Grad Council Update
FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
October 2014
PLANNING (or in the words of Yogi Berra, “If you don’t know where you are
going, you’ll end up someplace else”)
We have been involved in several planning exercises over the last six weeks.
The FGS Scholarship Budget (172 account) is up first, in fact, it is due to the
Budget Committee this week (Thursday, October 16).
We have been asked to develop a 3-year plan for graduate program development and graduate student numbers as part of a Strategic Enrolment Model
that the University is preparing to outline how the University will carry forward its overall plans as outlined in the Strategic Mandate Agreement signed
with the Province. Our initial report is due Monday, October 20.
Also as part of a University planning exercise, each academic and administrative unit has been asked to develop a series of plans concerning how the units
will respond to various adverse events on campus, such as a SARS-like event,
etc. The initial set of these plans is due in early November.
Lastly, we will be putting together the Faculty Operating Budget (168 account)
for early December.
NEWS AND NOTES
SCHOLARSHIP INFORMATION
WORKSHOPS: Workshops continue to run — see dates
2014-15 MNK: Planning is
under way for Mapping the New
Knowledges, the annual graduate student research conference
as the FGS celebrates MNK’s
10th anniversary.
Our first event of the year will
be a Research Café with faculty
researchers, graduate students
and community practitioners
discussing bullying in today’s
society — from the playground
to the boardroom to the cyber
world. The event, to be held
on Friday, Nov. 21, coincides
with Bullying Awareness Week in
Canada.
More information will be available soon. For now, see a list of
MNK important dates.
2015-16 CGS / OGS / QEII-GSST SCHOLARSHIPS
This section uses some information from last Grad Council update, and adds
new details.
Please refer to the side panel for information about ongoing workshops for
graduate students who will be preparing scholarships applications for 2015-16.
Please make sure that your students are aware of these workshops.
For 2015-16, Brock has been awarded 29 Canada Graduate Student Awards,
with the Tri-Council Agency distribution being: CIHR - 4; NSERC - 3; SSHRC 22. In addition, we have been notified that we will be allowed to submit 8
NSERC doctoral applications, and 9 SSHRC doctoral applications.
For OGS, we have seen our quota rise to 49 (of which 2 are to be awarded to
international students), and in addition, we will be able to present 6 QEIIGSST awards.
Last year, we split the 46 OGS awards as 35 Master’s (includes 1 international)
and 11 PhD (includes 1 international). The suggestion has been made that we
add the 3 additional OGS awards to the PhD awards, bringing the number of
PhD awards to 14 (13 to domestic students; 1 to international students), and
leaving 35 for the Master’s students (34 to domestic students; 1 to international students). There is no defined split of awards to incoming vs. returning
students; we will offer awards to the 49 best applications.
I will again convene a meeting of the Associate Deans, R&GS to establish the
preferred split of the 49 awards, and to establish the adjudication process for
all awards. It is likely that the Associate Deans will continue the process that
we used previously as this seemed to work well.
NEW FGS AWARD: The FGS has
recently established the Marilyn
Rose Graduate Leadership
Award. The first award recipient(s) will be recognized at a
presentation to coincide with
the 10th anniversary of MNK.
The award will recognize faculty, staff and students for their
vision and leadership on behalf
of graduate studies at Brock in
the areas of academic programming, research and scholarship,
student services, and student
experience initiatives — the
kind of work through which
a strong and vital graduate
culture has emerged to support
the University’s academic and
research goals.
Nominations for the 2015
awards will be accepted until
March 10 each year. See further
details about the award and the
online nomination process.
For those who are new GPDs, last year we had two OGS adjudication committees — the Master’s Adjudication Committee had 10 faculty members, and the
Doctoral Adjudication Committee had 5 faculty members. For the CGS adjudication, we had two committees — a CIHR/NSERC/QEII-GSST committee consisting of 5 faculty members, and an SSHRC committee made up of 8 faculty
members. In addition, we will need an NSERC Doctoral Adjudication Committee to rank the NSERC Doctoral applications before sending them to Ottawa
for National Adjudication; similarly, we will require an SSHRC Adjudication
Committee to rank the SSHRC Doctoral applications before sending them to
Ottawa for National Adjudication.
