MINUTES of the April 19, 2010MEETING of the GRADUATE COUNCIL
BINGHAMTONUNIVERSITY
MINUTES OF THE April 19, 2010MEETING OF THE GRADUATE COUNCIL
PLACE:Couper Administrative Building - Room148
PRESIDING:Nancy E. Stamp, Vice Provost and Dean of the GraduateSchool
MEMBERS:Jacques Beaumont,Christopher Bishop, Michael Conlon, Carmen Ferradas,James Fang, Brandon Gibb, Robert Guay, Wayne Jones, William Heller, Sarah Lam, Dina Maramba, Pamela Mischen, Charles Nelson, Beverly Rainforth, Olga Shvetsova, Pamela Stewart Fahs, Steven Loscalzo; Cagri Idiman; Gamze Bedirharoglu; Wesley Saavedra, Cagatay E. Dogan
EX OFFICIO
MEMBERS:Elizabeth Brown, Stephen Gilje, Dara Silberstein, Lindsay Tremain
EXCUSED:Mark Fowler, Edward Li, Wendy Martinek, Andrew Merriwether,Debi Mishra, Max Pensky, Gerald Sonnenfeld, Nan Zhou
ABSENT:William Haver, Max Pensky
- CALL TO ORDER:
Vice Provost and Dean Nancy Stamp called the meeting to order at 3:00 pm.
- MINUTES:
The minutes of the March 15, 2010were tabled and revised to be approved at next Graduate Council Meeting
- COMMITTEE REPORTS:
Curriculum Committee
This Committee approved the following course:
- Program Revision for Master in Music – Opera Track
The motion was made to accept the new course proposal and all were in favor.
Academic Standards Committee
This committee has not met.
Advisory Committee on Scholarship and Research
This committee is meeting bi- weekly to review proposals for the Organized Research Centers
and the Interdisciplinary Collaborative Research Grants.
Clark Fellowship Advisory Committee
The Clark Fellowship Advisory Committee has been reviewing applicationsfor the Clark
Fellowship Awards and has made 17 offers to students.
Grievance Committee
This committee has not met.
- NEW BUSINESS
Provost Swain and representatives from the University’s Strategic Planning Council attended the Graduate Council Meeting to discuss the draft of the 2010 University’s Strategic Plan.
Provost Swain, Chair of the Committee, gave an overview of the context of the University’s Strategic Plan. She said, the current draft of the Strategic Plan is part of the Middle States reaccreditation. She explained that this reaccreditation takes place every 10 years. Middle States requires at the 5-year point of the 10-year cycle for the campus to do aperiodic progress report. In 2005, we provided a progress report on the 2000 self-study and plan prepared for Middle States Accreditation and implemented a new University Strategic Plan. Provost Swain stated that there is a website with two documents, both in draft form, a Progress Report on the 2005 Strategic Plan and a draft of the 2010 Binghamton University Strategic Plan.
The 2010 Strategic Plan by was created by forming 5 sub-committees. The committees were from each vice presidential area and were composed of faculty, staff and students. The committee’s were asked two questions – what have your divisions done to advance the 2005 Strategic Plan and what should be the issues for the institution going forward, that is, what should the next strategic plan consist of. The University Strategic Planning Council gathered all the information and put together a draft of the 2010 Strategic Plan.
The 2010 Strategic Plan is not as specific as compared to the 2005 Strategic Plan. This was a purposeful decision due to the recent events of our current president leaving the University. The Strategic Planning Council decided they would do a generic plan based on aspirational characteristics, in other words, what they wanted the university to be characterizedasin 5 years from now and what kinds of things would express that characterization. The Strategic Planning Council wanted to have a strategic plan that would enable the incoming president to see what is important to the University and at the same time, allow a sufficient amount of room for him or her to put his or her own stamp on it.
Provost Swain stated that according to the University Strategic Plan, raising graduate stipend levels will be an issue that should be addressed.
Dean Stamp asked Provost Swain about the list of potential programs like architecture and physical therapy. Provost Swain indicated that new educational opportunities should be part of the plan and fit the University’s programs. The LawSchool is still a part of the Strategic Plan.
Enrollment was discussed, as the current Strategic Plan shows one of its goals being 25% of enrollment would be graduate. In the proposed strategic plan, there were no statistics regarding graduate enrollment. Provost Swain conveyed that to get to the graduate to undergraduate mix that was set as a goal previously may require more investment because it may require more graduate fellowships.
The Graduate Council’s Strategic Planning Committee has been reviewing these documents in preparation for the visit by the University Strategic Planning Committee. The committee also looked at a spreadsheet that compares the GraduateSchool’s strategic plan against the University’s Strategic Plan. The Committee felt the graduate school strategic plan had breadth and recommendationswere more specific to what we envision for graduate programs. The committee felt it could advocate for graduate programs in that strategic plan, partly because they do not have the same constraints as the University Strategic Plan. Dean Stamp stated that next fall the Strategic Planning Committee will have to look for the major themes in the University’s Strategic Plan and coordinate that with the goals of the GraduateSchool.
Strategic Planning Committee also discussed the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate. The Carnegie Foundation conducted a doctorate study involving44 universities, with 84 departments volunteering for the study and 6 disciplines being represented. These were two kinds of surveys – one was a doctoral student survey asking the students what they expected to get from a program and what they thought they were getting from a program. Then there was a parallel survey for faculty asking “what do you expect the doctoral students to get out of the program and what do you think they are getting out the program”? The primary focus of the study was time to degree and attrition rates.
Using the Carnegie survey, Sean McKitrick, Director of Institutional Research at BU, conducted the Survey Monkey where departments could volunteer to participate. Nine departments participated in the survey with a spectrum of different disciplines represented. Dean Stamp aggregated the results and presented a powerpoint draft as graphs.
At the next Graduate CouncilMeeting of May 10th, we will discuss the powerpoint draft in more detail.
- ADJOURNMENT:
The meeting was adjourned at 4:30 on a motion by Professor Gibband seconded by
Professor Jones.
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Minutes recorded by Cheryl McGowan,
Secretary to the Vice Provost and Dean
of the GraduateSchool