Tuesday, August 31, 2021

Council in Attendance: 
Mike Wittie (Engineering)
Christopher Livingston (Architecture)
Scott Creel (Letters & Science)
Tricia Seifert (Education)
Michael Brody (Faculty Senate)
Marc Giullian (Business)
Jane Mangold (Agriculture)
Wade Hill (Nursing)
Catherine Dunlop (Letters & Science)
Que Vo (International Programs)
Hannah McKelvey (Library)
Dawn Tarabochia (Health & Human Development)
Craig Ogilvie (Dean of The Graduate School)

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

Absent:
Dennis Aig (Arts)
Maureen Kessler (Student Representative)

Meeting started at 11:02 am on WebEx

Approval of April 28, 2021 Minutes

Motion to approve made by Giullian, 2nd by Tarabochia: 7 approve, o opposed, 1 abstention

Announcements

Update from the Dean

  • Welcome new members: Jane Mangold (Agriculture), Scott Creel (Sciences), Hannah McKelvey (Library)
  • College of Nursing announcement: $101 million donation to the College of Nursing
     Anticipate DNP midwifery program in the next year
  • Meetings likely to stay virtual this semester
  • Data from Office of Planning & Analysis: 1st year retention of graduate students that started 2019-2020 academic year, did they come back for graduate semester in most recent academic year?
    • Up 3% for doctoral to 92.7 %
    • Up 2% for master’s to 93.4%; highest ever
    • On track to be record number of graduate students this fall, official numbers forthcoming
  • Focus on wellbeing for graduate students
  • Focus on strategic plan goal 1.2.4: career paths
  • Q: Any updates on graduate housing?
    • About 60 more grad students in grad housing than last year
    • Working with residence hall leaders to address numbers of upper-level undergraduates in grad housing (about 300) – tend to apply earlier than grad students
    • A new graduate housing facility has not been approved yet
    • Graduate student stipends increasing

Faculty Senate update (Brody)

  • Lawsuit contesting legitimacy of BOR to govern the campuses was filed, secondary lawsuit regarding the right for students to organize politically on campus and transgendered athletes’ rights to participate in sports
    • Update on status in 2 weeks
  • Advocated for safety measures for fall term
  • Also work with senate leadership throughout MUS system – will meet next week with OCHE to discuss vaccinations, masks, etc.
  • Represent campus at BOR meeting Sept 15-16

Old Business

MS-Sustainable Food Systems Online Option

  • Revised after UGC comments: STAT 511 was removed, start date clarified
  • Electives aren’t defined—could suggest listing available electives
  • Q: STAT requirement removed: EDCI 501 almost always fully enrolled, might need to direct their students to times to take it or might need an additional section – encourage working closely with the department offering the course
  • Seems like a student would want a more specialized education – a lot of broad-based classes
    • There are more courses, defining the planned electives might help
  • For benefit of senate: best to formalize request in a letter and include in CiM
  • Curriculum seems well designed
  • Dunlop motions to approve as written with addendum letter detailing electives for online option
    • Seifert seconds motion
    • Motion passes: 9 in favor, 0 opposed, 0 abstained
    • Livingston will forward proposal with letter     
                                                                            

Associate Graduate Faculty

  • Current policy allows process for research scientists/engineers/NTT members to co-chair, proposal allows options for these research scientists/engineers/NTTs to chair committees
  • Key role for department: reviewed by faculty of a department
  • Revisions: mainly to remove the appendix A: idea that someone could have equivalent experience, instead must have equivalent degree
  • Informally reviewed by faculty senate subcommittee, union leaders of NTT, and research council: mixed feedback
  • Call for questions/comments
    • Why is it problem that NTT member would need to co-chair?
    • Important for a TT member in the department to serve: connected to department and curriculum
    • Highly qualified NTT faculty, but at the same time, the role of the advisor is to interface with the department and curriculum as a whole. Is the student best served by someone outside of the department?
    • As written, the proposal includes staff
    • Does this affect a lot of faculty? Not significant numbers – but looking at what’s best for the students, not the numbers
    • More professional degrees (e.g., Education) have many NTT faculty, serious workload for the TT faculty
      • As some of the language has shifted, there is an issue around NTT workload – full time versus part time (based on course teaching alone)
      • Chairing a committee through completion is an enormous undertaking
        • Do we have the capacity to properly support students?
      • From conversation with NTT leaders: if NTT was to take on role of chair, this would be included as part of workload
    • College of Nursing: applied doctorate; NTT faculty are best suited to serve as advisors
      • Nursing currently has an exception to allow NTT faculty as chair
    • Paragraph about eligibility allows departments to choose
      • Nomination comes at department level: safeguard in this process
    • Faculty needs to grow for program to grow
      • Building larger graduate programs this way is not encouraging for departments as opposed to hiring plans – departments need to feel sturdy with the capacity they have
    • Seifert motions to table: members to share revised language back to their colleges and revisit at the next meeting
      • Tarabochia seconds
      • Tabled for next meeting

 

  • Co-Convening Policy
    • Review updated policy draft: co-convened courses that provide quality graduate experience
    • Feedback focused primarily on 2 items:
      • 1) Co-convened course enrollment must be at least 50% graduate students or move that direction over time
    • 2) Undergraduates need 3.25 or permission of instructor – parallels reserving a course for graduate study
      • Difficult with the fluidity of enrollment in courses
      • 50% difficult to achieve for a lot of programs because of the number of graduate students compared to undergraduate students
      • Policy sounds like a graduate course with undergraduates petitioning to take a graduate level course, how does that match up with departments trying to teach both grad and undergrads
      • A lot of co-convened course have the same content, but different expectations for graduate and undergraduate
        • The extra assignment for graduate students felt like busy work in practice. To address this, proposed the entire syllabus is at the graduate level, but undergraduates complete a subset of the assignments (less work for UGs than taking an actual grad course)
      • Difference of assignments and realization of learning outcomes: if learning outcomes are the same for UG and GR, having fewer assignments, will those achieve the graduate level learning outcomes? Or will there be separate learning outcomes?
      • A policy could accommodate both high-quality graduate experience and co-convened courses
      • Co-convened serve a unique and useful role: transition from UG to GR—are different from graduate classes

 

Adjourned at 12:32 pm

Next scheduled meeting– September 14, 2021 WEBEX