As we have had approximately 180 applications to adjudicate the last two
years, we will be looking to obtain 22 faculty volunteers for the OGS adjudication - 15 for the approximately 125 Master’s applications (2 AHSC; 1 Goodman;
1 EDUC; 2 HUMA; 2 M&S; 7 SOSCI), and 7 for the approximately 60 PhD applications (1 AHSC; 1 EDUC; 1 HUMA; 2 M&S; 2 SOSCI). Please help your Associate
Dean to find the needed volunteers.
Have you read
MNK RESEARCH CAFE — November 21, 2014
The Research Café on Friday, November 21 will feature a panel discussion
about bullying. The event will be held from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Scotiabank Atrium in the Cairns Family Health and Bioscience Research Complex.
The panel will feature an insightful discussion about bullying, from the classroom to the workplace, and will draw upon a rich mix of research expertise at
Brock. The panel members will be Professors Zopito Marini (Child and Youth),
Tony Volk (Child and Youth) and Lisa Barrow (Goodman School of Business), Ann
Farrell, a PhD student in Psychology, Natalie Spadafora, a master’s student in
Child and Youth Studies, and Heather Woods, a master’s student in Education.
The three graduate students are receiving research funding from SSHRC for
current studies they have under way on bullying-related topics. The event
coincides with Bullying Awareness Week in Canada (Nov. 16 to 22).
Over the past several years, we have organized the Café as an opportunity to
bring attention to Brock’s growing strength in transdisciplinary research activity. For this event, we are pleased to be working in partnership with the Lifespan Development Centre and Brock Research. We look forward to an event
that will hold much interest for Brock faculty, staff and students and many
professionals and practitioners from across Niagara.
NEW GRADUATE STUDENT AWARD
The Senior Women Academic Administrators of Canada (SWAAC) has invited
Brock, through the Dean of Graduate Studies, to submit one graduate student
nomination for the organization’s Graduate Student Award of Merit. There
will be five awards, each valued at $3,000, given in 2015 to women registered
in Master’s or PhD programs in Ontario. The award criteria include outstanding academic performance and evidence of leadership. Please contact me by
Friday, November 28 with names of students who you feel are deserving of this
nomination. More details about the award are available at http://www.swaac.
ca/Grad_Award.htm
Mike Plyley, Dean
Faculty of Graduate Studies
Grad Council Update
GRADUATE MENTORSHIP
AWARDS: We have developed
an online submission process
for the Graduate Mentorship
Awards. That means that
graduate students can prepare
nomination packages and submit
them at any point in the year.
All nominations received by
March 10 each year will be adjudicated for that year’s awards
and presented in April at the
MNK conference. We will be
reminding students throughout
the year of the opportunity to
nominate graduate supervisors
for the 2015 awards. Details
about the awards and the nomination process are on the FGS
website.
• Brock-community study to improve wheelchairs for children
with cerebral palsy
(Brock News , Oct. 10)
http://www.brocku.ca/brocknews/?p=30170
• Brock celebrates Open Access
Week (Brock News, Oct. 6)
http://www.brocku.ca/brocknews/?p=30080
• Graduate students would benefit from mental health support
specific to their issues (New
York Times, Oct. 7)
http://op-talk.blogs.nytimes.
com/2014/10/07/when-education-brings-depression/?_
php=true&_type=blogs&_
php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1&
• New data from the Graduate
Management Admission Council
(GMAC) show that full-time,
2-year MBA programs remain
the standard in business education
http://www.gmac.com/
market-intelligence-and-research/research-library/
admissions-and-application-trends/2014-app-trends-report.aspx?fromsearch=1
• How Universities Are Cutting
the Time It Takes to Earn a Doctorate (The Chronicle of Higher
Education, Oct. 6)
http://chronicle.com/article/
How-Universities-Are-Cutting/149203/?cid=at&utm_
source=at&utm_medium=en
October 2014