Graduate Faculty CouncilMinutes - August 23, 2000 |
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Minutes of the Graduate Council
August 23, 2000
The meeting was convened at 3:05 by John Jaszczak as outgoing secretary. Outgoing president David Landon and outgoing vice president Steve Seidel are no longer on the council.
Attendance:
- Steve Carr
- Gregg Bluth
- Sarah Green
- Casey Huckins
- Bruce Rafert
- Vicky Bergvall
- Walt Milligan
- Marilyn Urion
- Mark Roberts
- Bruce Mork
- John Jaszczak
- Neil Hutzler
- Chung-Jui Tsai
Nominations for officers:
The council needs to elect President, Vice President and Secretary for this year. Nominations are requested to be sent to the secretary (jaszczak@mtu.edu) before September 1. This is going to be an important year for the Graduate Council due to the continued planning for growth in research and graduate programs, and with the retirement of Sung Lee.
Upcoming Meetings:
Meetings need to be scheduled in the near future to elect officers and to discuss spin-off PhD program proposals. Spin-off proposals are likely to be due in the graduate school by Sept. 6 and will be simultaneously distributed to the Grad Council and the Senate. We will have time to review the proposals and meet the week of Sept. 11. Please email the secretary with your schedule preferences and schedule conflicts as soon as possible. Last year, meetings were held at 5:00 PM on Tuesdays or Wednesdays so this is also an option. The secretary will arrange meetings until new officers are elected.
Spin-Off Ph.D. Programs:
Marilyn Urion summarized the background for the recent decision by Carnegie that MTU be designated Doctoral Intensive instead of the higher level we desired of Doctoral Extensive. There is great concern that this could have a significant impact on our base funding from the state, and longer term affects in recruiting and retaining high quality faculty and graduate students. Although we met the necessary average of 50 PhD's per year over the 3 year evaluation period (with no margin), we did not meet the requirement of graduating them in at least 15 programs in each of the 3 years. This is in part due to misalignment of our program names compared to the dept of education classification scheme. The evaluator from Carnegie was willing to look at our programs, however, and judge accordingly. The bottom line is that we need more PhD programs. Many departments on campus have been growing naturally and could very logically propose new "spin-off" PhD programs. Such proposals are relatively short, and have a somewhat simpler time line to approval and implementation. Such spin offs should have no new department or administration. Some new PhD program proposals have already been completed and their review should be expedited in the Grad Council and the Senate.
The counting of programs and PhD students for the 2005 evaluation by Carnegie will start NOW. The 3 years will be 2000-1, 2001-2, and 2002-3. Therefore we need to act NOW to get logical programs approved that we would have worked on implementing anyway for logical benefit of our departments and students.
The classification of instructional programs will be changing, probably by the 3rd year of the counting sequence above.
The deans are meeting with the graduate school tomorrow to make a preliminary agreement on what spin-off programs are worth promoting first.
Details of timelines, spin-off templates, implications, classification schemes should be available through your dept chairs or deans. They are also available from Marilyn Urion.
Research Advisory Group
Bruce Rafert emailed all on the grad council list a draft of the suggested actions put forward gy the ad hoc Research Advisory Group. Bruce suggested that everyone read it soon and that the grad council discuss, adopt and promote any items that it sees fitting. One example that we could immediately promote is the topic listed as "Carnegie Classification" in page 6 with several items of action recommended.
-John Jaszczak
Secretary
| Last reviewed on 06/15/2007 |