MINUTES
Graduate School Administrative Board Meeting
Monday, November 10, 2008
3:30PM
1511 Greenville Centre
MEMBERS PRESENT: Bland, Sharon; Decker, Jim; Dellana, Scott; Eakins, Stan; Ericson, Rick; Fonooni, Hamid; Griffin, Linner; Holte, Jim; Hough, Monica; Kasperek, George; Mott, Vivian; Newton, Ron; Patterson, Belinda; Peele, Hettie; Pellicane, Patrick; Pokorny, Marie; Pories, Mary Lisa; Ries, Heather; Reis, John; Rouse, Art; and West, Terry.
MEMBERS ABSENT: Ken Wilson
AGENDA
1) Call to order
The meeting was called to order by Dean Pellicane at 3:35 pm
2) Approval on the 10/27 GSAB minutes
Amendments to the minutes were as follows: (1) “Appendix L” should be inserted in reference to the revision of the Faculty Manual by the Faculty Governance Committee to include key changes in the Unit Program Review document; (2) Hettie Peele, Rick Ericson, Heather Reis, and Monica Hough were present; (3) Vivian Mott was not present.
3) Announcement
a. Thanks was extended to all who participated in the recent Graduate School Review
b. The Graduate Assembly will meet on 11/11/2008
Julie Poorman from the Office of Student Financial Aid will present new information and new guidelines on financial aid available to students
c. Dr. Pellicane will be attending a Graduate Dean’s meeting at Western Carolina University. Topics to be considered include the following:
i. Continuous registration for students who are in the research thesis/dissertation phase of their program whereby they would be charged a flat fee rather than be charged per student credit hour. Dr. Pellicane will be discussing this with his fellow deans. He has already had discussions on this with representatives from the UNC General Administration.
ii. There will be a panel discussion on certificate programs
d. The Graduate School is developing manuals of standard operating procedures for applications/admissions and administrative processes. These will include the mechanics and steps of the processes as well as the BANNER software entry steps.
4) Graduate Faculty Criteria Code for the College of Technology &Computer Science (COT&CS)
The faculty of COT&S have approved this document. These faculty wanted a point system. The discussion session focused on the lack of clarity in the document. It includes items of productivity for a five-year time frame. It appears that a faculty member can obtain points of credit for an item more than once. Concern that this is a typo? This could be the cause of the ambiguity conveyed to the reader. It was concluded that there is need to get more clarification from the COT&CS faculty. Some items appear to have been “weighted.” There is some duplication in the narrative, but it appears that this was done deliberately.
It was concluded that the document meets a threshold standard, and since it has been approved by the COT&CS faculty, the GSAB should be encouraged to accept the document as written.
The GSAB agreed to approve the document dependent upon clarification to be provided by COT&CS. It was agreed that they should submit the document again to the GSAB for approval after they provide the clarification.
[On November 12, Dr. Pellicane received an e-mail from David L. Batie from the COT&CS and he explained that there is no “weighing” of the activities. Under the heading Activity Group 2 - Research or Creative Activity the line, “Senior Author of a research paper in a peer-reviewed journal,” appears twice. The COT&CS wanted to retain both lines because the faculty wanted an opportunity to include more than just two instances for a research paper; therefore, this was not a “typo.” On November 26, Dr. Pellicane notified the COT&CS and the GSAB to the fact that the faculty criteria document was approved.]
5) Dr. Pellicane presented several “topics of conversation.” The following topics were discussed to obtain background information, but no legislative action was taken:
a. Ethics training for graduate students needs to be addressed.
b. Residence requirements
c. Transfer credit
d. What is the credit hours required for the PhD? What should this be? The GSAB will be addressing this issue in the future. Items to be considered include the following:
i.What are the criteria to get a degree? There are other criteria other that just cr hr.
ii. Candidacy examination
iii. Capstone experience
iv. What courses in a master’s degree can be transferred into a PhD program? Can they be transferrable if used in a previously earned degree?
Dr. Pellicane will create a draft proposal which will address the above mentioned issues. The proposal will be considered at the next GSAB meeting.
6) Adjourn
The meeting was adjourned at 4:50 pm.
