Meeting Minutes - March 13, 2008

1. The minutes of the February 28, 2008 meeting were reviewed and approved.

2. Associate Dean Wurster made the following announcements:
• Decisions have been made concerning the Strategic Initiative Fund applications received in February and letters will go out early next week.
• The Jakobsen Conference will take place on March 28-29, 2008. See the Graduate Student Senate website for details (www.uiowa.edu/~gss).
• A Directors of Graduate Studies Meeting has been scheduled for March 25, 2008 at 4:00 p.m. in W401 PBB. Professor Kathleen Diffley will give a presentation on best practices for mentoring in the humanities during the dissertation year and Dean Keller will give an update on resource allocations.
• The Office of the Registrar has indicated that they will be able to add program names to the diplomas issued to spring ‘08 graduates.
• Associate Dean Berkowitz reported that the funding for the 4th year of the Presidential Graduate Fellowships has been increased to the same dollar amount as for the 1st year. The Graduate College is targeting to award 30 new Presidential Fellowships this year. Past yields have averaged 38% of the offers. There were 101 nominations this year compared to 136 last year. Departments were limited to a maximum of six nominations this year, but when comparing the number of departmental nominations in previous years to this year, that limit didn’t seem to account significantly to the decrease. Fifty-six Ballard Seashore Dissertation Year Fellowship nominations have been received so far. Thirty fellowships will be awarded. And finally, the deadline for receipt of the T. Anne Cleary nominations was extended to March 28, thus no data is available yet on those awards. Associate Dean Gardinier noted that 20 offers had been made already for Dean’s Graduate Fellows. The breakdown for Dean’s fellowships is two-thirds - PhD students and one-third - Master’s students.

3. Professors Laronde, Racevskis, and Thomas were invited to join the meeting to comment on the request to change the name of the graduate degrees in “French” to “French and Francophone World Studies”. Professor Laronde pointed out that Francophone refers to the cultural, linguistic and geographical study of the French Language and Literature, and although “World” is included under Francophone, the notion of world extends beyond purely the geographic. Professor Racevskis referred to a recent Manifesto from the Association of French Language Studies which talks about “literature-world” which he considers precedent to Francophone World. He also is serving on a Task Force on the Future of Modern Languages at Iowa in which ways to get more systematic interaction between the humanities and the social sciences has been discussed. A listing of student Ph.D. thesis titles since 2002 was distributed to reflect the existing “world” studies emphasis in the department. The graduate student cohort already represents the four corners of the world with students from Africa, France, Vietnam, and the US. Professor Honey felt that his prior concerns about the proposal had been addressed. It was moved by Professor Fellows and seconded by Professor Honey to approve the name change as proposed. The vote in favor of the motion was unanimous.

4. Associate Dean Wurster briefly summarized the next proposal for a MA degree in International Studies. He explained that the Graduate College has decided to consider this a name change rather than a new degree proposal. Since the degree has no home department, it will be considered an interdisciplinary graduate degree program under the Graduate College similar to Second Language Acquisition or Applied Math and Computational Sciences. Historically, this degree came into existence as a Master’s in Third World Development Support, which was closed to student admission about 6 years ago. Since that time, students interested in earning a master’s degree in this field worked through the Interdisciplinary Ad Hoc MA degree with a focus in International Studies. Professor Thomas, Associate Dean of International Programs, and Martha Greer, International Studies Coordinator, were invited to summarize the proposal and respond to questions. In response to a question about job placement, Professor Thomas indicated that students who are awarded this degree primarily take jobs in the State Department or with international government organizations working with relief aid, etc. Strengths of the program are its foreign language requirement and its study abroad requirement. The program looks for highly motivated students who already have a plan of study in mind as part of the application process. Only a few students will be admitted into the program each year. Faculty are brought together on an ad hoc basis according to the student’s research interests. The Council voiced concern about the large number of 0% time faculty listed in the proposal. Professor Thomas indicated that there are screening criteria and most faculty are strongly involved in one of the International Program centers. However, the Council was concerned about the administration of the program with the large number of faculty, and even how the students would determine the focus area of the faculty. They also were concerned about how the students would be supported, but were assured that most would receive a teaching assistantship or receive International Program funding earmarked for these students. The Council recommended that examples of focus areas be listed in the document (page 5) and on the web to more quickly inform prospective students about the program. They also suggested listing faculty by focus areas. Another recommendation was to require students to take some minimum number of credit hours in their focus area. The number of required research hours was questioned but it was explained that there is no thesis requirement, although the majority of students do complete a project. It was further recommended to include a description of the executive committee or other committee which would oversee the administration of the program. It was then moved by Professor Stewart and seconded by Professor Li to approve the proposal with the condition that the recommended changes be made. Official approval will be confirmed by the Graduate College once a revised proposal, satisfactorily addressing all recommended changes, is received. The vote in favor of the motion for conditional approval was unanimous.

5. The agenda item for further discussion pertinent to the outside member of graduate committees was postponed to the March 28 meeting.

The meeting adjourned at 9:45 a.m.