Attendance: Catherine Axinn, Dominic Barbato, Josephine Bloomfield, Duncan Brown, Angie Bukley, Lee Cibrowski, Dawn Deeter, Judith Edinger, Aimee Howley, David Juedes, Hans Kruse, Christine Mattley, Michael Mumper, Chester Pach, , Josep Rota, Susan Sarnoff, Nihar Shah, Robert Staron, Katherine Tadlock, Maureen Weissenrieder, and Julia Zimmerman.
Excused: Patricia Beamish, Carolyn Cardenas, Donna Conaty, David Drabold, Tim Heckman, Animesh Rathore, and Yinjiao Xu.
Guest: Doug Lape (Director, Transportation Services)
Convened: The meeting was convened at 2:10 pm.
1. Approval of Minutes of the February meeting
The minutes from the February meeting were approved.
2. Chair’s Report (Duncan Brown)
A. Posthumous Degree Policy: Duncan said that the posthumous degree policy that was approved by the Provost last fall is still not a part of the Policies and Procedures Manual. The process for adding it to the manual has now begun. To match the format required for the manual some minor changes in wording had to be made. However, when he and Lee looked at the revised text it was clear that there were no substantive changes.
B. Program Reviews: Duncan informed Graduate Council that multiple program reviews are in various stages of completion and the first of those will be coming to Graduate Council next month. He added that he will try to have the review available on the website.
C. Apparel and Textile Merchandising: Duncan said that he would forward information about restarting the program in Apparel and Textile Merchandising in the College of Health and Human Services.
D. Graduate Student Housing: Duncan informed members that Jim Hintz could not be here today because of a meeting that he had to attend at OSU. He added that he will try to have Jim come in some other time.
3. Remarks by Michael Mumper
A. Graduate Application update: Michael informed members that we have received more than 3000 applications by now. Applications from China have increased a lot and there has been a moderate increase in the number of applications received from India and the Middle East. He added that domestic applications are up as well by 350 from what they were at this time last year.
B. Graduate Tuition Waivers: Michael said that he does not have any information about the budget situation that might have an impact on departments offering fee waivers to newly admitted students. He added that he is aware that offers need to be made at this time and he recommended that departments should go ahead with it and that as soon as he hears anything from the Provost he will let members know.
C. GERB: Michael said that there are six proposals that need to be reviewed and that the Provost agreed with him that they should hold off on reviewing them, given the current uncertainty of the budget situation.
D. Patriot Act: Michael said that he will have some more information from Jim Kemper soon about Graduate Assistants and Teaching Assistants being considered as graduate students and not as employees.
E. ETD: Michael informed members that the ETD unit of Graduate Studies is working with the Library to have the submission process for graduating students even more streamlined. He added that Angie McCutcheon, Director of Electronic Thesis and Dissertations will attend the Graduate Council meeting either in April or May to provide an update.
4. Remarks by Katie Tadlock
A. Incomplete to Fail conversion: Katie referred to the handout in the packet about an update in the policy about an ‘Incomplete’ grade received by a student. Thus far, students usually have six weeks of the next quarter of enrollment to have an ‘Incomplete’ updated to another grade. If it is not done so in six weeks of the next quarter of enrollment the grade changes to an ‘F’. Sometimes the next quarter of enrollment is many years after the “I” was assigned. Per the new policy the “I” will revert to “F” at the end of the next regular academic term (not including summer session) in which the student is enrolled or two years from the end of the term in which the “I” was given which ever comes first. Also, the “I” would revert to an “F” upon graduation.
B. Language Requirement for some graduate programs: Katie said that in continuation with the discussion from the February meeting about the language coursework requirement for some graduate programs it will be beneficial to have a method of indicating competency on the OU transcript.
C. Deadline for Named Fellowships: Katie informed members that the deadline to turn in nominations for the Named Fellowships is March 14th and that soon thereafter packet will be compiled and sent to members of the Graduate Affairs and Fellowships committee just before Spring break.
D. CGS deadline for newly admitted students: Discussion about the April 15th deadline (that all institutions as signatories to the CGS resolution are required to comply with) sometimes results in departments losing some good students. Josie added that having to wait until midnight of April 15th to make the second round of offers sometimes results in not getting the desired group, because they have already accepted an offer at another institution. Michael said that unfortunately some institutions send letters that do not clarify that the offer will stay open until April 15th. Josie asked how long this deadline has been in place and wondered if in the present times an earlier date would make more sense. Katie said that policy has been in place since the early 1990s and that it was recently reaffirmed a few years ago.
5. Discussion Items
A. Doug Lape, Director Transportation Services
Doug informed members of Graduate Council about Transit services on campus and arrangements made with the city. He presented a brochure that has the updated map, with the new Baker Center. He said that campus transit started in 2000 with one 15 passenger van as a pilot program initiated by an Associate Vice President. He said that the budget for the program has not increased since 2001. It is 100% student operated and it runs on two routes, the West Union and the Ridges with the transfer taking place at Baker Center. At this point in time, due to budgetary constraints the bus runs from 7:30 to 5:30. He added that this winter quarter for the first time, they had to leave passengers at the bus stop, because of lack of seats. To accommodate the growing numbers they have been able to borrow another 15 passenger van from the Motor pool. This extra van is running on the West Union route and will do so until June of this year. Doug said that upper administration is aware of this now and he is hopeful that the situation will be addressed adequately.
