hines contacted Legal Affairs for advice about how to proceed.  The confusion regards who appoints the faculty members of the Board: the Chair of the Graduate Council or the Associate Provost for Research and Graduate Studies.  After some discussion about that issue, it was decided that both Rathindra and David would jointly appoint members to the board.  He added that Hans Kruse and Gary Weckman will be serving on the Board until the end of the year, and that he has asked the Chair of EPSA, Scott Titsworth, to look into the discrepancy in the policies listed in two documents (Faculty Handbook and University Policies and Procedures Online Manual) about the constitution of this board. 

2. Task force on Centers of Excellence: David said that the appeals were considered on March 16^th and effected departments/programs/Deans were informed about the results.  Programs whose appeals were denied have till April 20^th, 2009 to submit their comments to the Task Force.  He added that he has recommended to Dean Ogles to write a one-year follow up report to list the actions taken to address the concerns identified in the report. 

Rathindra reminded members that he is still very concerned about having this information on the OU website.  Given that this report is accessible to students, he is concerned about the ratings of departments and programs having an adverse impact on our incoming graduate class.  He said that the word can spread very quickly among international students and that will hurt our departments.  He said that he respectfully requests Graduate Council to have that information taken off the website.  Judith echoed the same sentiment about the OU-COM ratings and supported the idea of not having the information available on the OU website.  Jennifer Hines noted that the Graduate College can have a paper copy of the report available for perusal. 

A motion to have the report taken off the website was approved. 

3. Graduate Commencement: David informed members that today’s packet contains an email from the Registrar, Deb Benton about adding another signature line to the graduate diplomas.

4. Q2S: David said that graduate education has not been given its due in the discussions about the transition process.  David told members that per his conversation with Jeff Giesey, one of the coordinators for the Q2S project, he has been invited to attend the meetings that are being held to finalize the electronic system which will be used for this process.  He added that there are a number of items in the Q2S transition that pertain to graduate education and should be addressed soon.  He said that Jennifer Hines has suggested the creation of an ad hoc committee for this purpose. 

5. Program Review: David reminded members that the Curriculum committee is considering the review for the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the program proposal for a Master of Engineering Management degree program.  

3.     Remarks by Rathindra Bose, Jennifer Hines and Katie Tadlock

1. Q2S Transition: Rathindra brought everyone’s attention to the Outlook article today about the Q2S transition.     

2. Tuition Scholarships: Rathindra noted that currently there are too many exceptions to the graduate tuition scholarship policy.  He said that Jim Rankin along with other Associate Deans have looked at the process across campus and have put forth some recommendations..  He added that he would like to see the recommendations implemented without a negative impact on the students.  He said that when there are too many exceptions, it is not productive; hence the policy in place should be thorough. 

3. Suspension of admission to various Graduate Programs in the COE: Katie informed the Council that a number of programs in the College of Education have had admission suspended by their College.  Some of the suspensions are for this year only, while others are for an indefinite period.  Katie told members that a list of programs that are being suspended is included in today’s packet.  Katie informed members that the Graduate College is currently in the process of removal of the programs from the graduate application.  She added that the Graduate College is working with applicants to either refund their application fees or to move the application to another program, per the applicant’s request.  Rathindra said that RACGS will be informed of those programs whose admission is suspended indefinitely.  Rathindra also made some general remarks indicating that he thought it was wise to close programs that are not viable to be able to expand the ones that are good.

4. Bologna Accord Degrees: Katie told members that today’s packet includes a couple of sample Bologna compliant documents that the Graduate College has received recently.  She said that this could probably be taken up by the Admissions Committee to discuss the implications for our graduate admissions policy.  Rathindra said that at Northern Illinois University the Graduate Council had given the authority to the Graduate College to handle these on a case-by-case basis.  He added that it turned out that 75% of those degrees were not acceptable. 

5. Absolute Minimal TOEFL for admission: Katie informed members that in the past few years there have been a large number of exceptions to the TOEFL policy and that the Graduate College would like to have some guidance on the absolute minimum TOEFL score required to process a graduate admission.  Rathindra echoed the same sentiment noting that he would like to see a reduction in the number of exceptions.  He told members that at Northern Illinois University, they had a separate category of graduate students, known as ‘student at large’.  These students were not admitted to a degree program, but could take graduate level course work.  No more than six of those credit hours could be transferred if they were admitted to a degree program. 

Sergiu asked if all international students are tested upon arrival.  Katie said that if an acceptable TOEFL or IELTS score has been submitted, then they are not required to be tested unless the department wants them to be.  Hans noted it is a breach of our rules and policies if a student arrives on campus without having submitted a TOEFL score.  Howard said that faculty requests for waivers are sometimes based on interviews conducted with applicants.  Jennifer Hines noted that many of these are self-supported students and that there is considerable pressure exerted by the departments on the Graduate College to admit them.  In response to questions about exceptions to the TOEFL requirements, Katie informed members that only the exchange students from Denmark are exempted from it.  Jennifer Hines added that for the exchange students from the University of Shanghai the Speak Test is administered by faculty who travel to China, but then it is graded by the OPIE staff here. 

Rathindra said that he would like to see the Graduate College with the support of the Graduate Council uphold all aspects of graduate education.  He added that at NIU, all Memorandums of Understanding that involved graduate education were also signed by the Dean of the Graduate College.  At OU, he said, that the Graduate College does not even receive a copy of those.  A new international team has been formed and the Graduate College has representation on it.  Rathindra said that he has proposed that the Associate Dean of the Graduate College chair that team.  David Mould recommended using a transmittal form accompanying to a Memorandum of understanding where the Graduate College signs off.  Rathindra endorsed the idea, saying that a form like that would be helpful to the Graduate College in terms of knowing what was being committed.  Jennifer Hines said that presently, the UIC has been reviewing these rigorously. 

Discussion focused on setting a base line score, a floor, so if someone had a score below it, they would not be admissible.  Rathindra added that it is imperative to have that for us to uphold our standards.  He added that it is not difficult to score a 300 on the test.  Jennifer Horner said that we have to remember that we need to be fair to students and that we should not bring them here, if they will not succeed.          

4.     New Business

1. Planning and Strategy Committee (Hans Kruse):

Resolution regarding Graduate Commencement: Hans brought everyone’s attention to the email about the change in the signatures on the graduate diplomas from Debra Benton (University Registrar) that is a part of today’s packet. 

The resolution regarding the signature of the Dean of the Graduate College on Graduate Diplomas and a role for the Dean in the graduation ceremonies was approved with the inclusion of the word ‘osteopathic’ in the name of the College of Medicine. 

David Juedes will forward this resolution to the Provost.  Jennifer Hines informed members that Andrea Gibson (Special Assistant to the VP for Research) will be available to meet with the members of the Planning and Strategy committee to talk about the commencement ceremony and other aspects of graduation.   

The meeting was adjourned at 3:30 pm.  The next meeting is on May 8^th, 2009 from 2 to 4 pm, in Baker 240.