Meeting Minutes - March 27, 2008
1. The minutes of the March 13, 2008 meeting were
reviewed and approved.
2. Earlier this week, President Mason announced that Wallace Loh from
Seattle University will become the next Executive Vice President and
Provost for The University of Iowa. Dean Keller thanked the Council
members who served on the Provost Search Committee for their hard work.
• Dean Keller reminded the Council members of the Jakobsen Conference
which will take place on March 28-29, 2008. The Graduate Student Senate
received 130 abstracts for presentations/poster displays at the
Conference. Winners in four broad disciplinary areas will be announced
at the reception to be held Saturday evening at the Levitt Center.
• The Graduate Student Awards Reception to honor the winners of the D.C.
Spriestersbach Outstanding Dissertation Prize, the Graduate Deans’
Dissertation Award, and the L.B. Sims Master’s Thesis Award will be held
Friday, March 28 at 4:00 p.m. in the Museum of Art. All Council members
are invited.
• The Graduate College has received notification that the release date
of the NRC Assessment report has once again been delayed. It is now
scheduled to come out in September 2008.
• All offer letters for the Presidential and Deans Graduate Fellowships
have gone out and the Ballard/Seashore Fellowship offer letters will go
out next week. Summer Fellowship letters will go out tomorrow. The SIF
letters went out March 15.
• Dean Keller was very pleased to announce that Michael Ridge (History)
will receive a Distinguished Student Leader Certificate; Crystal Edler
(Psychology), a Hancher-Finkbine Medallion; and Kathy Klein, the 2008
Staff Hancher-Finkbine Medallion. All will be honored at the
Hancher-Finkbine award’s dinner on April 22.
3. Associate Dean Wurster continued the discussion of language pertinent
to outside members of graduate committees. He distributed two versions
of proposed changes to the existing language which appears in the Manual
of Rules and Regulations of the Graduate College, section IX. P.
Examining Committees. The existing language requires one member of the
final examination committee to be from outside the major department.
Officially, the outside member cannot hold a secondary or a 0%
appointment in the major department. Policing this requirement is very
time consuming and cannot be done very accurately. Dean Wurster feels
the credibility of the Graduate College and the Deans Office is at
issue. He also emphasized that the Graduate College wants to provide
departments the latitude to appoint the most appropriate people for the
dissertation defense. Version 1 proposes new wording that would transfer
the requirement of an outside committee member from the Graduate College
to individual departments or programs. Version 2 continues the
requirement of an outside committee member but defines the outside
member as a member of the graduate faculty who does not hold a primary
appointment in the major department. This would allow faculty with
secondary or 0% appointments to serve as outside members. Version 2 also
addresses interdisciplinary programs by requiring that one member of the
committee of those programs not have an appointment in the program.
After reviewing the two versions, the floor was opened for discussion.
Several members of the Council were concerned that not requiring an
outside member went against international traditions and may have some
impact on the credibility of dissertation work at the University of
Iowa. There also was the concern that without the outside person a weak
candidate could be passed too easily or that a department could make a
situation more difficult for a degree candidate. Also, with the
institution’s emphasis on interdisciplinarity, the question was raised
as to whether not requiring an outside committee member was sending the
wrong signal. It has been the experience of several members of the
Council that their service as an outside member has levered connections
for them for future interdisciplinary work. However, the Council did
empathize with the problems caused by the existing wording. A hand vote
showed majority support for version 2 with slight textual revisions. As
currently proposed, version 2 requires the final examination committee
to include an outside member who does not hold a primary appointment.
The Council recommended defining the primary appointment to be based on
the salaried appointment. For interdisciplinary programs where there are
no salaried appointments, the outside member could not have an
appointment in the program. Associate Dean Wurster agreed to wordsmith
version 2 as suggested and will bring it back to the Graduate Council
for action at a future meeting.
4. Associate Dean Wurster next summarized the revisions made to the
proposal to establish a Certificate in Emerging Infectious Diseases
Epidemiology, which previously had been brought to the Graduate Council
at its meeting on February 28. In order to address the previous concerns
of the Council, the certificate has been renamed, the language
concerning the TOEFL requirement has been changed, and four letters of
support from outside institutions have been acquired. The Council was
pleased with the revisions. After brief discussion, it was moved that
the revised proposal for a Certificate in Emerging Infectious Diseases
Epidemiology be approved. The motion was seconded and the vote in favor
of the motion was unanimous.
5. Dean Keller opened the floor to a discussion on the best time to hold
future Graduate Council meetings. Although for several years the
meetings have been scheduled on Thursdays from 8:15-9:45, more Council
members are experiencing conflicts, especially with teaching duties.
Dean Keller felt that it was important for the Graduate College to
provide members the opportunity to participate by trying to schedule the
meeting at a time when the fewest conflicts would occur. A note will go
out to all members asking for feedback.
The meeting adjourned at 9:40 a.m.