He said that an outside company has the contract from the city to run their local bus. Doug explained that the city is eligible for grant funding but the university is not. He said that neither the city nor the university has an operation big enough to run both sets of transit vans. He said that OU is working with the city on the East State Street route. Catherine said that she commends the door to door service of the CATCAB, she said that she has used it many times. Hans noted that some areas are not covered by the service and that some apartments run their own shuttles. In response to Duncan’s question about Carriage Hill, Doug said that the city transit covers that. Doug also said that OSU charges a $9 per quarter transportation fee to facilitate running the transit buses. Doug added that budgetary constraints prevent them from running the service in the evenings and on weekends. He said that they have been getting phone calls from apartment complexes about running shuttles there.
Doug said that they have $97,000 in general funds and that it costs approximately $35,000 per route per vehicle. He added that since it is a student run operation, there are no overheads in terms of benefits or high salaries. He added that the increase in fuel prices and the minimum wage have been very hard on them. Hans said that they have done a wonderful job with a small amount of money. Doug responded to Joe’s question that this cost does not include the cost of the vehicle. He added that the first shuttle was purchased from the motor pool funds. David Mould asked about the possibility of people paying for the service. Doug said that they had looked into it a few years ago and both the Student Senate and the Graduate Student Senate supported a resolution about instituting a transportation fee. Doug said that if people pay as they come in the bus, it slows things down. The goal of the service is to move large numbers of people across not so large distances very quickly. He said that is the reason why most schools use a fee and not a pay per ride system.
David Mould said that most people who use the service are regulars so if a quarterly pass or some other similar method can be instituted, it will be beneficial for both the users and the operators. Doug said that they are looking at ways to offset costs and Transportation Demand Management (TDM) looks at these issues and suggests alternatives. Josie said that having a good transit system ties in with the Vision Ohio priorities about a successful first year experience and that the administration needs to be reminded about it. Catherine said that Graduate Council could send a resolution to the Provost requesting that funding not be cut for this program. Susan added that having a good system is vital for retention as well. She added that students have said that they cannot afford to pay the fees and also buy a car so that they can commute, so they would rather go to another, school such as OSU, where they have access to a transit system.
B. Graduate Student Housing
Michael referred to the handout included in today’s packet about Graduate Student Housing at our peer institutions. He added that they received responses from nine out of the ten institutions. Michael said that there seem to be three models that are being followed; the university hosts a website where landlords list their available properties, residence halls designated for graduate students, and the university operates its own apartment buildings that range from having 20 to 475 units. Michael said that none of the universities said that they had an agreement with local landlords where they would have reserved and subsidized housing for graduate students. Hans asked how many of these schools are in isolated areas like OU. Chris said that Washington State is similar to OU in that respect but they have a lot of graduate housing. Duncan said that so does Urbana-Champaign. He added that this is pretty compelling evidence and that the Facilities Planning Commission should be aware of this.
Catherine said that all of these seem to be flagship schools from these states. OU is not the flagship school of Ohio, OSU is; and in this aspect these nice schools are probably not the best examples to be our peer institutions. Hans said that since we are not the flagship school then we have to work harder to get a good class and to keep them here, which might mean spending more on this than the flagship schools do. Michael said that since the freshman class has grown, there has been no room for single graduate students in the dormitories. Judith said that on the OU-COM website landlords can list their properties and students can check out these pictures. She added that it is very low maintenance; it just requires a short review time of the listings provided. She added that these landlords like graduate students as tenants so it works out to everyone’s advantage.
Michael asked if this operation would be housed in Graduate Studies or with the Off- campus housing office. Judith said that they host the website because the office of Off-campus housing wanted landlords to pay a large amount to have their properties listed on their website. The landlords were not interested because they always have enough people to rent their properties. Chris said that some schools like Colorado also let you find roommates through these websites. Duncan noted that if someone from OU-COM can attend the next meeting to talk about this, it will be helpful and will save us time and energy by not having to reinvent the wheel. Nihar said that the graduate students have a list-serv that they use to find room mates and that could perhaps be expanded. Hans said that the system needs to have some staying power and that could be possible if Graduate Student Services can facilitate it.
Discussion focused on access to such list-servs and making people’s addresses and phone numbers available online. Lee noted that several years ago oak identification records were assigned to everyone who made a housing deposit. Katie said that there are federal and university policies regarding this and students are issued a temporary ID until they come in person and show a photo identification to verify and validate who they say they are. Aimee asked if some sort of password protection can help with this. Michael said that some progress was being made about this, but then the data security issue happened and the focus of that department shifted. Duncan said that it will be good to have some of this based in Graduate Student Services and maybe parts of this can be based in departments. He added that a number of different approaches are possible. Josie asked if Graduate Council could talk to the Provost about this and how the priorities that were identified did not make it into the Master Plan. Duncan said that he was going to invite the Provost to a meeting this year and it is good to have a specific topic to talk to her about. Joe said that he would also like to get specific information about international students. He said that in all of his travels abroad all the alums mention how wonderful it was to have the Mill Street community. Susan said that housing, transportation, and child care are all interrelated and need to be addressed together.
6. Recruitment and Admission Requirements Committee
Proposal to waive TOEFL requirements for students in the exchange program with the University of Southern Denmark:
Josie said that this program has been in place for many years and that the English proficiency of these students has never been questionable. Katie said that an informal agreement has been in place to waive the TOEFL so this proposal is not about a change in policy. She added that these students are English majors and they are all non-degree seeking. Josie said that every year two to four students come through this program.
Graduate Council approved the proposal put forward by the Recruitment and Admissions Requirement Committee to waive TOEFL requirements for students in the exchange program from the University of Southern Denmark.
The meeting was adjourned at 3:40 pm. The next meeting is on April 12th, 2007 in the Governance Room in Walter Hall from 2 to 4 pm.
