BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY
MINUTES OF THE March 16, 2015 MEETING OF THE GRADUATE COUNCIL
PLACE:
Couper Administration Building - Room148
PRESIDING:
Susan Strehle, Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School
MEMBERS:
Subimal Chatterjee, Shelley Dionne, Fernando Guzman, Norah Henry, Adam Laats,
Ricardo Laremont, Michael Lewis, Elizabeth Mellin, Sara Reiter, Daryl Santos, Linda
Wong
GSO:
Alison Coombs, Jason Gallia, Jiarui Han,
EX OFFICIO
MEMBERS:
Susannah Gal, Sarah Lam, Paul Parker,
EXCUSED/ABSENT: Serdar Atav, Mary Beth Curtin, Jenny Gordon, Mark Fowler, Kevin Hatch,
Matthew Johnson, Gerald Kutcher, Kristina Lambright, Patrick Madden,
Rosmarie Morewedge, Chuck Nelson, Pam Smart,
I. CALL TO ORDER:
Dean Susan Strehle called the meeting to order at 3:00 pm.
II. MINUTES
The minutes from the February 16, 2015 Graduate Council meeting were approved as written.
III. COMMITTEES
Academic Standards Committee This committee met on Monday, March 9, 2015. This committee met to
discuss the question about visiting faculty on campus and their relationship to directing dissertations and serving
on dissertation committees. There are approximately 300 visiting faculty in HR with at least 30 in titles called
“visiting professor, visiting assistant professor, and visiting associate professor”. The document online reads that
in order to chair a committee, the chair needs to be a tenured or a tenured track member of the faculty, which
would by definition, exclude visitors and adjuncts. As well, it indicates that others may serve as members of the
committee but not as chair, indicating that the chair should have a permanent ongoing status with the university
in order to keep the student safe from the beginning to end of the dissertation. The committee recommended no
change to what is online, which means that visitors can serve on the committees if they are the right person for
that dissertation, but they should not be in the position of chair. No motion is necessary regarding this; it is more
of an affirmation of past discussions.
Advisory Committee for Scholarship and Research This committee met on March 5, 2015. They are
currently reviewing ORC annual reports and two center external reviews have been scheduled. ACSR will meet
with the Institute for Intergenerational Studies on April 28 and the Institution for Advanced Studies in Humanities
on May 15. The call for new OR centers was extended to March 15, and it is anticipated that 5 new centers will
be submitting proposals.
Budget Advisory Committee This committee has not met.
Clark Advisory Committee This committee met on March 13, 2015 to review nominations for the Clark
Fellowship Award. Nine offers have been made. There may be a few additional openings available in 2015 so
we will be sending out emails to department chairs/graduate directors and secretaries to see if they have another
nomination to submit to the Graduate School. A total of 14 offers have been made.
Curriculum Committee This committee met on March 9, 2015. There were four permanent course proposals
from the Biomedical Engineering Department, BME 542 – Nanotechnology and Drug Delivery, 563 – Bioprocess
Engineering, 573 – Advanced and 583. All four courses are 3 credit, fixed electives for their graduate program.
No questions were raised and all courses were approved.
The next permanent course proposal was for ME 584 – Design of Mechanical Elements. It is a 3 credit fixed
course. No questions were raised and the proposal passed unanimously.
The final item discussed at the curriculum committee meeting was ECON 539, a request for course numbering
revision. The Economics department wants to change the number of the approved course of ECON 539 to
ECON 542 because they want to maintain internal consistency with their undergraduate course of ECON 442.
There were no questions and the changes were approved.
Student Affairs Committee This committee has not met. There is a potential for another grievance, currently
being heard inside the department right now and a meeting of the Student Affairs Committee will be set up soon.
Strategic Planning Committee This committee has not met.
IV.
NEW BUSINESS
There are a few items that are coming up that Dean Strehle wanted to make the committee aware of. The
committee will consider a proposal for Binghamton’s first formal distance education certificate which will be in
social work. This is a result of a New York SUNY “High Needs” grant that came to the Social work program
within CCPA and the high need is that practicing social workers need continuing education credits; they need to
go on and do additional work. Our staff is uniquely positioned to deliver the kinds of coursework and
experiences they need. SUNY has several new forms for proposing new degrees and we’ve had
other distance learning options on this campus, but the nature of this certificate is that all of it will be delivered
online. We need to answer questions about how we are going to help instructors, what our
technology is, what our platform is, etc. The CLT department has been involved in answering the questions.
Once the curriculum committee gets the proposal, then the graduate council will see the document.
The Board of Trustees in Albany approved the School of Pharmacy in Binghamton at their Academic
Affairs Committee Meeting on March 9, 2015.
The Sustainable Communities Program is going to the Faculty Senate Executive Committee within the next day
or two, and the Binghamton Plus Program will have more details added in the summer and will most likely come
to the committee in the fall.
V. ADJOURNMENT
The meeting was adjourned at 3:38 p.m. after a motion by Ricardo Laremont, seconded by Subimal Chatterjee.
_____________________________
Minutes recorded by Melissa Spencer,
Secretary to the Vice Provost and Dean
of the Graduate School