MINUTES

Graduate School Administrative Board

September 18, 2006 – Bate Building – COAS Conference Room

Present: Sharon Bland, Sylvia Brown, Dennis Brunt, Michael Corso, Margie Gallagher, Linner Griffin, Gerhard Kalmus, Sharon Knight, John Kramar, George Kasperek, Jim Holte, Ron Newton, Pat Pellicane, John Placer, Heather Ries, Carmine Scavo, Mark Taggart, and Terri Workman.

The meeting was called to order at 3:40 pm by Dean Pellicane.  It was announced that
John Placer will be permanently replacing Saeed Moaveni on the GSAB as the College Computer Science and Technology Graduate Director.  Dr. Terri Workman represented the Health Sciences Division on the Dental School proposal.  Dr. Michael Corso of the Health Sciences Division accompanied her.  Dr. Workman discussed the feasibility of a dental school in a form that was different than that of UNC-Chapel Hill.  Dr. Corso and an outside group of dental educators were in charge of coming up with the dental school curriculum in concert with UNC-CH.  Because of the compensation differential on the outside external to the university, the overall challenge in developing the school is to recruit and maintain a quality faculty.  Dr. Workman reported that a large number of well qualified student applications cannot be handled by UNC-CH because of the small number of seats available; there are roughly 1200 qualified applicants of which about only 250 are accepted.   This leaves a large pool for acceptance into other dental school programs. 

The ECU dental school operating budget has to include indigent care.  The school will have outlying service stations in the eastern and western regions, and even in the underserved populations in the Durham area.  The establishment plan needs to have a good business model; this process was guided by Dr. Rick Niswander, dean of the ECU Business School.  The ECU dental school will be eligible for Medicaid reimbursement of 70 cents on the dollar, and it is proposed that it will operate with a “break-even” budget.  Indigent care numbers will be controlled, so that they do not overburden the outlying clinics.  The program will be administered by the university with a “pay for performance” model approach.   The dental school will have a low tuition rate which will significantly reduce the loan dollars required by dental students: therefore, graduates will have a greater tendency to serve in the outlying clinics in rural areas if they do not have a significant debt burden. 

There will be laboratory space for clinical research on-site in the regional centers.  There will be rotation of students at the site whereby some of faculty will be permanently located.  The school will have a partnership program with the community colleges in training workers in the supporting technical dental fields.  The regional sites will be operated as a 501-C3 non-profit operation.   A committee will be selected to pick the sites.  Right now there are more than 20 sites that meet the selection criteria based on a model of appropriate metrics.   Teleconferencing with distance education and on-campus video conferencing and training will be provided. 
A grade point average of 2.0 is acceptable in dental schools – similar to UNC-CH.  The Dental School mission goals are prioritized as: (1) education, (2) research, and (3) service.  The UNC-CH dental school is more research oriented.  Dental students do not have a residency requirement, but there will be an opportunity for residency for very specialized fields of dentistry.  The national trend is to move into the residency requirement.  It will cost $300/sq ft. to construct the new buildings.    

A motion was presented by George Kasperek to approve the request for authorization to establish the ECU dental school.  The motion was seconded by Jim Holte.  The motion was approved unanimously.  Sharon Knight reported that the dental school curriculum proposal was approved by the GSAB curriculum committee, and she submitted it as a motion for approval. The motion was seconded by Jim Holte.  The motion was approved unanimously. 

Dean Pellicane announced that the upcoming agenda items for GSAB are: (1) A Grievance Policy, (2) Graduate Assembly involvement in graduate education, (3) Solicited items from GSAB, and (4) Residency.  

It was reported that Sharon Knight has resigned from the Center and Institutes Review Committee.  Margie Gallagher was nominated as her replacement.  Dr. Gallagher was unanimously elected to serve.

Dr. Pellicane announced that the Graduate School was given additional resources for tuition remissions and assistantships.  In-state tuition remissions will be supported by some of the additional dollars that were received for assistantships.  The Yardley Group will be meeting next Tuesday on campus;  their objective is to find out if they have their basic assumptions correctly stated, and they will be providing a preliminary report.  It is evident that future allocations will be based on intense evaluation, scrutiny and the formation of assessment documents for both master’s and doctoral programs.  The former is being prepared by the university (Task Force on Graduate Education) and the latter by the Yardley outside consulting firm. 
   
 The next meeting date will be Monday, Oct 9th in the Mendenhall Underground at 3:30 pm.

Respectfully submitted,



R. J. Newton
Recording Secretary