SANTA CRUZ: Office of the Academic Senate
DRAFTGraduate Council Minutes
Meeting of June 1, 2006
The Graduate Council met on Thursday, June 1, 2006 at 2:00 p.m. in 307 Kerr Hall.
Present: Bruce Schumm, Chair, Ram Akella, Robert Boltje, Don Brenneis, David Brundage, Donka Farkas, Donna Hunter, Norma Klahn, Ronnie Lipschutz, Pradip Mascharak, Lisa Sloan, ex officio, Beth Remak-Honnef (LAUC), Ian Dobbs-Dixon (GSA), Foaad Khosmood (GSA), Allison Luengen (GSA), Sina Farsiu (PSA), Bob Hastings (DGS), Laurie Babka (ASO).
Absent with notice: Pradip Mascharak, Lisa Sloan, ex officio.
Guest: GSA President-elect Berra Yazar (MCD Biology).
The Minutes of 5/18/06 were approved.
No announcements from DGS.
Announcements from the Library: Librarian Steel has met with the CPEVC and still feels there is progress on improving Library resources. At that meeting the CPEVC expressed interest in the Senate’s point of view (COL-COR-GC) regarding the prioritization of Library needs, so the Librarian may be consulting again with GC.
Announcements from GSA: GSA reported that the new GSA president has been elected and more officers will be soon. GSA President-elect Yazar sat with the Council today. Allison Luengen summarized GSHIP meetings, current student requests and premium impacts, and distributed a document summarizing the process and timeline for the annual GSHIP renewal. If GSA recommendations to the CPEVC are not met this year, the issue will return to the Council in the Fall.
Announcements from PSA: Continuing issues for PSA are the post-doc salaries and NIH minimum wage standards (Rep. Farsiuwill be meeting with Dean Sloan), and educating grad students and post-docs on intellectual property issues through forums next year. (PSA will be coordinating with Intellectual Property Director Gerald Barnett.)
Chair’s Announcements: UCEP and CCGA are finlaizingpreparing a joint memo for the Academic Council regarding restructuring the policy on graduate student instructors.
External Review Guidelines Revision
The Graduate Council unanimously approved a GC response to the VPAA regarding recent proposed changes to the program external review procedures. The Council urged retention of two critical foci of external reviews in the Council’s assessment of graduate program health: a review of curricular and degree requirements and an assessment of the overall graduate environment in the department or program.
Reports from GC Subcommittees
Graduate College: Ideas raised in the subcommittee for the Grad College include course-sponsoring authority and working on curricular content, hosting interdisciplinary forums, trying to identify founding fellows from among the faculty to develop a proposal for sponsorship of a pilot graduate college between two diverse divisions on campus. After the prototype year, a proposal will be prepared for Regental approval. The subcommittee believes the GradCollege needs to sponsor some activities before it can petition for approval and a physical location.
Graduate Student Welfare: The TAPS letter requesting an exception to night parking fees for grads has gone out with a response requested by June 15. GSW has also been working on the Mentoring Guidelines, GSHIP, and health billing problems.
GSHIP: The issue was presented as to whether grad students are getting value for their broker arrangement, which is hard to ascertain. One member argued that UCOP has staff devoted to faculty/staff health insurance brokering, and wondered ifcouldn’t this in-house expertise be called upon for grad insurance as well.? No best-practices have been identified among the varied campus strategies. The GC Chair will take this issue to CCGA as a topic (both GSHIP negotiations and accessibility to UCOP personnel) for a meeting with President Dynes. Dean Sloan will be bringing this issue up at the Council of Deans meeting today to identify other campuses willing to negotiate health insurance as one group.
Mentoring: Before the draft Guidelines are sent around to the deans and departments, GSA is hoping to have GC’s stamp of approval on them. The Council proposed several language changes which GSA accepted; GSA will update the document accordingly. Included in the Guidelines is a requirement that all programs have a graduate handbook, which GC will collect from each program. The Council approved the Draft Mentoring Guidelines for UCSC Graduate Students with recommended changes.
The Chair thanked the subcommittee for their dedicated work.
Cross-listing Courses
The Council unanimously approved the draft response for the proposed new policy for cross-listing courses which concurs with CEP’s recommendation that the Senate be recognized as the authoritative body on courses, and that the Registrar’s Office be included in approval notifications.
Film and Digital Media Ph.D. Proposal
The Council approved the draft GC response to the FDM graduate proposal which incorporates CPB’s comments.
Student Freedom of Scholarly Inquiry Principles
The Council discussed a draft response to the systemwide review of the Student Freedom of Scholarly Inquiry Principles. With some ambiguity in theone section of the Pprinciples on the Academic Freedom of graduate student instructors, the letter was adjusted to accommodate either way of reading the intent. In general the language needs to be reviewed against APM-390 as well as the UCEP-CCGA’s upcoming proposal on graduate student instructors. The revised response was approved unanimously.
Petition for De-Facto Master’s Degree
The Council declined to make policy for de-facto Master’s at this time, but considered the particular student request submitted to the Council. The Council believes this decision would not be binding as precedent-setting. The Council approved the request (with 1 recusal, 2 opposed, 1 abstention) under this particular set of exceptional circumstances. The Council will pass its recommendation to the Graduate Dean.
The Chair thanked the Council for its work this year; the Council in turn thanked the Chair.
The meeting adjourned at 3:50 p.m.
So attests,
Bruce Schumm, Chair
Graduate Council
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA