University of Massachusetts at Amherst Graduate Council of the Faculty Senate Linda Shea, Chair

Transcription

1 University of Massachusetts at Amherst Graduate Council of the Faculty Senate Linda Shea, Chair Minutes of General Membership Meeting Wednesday, December 9, 2009 Goodell 528 Twenty One (21) individuals attended the meeting. Provost James Staros was an invited guest. Michael Alderman, Susan Chinman, and Patrick Sullivan from the Graduate School attended as well. Also, in attendance were Graduate Council members Neal Abraham, Jane Baran, Leslie Horner Button, Tony Butterfield, James Cathey, James L. Craig, David Dudek, Li Gu, Arthur Kinney, Kevin Klement, David Kotz, Bill McClure, Ben Normark, Linda Shea, Nate Therien, Howard Stidham, H. Martin Wobst. I. Welcome and Introductions Chair Linda Shea called the meeting to order at 12:03 PM. Noting the inclement weather, she thanked everyone for coming. She especially welcomed Provost James Staros and thanked him for coming. Chair Shea then provided Provost Staros a brief introduction to the work of the Graduate Council and its committees. Following this, the Provost asked if we would go around the room and introduce ourselves, and the meeting attendees obliged. II. New Business A. Discussion with Provost Staros The Provost began by referring to the Chancellor s comments made that morning about the current budget situation. The state appropriation for FY09 to today has been reduced by $60 million. He noted that for state employees, benefits are added off budget but if you are paid with other money, you must include benefits in the campus budget. The Provost also said that Continuing and Professional Education is off the state books by law. The Provost continued on this point by saying that we are actually paying state employees with non-state money because there is not enough current state allocation money. This amount is currently $9 million and there will be an additional $2.5 million next year. There is no way to cut costs in order to get our budget to balance. Therefore, the Provost said that we have initiated new revenue generating initiatives. The first of these initiatives is an aggressive plan to recruit out-of-state students. Currently we have 16,000 in-state undergraduate students. We hope to grow the out-of state undergraduate student population from 3,500 currently to 6,500 in 10 years, beginning with 300 additional students next year. The reason for this plan is that we keep out-of-state tuition and curriculum without the money going through the legislative budget allocation process. The provost also said that doing this will work to further the academic goals of the university by giving aid to higher qualified students. For instance students that have a combined SAT score of greater than 1200 and a high school GPA of 3.2 or higher will receive $5,000 Chancellor Scholarship Awards

2 A. Discussion with Provost Staros (continued) The second initiative is that schools have been asked to repackage Master Degrees with undergraduate programs to form 5 year combined Bachelor/Masters Programs. The Provost said that this will require some program restructuring and that the Graduate Council can help by assisting and being engaged through timely reviews of the new proposed programs. The third initiative is developing Professional Master Degree programs. We hope to utilize summer session with these new programs. We already have the processes in place to ensure that departments which develop and implement these new programs are rewarded and compensated from the enrollment by one-half of the net revenue going to the college through Continuing and Professional Education. We are still working on formulas to distribute tuition for out-of-state students. The Provost noted that UMASS Amherst loses more with graduate students because the money that goes to the state through graduate tuition is greater than for undergraduates. The Graduate student Curriculum Fee is artificially low. We could create a Cost of Education Fee and keep it separate from the Curriculum Fee. Separating the Curriculum Fee from a Cost of Education Fee in this manner would also help lower costs for research grants. However, for terminal Master Degree Programs, the current Curriculum Fee would be increased. A comment was made that there will be difficulty in determining the additional costs associated with the additional revenue. The Provost said that he would be disingenuous if he said that we all would not be working more. He said that there would be no change to the formal teaching loads but that this would be dependent on good research performance. David Kotz said there is an issue with just giving up on additional state funding. The Provost responded that he could not assume any increase in state funding. There was a question if there is enough money in out-of-state revenues to keep the current student to teacher ratio at The answer was yes. Martin Wobst asked if we are moving to an economic payback rationale for doing things rather than using educational value and service. The Provost noted that there are political forces that are acting on us and the legislature right now. Bill McClure noted that he had been to conferences in which other state schools have voiced similar out-of-state recruiting initiatives. He asked what risk do we have in attempting to compete in that same market. The provost responded that yes, the competition is recognized but we are addressing it in our initiatives. A discussion of undergraduate acceptance yield followed. We have 30,000 undergraduate applications but the yield is so low about 11% yield for out-of-state applications and 25% for in-state. We will implement a merit scholarship program of $6,500 Chancellor Merit Scholarship Awards. We must ensure our marketing and presentation of this program will attract more students. As a result, we will test market our marketing before we use it

