Graduate Council Meeting Minutes
Sept 24, 2014
In Attendance:
J. Perkins, K. Luthria, A. Savakis, S. Ludi, L. Underhill, C. DeFilippo, D. Wilson, J. Hornak, T.
Trabold, D. Jacobs, J. Venkataraman, J. McCluskey, C. Shank (Minutes), M. Schweppe, H.
Flores, C. Licata
Agenda for the Meeting:
The strategy for completing the Graduate Council Charges were discussed. The
committee will be moving forward by holding group discussion for each of the listed and
ranked charges, the week following the discussion Joe Hornak will pass around a sign up
sheet and anyone interested in serving on the sub-committee will list their names. Subcommittees will be determined from the collected list of names after all the charges
have been discussed.
2.20 Graduate Student Teaching
Background for this charge:
An interest in training graduate students to teach, especially in the PhD programs, at
RIT. Flores is interest in creating workshop and seminars that, currently discussed as
being mandatory, for grads who will be teaching. The reason for this is to support and
create quality education. The Office of Graduate Studies felt there was currently no
organized support for grads that are teaching.
Discussion:
Concerns voiced that teaching classes for all the grads would not be an appropriate way
to prepare grads to teach because of the variety of disciplines represented in the
masters programs at RIT. CIAS has teaching electives specifically for grads who will be
teaching in the Arts. Different programs in CIAS already prepare grads for teaching
throughout there program. The comment is made that President Destler had said, at
some point, no grads would teach classes at RIT. Discussion progressed about how
specific programs support grads teaching already and have a history of doing so.
Conclusions:
The sub-committee will look, in part, at how much teaching is currently going on in the
colleges by grads. Will be reviewing the policy of grads teaching and will look at he need
for workshop/ seminar for teaching.
Sign up sheet will be passed around during Oct 1 meeting to sign up for this sub
committee
2.25 MS, MBA, MFA & PhD Thesis Quality
Background for this charge:
What does quality of Thesis mean across the master and PhD programs at RIT. The
question of who will oversee the content, format for each program was determined to
be the responsibility of the grad directors and faculty in that department. Program
director said they would be responsible for quality in their program.
Discussion:
Program directors and faculty in the program should determine what is a quality thesis.
Discussion about how the written thesis is submitted and what is standard for the
masters program. Questions about submitting to ProQuest were raised. Master program
are varied and divers how would a standardize thesis quality be created without
comprising the needs of a variety of programs. Who would monitor thesis quality – if
not the graduate directors?
Conclusions:
Discussion moved to sub committee.
Sign up sheet will be passed around during Oct 1 meeting to sign up for this sub
committee
2.40 Establish a web portal for communication with program directors
Background for this charge:
Establish a central place where information intended for program directors can be
housed. Establish a place where open graduate electives can be listed for graduate
students to view.
Discussion:
How have grad director received information in the past – is some thing currently
needed? What are the problems with how this has been done? There is no clear way
that communication has been handled and therefore there have been
miscommunications and everyone is not up to date on changing policies. It would be
easier to have one place people check as apposed to emails. The Office of Graduate
Studies website is the place for this information to be held. A handbook for graduate
directors would also be a good thing to have on this site, to help new directors get up to
speed.
Conclusions:
Move to create a sub committee to discuss what goes up on the website and which
website.
Sign up sheet will be passed around during Oct 1 meeting to sign up for this sub
committee.
2.56 Graduate Grievance Policy
Background for this charge:
The current language of this policy is centered on undergraduate education at RIT.
There are concerns that there is currently no standardized orderly way that grievances
are handled for graduate students. The group working on this last year identifies five
peer institutes and examined their graduate grievance policies, from this they
determined that other school have much more clear language in their policies.
Discussion:
Students should be taking their grievances to the department first, program director,
chair of the department and then the Dean of the College before coming to the Office of
Graduate Studies. Concern were raised that students do not follow the expected paths
to have their problem resolved. What specifically are missing from the current policies?
Conclusions:
Hector Flores and Carole DeFilippo would continue their efforts from last year with this
charge.
Sign up sheet will be passed around during Oct 1 meeting to sign up for this sub
committee
2.70 Graduate Assistant Definitions
Background for this charge:
There is a well written document that outlines the different graduate assistantships (
GA, GTA, RA, GTA) on line, the graduate council determined last year that the document
needs some clarification and reworking.
Discussion:
We need to identify what needs to be included in this document. A conversation with
Human Recourses needs to be had by this sub-committee to determine legally what
responsibilities grads students can hold in these different rankings? We’d like more
consistency in the definitions and also how to distribute these definitions to graduate
programs to makes sure they are following the guidelines.
Conclusions:
Sign up sheet will be passed around during Oct 1 meeting to sign up for this sub
committee