Graduate Council Meeting Minutes
May 9, 2008
Attendance: Catherine Axinn, Dominic Barbato, Jacqueline Bennett-Hanning for Howard Dewald, Judith Edinger, Andrew Escobedo, Kamile Geist, Jennifer Horner, Aimee Howley, David Juedes, Hans Kruse, Jody Lamb, Christine Mattley, Animesh Rathore, Josep Rota, William Shambora, Robert Staron, Katherine Tadlock, Wanda Weinberg, Peter Wickman and Yinjiao Xu.
Excused: Joseph Bernt, John Day, Howard Dewald, JoAnn Dugan, Tim Heckman, Greg Lusk, Brian McCarthy, David Mould, Chester Pach and Mike Prudich.
Convened: The meeting was convened at 2:10 pm.
1. Approval of Minutes of the April meeting
The minutes from the April 11th, 2008 meeting were approved.
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 task force received between 25 and 30 responses to the set of guidelines and rating criteria that were distributed at the end of March. He said that 23 responses were received for the online feedback form and several responses came via electronic mail. The overall results of the on-line feedback form were positive.
David clarified that the intent is not to rank programs and that Masters programs are not being ranked against doctoral programs. He said that within a week or two, final guidelines along with information regarding how the comments about the rubric and grading criteria were addressed will be sent. He said that starting July 1, the online and paper forms for completing the self study will be available. He recommended that the departments could get started on this now as well and that the graduate chairs could delegate parts of this to multiple faculty. The deadline to submit the completed self-studies is October 1. This will enable the Task Force to compile its report by the end of the calendar year.
Aimee noted that in the OSU report it seemed like some programs were on a moratorium and did not go forward with the self study. She asked if the Task Force had taken the fact that if a program was undergoing major transformation into consideration. David said that the ‘age’ of the program question would be able to factor that in.
Andrew expressed concern about the timeline for the completion of the self-study. He said that he understands the significance of this, but since a lot of this data is only available to graduate chairs, delegation of certain parts to other faculty might not prove helpful. David recommended that members send an email to Ben Ogles, the chair of the Task Force to express concern about the timeline. He added that the December 31, 2008 deadline is the deadline for the state and that the Task Force has to be able to read the 90 or so of these self studies in two months and prepare the report for the state. He added that they will also look for some feedback from the Deans and maybe from the Dean of the new Graduate College as well.
Catherine said that some Colleges have a system where up to date vitas of faculty are available electronically. Andrew said that the College of Arts and Sciences does not have these documents available electronically, they only have paper copies. David said that the hardest part of these self-studies, he believes, is to identify the research and scholarly activities that the students have been involved in. That information will need to come from each faculty member individually. He added that Institutional Research will help with this process by making specific data available for each College. Aimee added that she was informed that Mike Williford will be putting together a packet for each College instead of making that information available online.
Hans raised the issue about the results of the feedback form, asking if the concerns of the 13% who did not consider this appropriate are being addressed or not. David replied to Hans statement/question by mentioning that the survey included section by section comments as well, and that the section by section comments were more positive.
B. OSU Review of Graduate Programs: David said that in the last meeting Chester had asked a question about the process that OSU used to review their Ph.D. programs. This is a direct quote from their full report:
“The Graduate School has carried out an assessment of all doctoral programs at Ohio State making use of data compiled by the Office of Institutional Research and Planning and the Graduate School; reports submitted by the Colleges. And a review of the reports by a committee of distinguished faculty at Ohio State and two highly respected graduate deans from Illinois and Princeton. Graduate programs are embedded in the overall research, teaching, and service activities of departments and colleges, and the doctoral assessment process also provided valuable information on those activities”
David added that he was told that they used data from the latest NRC survey.
C. Graduate Student Health Insurance Waiver: David told members that a few days after the April meeting, he sent a memo to the Provost to express support for the health insurance waiver for graduate assistants. He added that he was happy to read in the Post a few days later that the waiver had been approved.
3. Remarks by Katie Tadlock
A. Graduate Student Health Insurance: Katie acknowledged the role of Dominic Barbato and Graduate Student Senate. She said that $110,000 has been made available to subsidize health insurance cost for Gas/TAs/RAs and for the College of Medicine.
B. Graduate Tuition Waivers: Katie informed members that at this point in time it seems that each College will have the same number of quarters in tuition and recruitment scholarships like last year. She added that she is still waiting for final amounts for each College which is pending final decision on shifting general fee to instructional fee.
C. GERB: The GERB meeting next week will review proposals for the new round of “mini-GERB” funding.
D. Graduate College Task Force: Katie informed members that the final report of the task force has been submitted to the Provost. She added that she has forwarded that version to all members.
E. RACGS: Katie informed members that the Ph.D. proposal for Civil Engineering has been posted on the OBOR site for public comment. It will be taken off after two weeks and will then go to the Board of Regents for approval.
She said that the Governor and Chancellor are concerned about not having enough instructors to teach in nursing schools. They might make funds available to hire new faculty.
Katie informed members that an announcement for a new round of proposals for Choose Ohio First will be coming shortly (on May 13th).
Katie told members that with the state’s focus on economic growth and workplace development, we might see recommendations for modeling decreases of 5 and 10% for the next budget year.
F. International Week: Katie reminded members that International week begins on the 11th and culminates on Saturday May 17th, with the street fair.
G. Student Research and Creativity Fair: Katie informed members that the Student Research and Creativity Fair will be held on May 15th from 12:30 to 2:30 at the Convocation Center.
4. New Business
A. Planning and Strategy Committee (Hans Kruse):
i. Resolution concerning task force on the creation of Graduate College: Hans informed members that he and the committee are fully supportive of the spirit of the document. The document could however, have used a couple of more rounds of editing, he added. That would just facilitate for clarifying issues and decrease the chances of misunderstanding. He recommended adding text that includes the full mission of the Graduate Council to the document. He added that the fact that this is an advisory body to the Dean is not going to change, unless Faculty Senate proposes it.
Jennifer asked for clarification regarding starting new graduate programs. Hans said that for a new graduate program, the Dean would first need the approval of Graduate Council and then that of UCC. He added that currently we follow the same procedure as well. Hans said that since the Graduate College would be the home for interdisciplinary programs, it could be perceived that the Graduate College could initiate new programs on its own. He said that he is aware that it was not the intention of the task force to do so. But, the document as it stands currently can be misread due to the lack of consistency.
Joe Rota asked if it was too late to edit the document. Hans said that given the limited amount of time available, it was not possible to edit the document in its entirety. Following discussion on adopting the resolution, Katie recommended that another resolution can be proposed wherein the resolution put forth by the Planning and Strategy committee be included as part of the Report from the Graduate College Task Force. Catherine added that if the report can still be edited, then it is better to do so and if it cannot, then we can move ahead with the resolution proposed by Katie.
The meeting was adjourned at 3:00 pm. The next meeting is on June 6th, 2008 in the Governance room in Walter Hall from 3 to 5 pm.