3 A. Discussion with Provost Staros (continued) We are also trying to engage alumni in ways in which we have not done so before. For instance, we will ask alumni to make a call and visit a well qualified candidate. Tony Butterfield said that assistantships at the graduate level were a good way to attract good students. He noted that funds have been going down in recent years and are below our peers now. He questioned how we could attract graduate students. The Provost said we could possibly reorganize assistantships and move any from Masters Programs to the Ph.D. level. He also indicated that the assistantships must be competitive. It was mentioned that we could possibly reduce tuition. The Provost said in-state tuition reduction is relatively easy and there is little cost to the school since the money first goes to the state. However, because we receive out-of-state tuition funds directly, it would be harder to cut out-of-state tuition. There was a question about academic school reorganization. The Provost said he has talked with the School of Behavioral Sciences and Fine Arts to explore that possibility. He also said he had an idea about departments that bridge schools and help knit the campus community together. He gave an example of biomedical engineering which utilizes expertise from psychology and computer engineering. We need to establish bridges between academic units and be open to new possibilities. The Provost concluded by saying he was glad to be here and that he was dedicated to UMASS Amherst. He said that public education is at stake and he is committed to coming out of this troublesome period successfully. B. Academic Standards and Curriculum Committee (ASCC) Requests for Approval Arthur Kinney briefly reviewed the program proposal to create two new concentrations in Historic Preservation and Design Studies in the Master of Science in Design graduate degree programs. Bill McClure added that the plan is to start these new programs in September, Arthur then briefly noted two courses that the ASCC also approved: CEE Earthquake Engineering Nursing 715 Intermediate Biostatistics (online course) A motion was made and seconded to approved all three proposals. All proposals were then unanimously approved

4 C. Northeast Association of Graduate Schools (NAGS) Award Nomination Patrick Sullivan informed the Graduate Council that we wanted to submit nominations to the Northeast Association of Graduate Schools for their annual awards. He said that we needed to submit any nominations by January 5 and that we needed a Graduate Council ad-hoc committee to review the applications received because we can only submit one nomination for each award category. He noted that there are six (6) award categories: 1. Doctoral Dissertation - $1, Master Thesis - $1, Graduate Faculty Teaching at the Masters Level - $1, Graduate Faculty Teaching at the Ph.D. Level - $1, Mentoring - $1, Innovation in Graduate Admissions - $2,500 Patrick said that the nominations should be submitted to the Graduate Council by December 31. A notice will be sent to all Graduate Program Directors and the Graduate Student Senate about these awards and the due date. Chair Linda Shea, Bill McClure, and Martin Wobst all volunteered to serve on the Nomination Review ad-hoc Committee. III. Approval of Minutes The minutes from November 18 were approved with corrections to the Travel Committee Report and corrections to the Comments from Administrative Officers (Item A) concerning the UMASS Program in Switzerland. IV. Comments by the Graduate Dean None V. Old Business None Discussed VI. Committee Reports A. ASCC See New Business Item B above. B. ALANA No report. C. Fellowship No Report

5 VI. Committee Reports (continued) D. Ethics Leslie Horner Button mentioned that there was an Ethics Committee meeting scheduled on December 18 to address the NIH/NSF grant funding requirement taking effect in January 2010 that all researchers be certified in Responsible Conduct in Research (RCR). Leslie said that we need to decide how to do this as a Graduate School for the long term while we put in place a short term solution. It was noted that there is a strong interest in the Five Colleges to work together on this issue. E. Special Admission No Report F. Student Affairs No Report. G. Mentoring No Report H. Travel No report VII. Comments from Administrative Officers and Others A. Graduate Council Meeting Dates for Spring 2010 The currently scheduled Graduate Council meeting dates were announced to be February 10, March 10, and April 14, and May 5. VIII. Adjournment The meeting was adjourned at 1:15 P.M. Respectfully submitted, David E. Dudek - 5 -