Wednesday, January 22, 2020

Council in Attendance: 
Ahmed Al-Kaisy (Engineering)
Wade Hill (Nursing)
Dennis Aig (Arts)
Sobia Anjum (Student Representative)
Lisa Davis (Letters & Science)
Tena Versland (Education)
James Becker (Health & Human Development)
Michael Brody (Faculty Senate)
Sara Mannheimer (Library)
Marc Giullian (Business)
Que Vo (International Programs)
Susan Kollin (Letters & Science)
Craig Ogilvie (Dean of The Graduate School)

Also in Attendance:
Lauren Cerretti (Graduate School)
Emily Peters (Graduate School)

Absent:
Christopher Livingston (Architecture)
Brock Smith (Agriculture)

Meeting started at 11:01 am

Approval of December 4, 2019 Minutes

Motion to approve made by Aig, 2nd by Versland, unanimously passed

Announcements

Faculty Senate Update (Brody)

  • Guidelines for centers are close to approval
  • Revisions to consulting policy for the university, making the policy more explicit
  • Annual review items: 1) extending annual review deadlines under certain circumstances
    2) trigger for a new annual review if you don’t meet expectations
  • Upcoming projects: faculty survey to assess experience of faculty, administrators’ review
  • MSIM and Optics and Photonics both had first reading

New Business

Hourly Pay for Graduate Students (Policy & Procedures Subcommittee)

  • Revising the language of Graduate School policy 2.4 Other Student Employment: "A graduate student at MSU may be employed primarily through a graduate teaching or research assistantship. However, graduate students may also work as a student employee at Residence Life, University Food Services, ASMSU tutoring, and so forth. Twenty (20) hours is the maximum total hours per week graduate students can work on campus.”   
    • Some of the language is vague (e.g. "and so forth," "primarily")
  • Slippery slope of interpretation; a greater number of grad students have been paid hourly instead of with assistantships
  • 40 graduate students paid hourly last fall: 11 positions appear to relate to research, 9 with teaching
  • Plan is to clarify the language, but remain flexible by saying, e.g. “with approval of Graduate School Dean a student may…”
  • Problems with being paid hourly: no progression assurance, no requirement to stay in good standing, students are not represented, no resident tuition, or tuition waiver
  • Grad students were paid anywhere from $9.08/hr to $25/hr
  • 19 hr/wk cap for student workers
    • Cap used to be 20 hours; with the union it changed to 19 hours to avoid .5 FTE
  • There are some situations where the flexibility of hourly graduate student workers is important
    • This could still be allowed with a level of approval
    • One step of approval would help the student and advisor before it goes hourly
    • If putting a student on a grant, should be an assistantship position
    • Smaller projects can be a lower number of hours or short-term appointments. There are creative solutions to get graduate students on assistantships rather than hourly. Still provides the student protections, professional development, etc.
  • Q: Is there a need for this to be regularly monitored? How did this become known? It may be valuable to have a monitoring process.
    • A: Caught because of a particular student situation. It can be monitored by The Graduate School once a semester going forward.
  • Subcommittee wanted to get UGC’s feedback. Will bring back updated policy proposal for the next meeting.

Master of Music in Music Ed, and Master of Music in Music Technology

  • Dean Ogilvie has been in communication with the proposers
    • In both, would be helpful to discuss the committee structure. Who will be advising the students? Who will be the program director?
    • In both, projected to be small programs – UGC doesn’t do fiscal analysis but the Provost’s office will. Will review how much revenue the program will bring in. With the small number of projected students, unlikely that a TT line will be approved.
      • 7 new courses being proposed for the Technology program
      • 3 new courses proposed for Education program
      • 10 more graduate level courses for the department. Increase in enrollment is about 4-5 students in each program. Provost will likely say there is not enough revenue for an added TT line, which means most likely they will be taught by NTT.
  • 2-3 students are music instructors in this semester’s C&I capstone class; have an advisor in music they currently work with
  • Education program will be online. There is no other online Music Education program that isn’t performance based in the neighboring 10 states. Will be attractive to students in MT and other states – flexibility to complete all online.
  • Q: Is it possible for the council to focus on one proposal over the other?
    • A: Music Education has a potential larger enrollment than they are estimating in the proposal
    • Music Technology: thriving undergraduate program in Music Technology, 80 undergraduates, but new classes are most likely going to be taught by NTT
  • Q: Are there similar programs to the Technology program in the region?
    • A: 3 in a 10-state region
  • When building a new graduate program, inevitably pull TTs from undergrad and NTTs end up teaching the undergraduates. How does this affect undergraduates?
  • No discussion of committee structure, who will be leading the program, proposal should also specify that undergraduate electives must be 4xx level
  • Possibility of co-convening 4xx-5xx level courses was discussed. Proposers’ answer was that many of their graduate students will have been undergraduates here and will have already taken the course
    • For out-of-state students, this would not be an issue
  • Q: How different does this program (Music Education) have to be from the program at UM? Not clear on difference with UM’s program.
    • Teacher based research, not performance based
    • UM also requires some onsite performance; MSU’s would be entirely online
  • Concern with enrollment and difference with UM’s program might make it difficult –something proposers should address in detail
    • Finite number of music teachers in the state, they should be able to project numbers
  • Aig will send the comments back to the proposers; ask them to respond to UGC’s concerns

Graduate Awards (Ogilvie)

  • Would like to propose that The Graduate School recognize 3 awards at commencement: land grant excellence, scholarship excellence, and teaching excellence.
    • To make this viable, departments would be responsible for selecting the nominees. The Graduate School would do a cursory check that nominees are on track to graduate, are in good standing, etc.
    • Recognized by: notation on the student’s record, a letter from president, listed in commencement booklet, honor cord to be worn at commencement
    • Proposed allocation: 5% of average number of the department’s graduating students
      • Balance between making this an honor and giving enough awards. Problem with 5% is that some programs would only be eligible to award 1 every 2 years.
    • Not every program has scholarship, teaching—some departments may just award the land grant scholarship
  • Open discussion on allocating the number of awards:
    • Education would be giving a lot of awards, may seem unfair to other departments
      • Would it be too many awards? Ex: 21 for Education a year?
      • Could be 5% up to 5 total awards?
    • Could be 1 per category per department. Departments already have their own awards—it can be difficult to get enough nominees for all awards.
      • A percentage seems fairer for the range of sizes of departments
    •  Could be 5% total instead of 15% total (5% per categories)
    • Could be 10% total and departments are able to allocate within the different categories
    • Even at 5% per category, most departments would only award 1-2 per category per year. Education and MSSE are the only departments with more than 2 students per category.
    • 5% total across the 3 categories seems fair. Department could choose how to allocate across the categories.
    • Q: Should there be a minimum?
      • A: Departments would have flexibility
  • Appreciate the initiative of these awards
  • Wanted to get feedback from UGC. Dean Ogilvie will finalize the proposal and take to the president.

Graduate numbers are projected to be down S20 compared to S19 (headcount)

  • Doctoral numbers are up
  • Big drop is in the non-degree student numbers, which means a few more degree seeking students
  • Will be looking into why non-degree numbers are down

Adjourned at 12:03 pm

Next scheduled meeting – February 5, 2020 LJ 325