Graduate Council

Voting members present: Sourabh Apte, Bill Bogley, Jim Coakley, Ryan Contreras, Rebekah Elliott, Lisa Ganio, Claire Gibbons, George Waldebusser
Voting members absent: Pat Chappell, Theresa Filtz, Marie Harvey, Lisa Price
Ex-Officio members present: Graduate School – Stephanie Bernell, Jennifer Brown
Guests present: Maureen Childers, Rosemary Garagnani

Roger Nielsen is the Faculty Senate Executive Committee (EC) liaison to the Graduate Council – if the Council has issues or questions for the EC to consider or wishes to take items to the Faculty Senate, call him. He can also provide the EC perspective on issues.

Comment on Ability/Time to Review Proposed Policy with Units

• Not discussed

Graduate Certificate Reviews (continued)

• Suggested Changes to the Curricular Policies and Procedures for Graduate Programs
• Notes on Certificate Program Review

• One member felt that an overarching transfer policy would trump this document.
• It was suggested to amend the document by replacing ‘criteria for transfer credit’ with ‘transfer policy’ in the first sentence of the next to the last paragraph on page 2.
• The members agreed with the proposed revisions by Academic Programs and Assessment (APA).

Action: Jim moved to accept the green changes (documented in the June 12, 2003 Graduate Council Minutes, but not reflected in the current statement) and red changes (suggested by the Office of Academic Programs and Assessment) and the amendment (to replace ‘criteria for transfer credit’ with ‘transfer policy’); motion seconded and passed.

• One member suggested including the 2003 date of some of the changes to the document.
• APA requested the Council to determine whether, in paragraph 4, the following verbiage is still applicable: “Award of a separate document, suitable for framing, will be at the discretion of (and will be the responsibility of) the unit administering the certificate program.”
  • The Registrar doesn’t print undergraduate certificates.
  • The impact on the Graduate School would be minimal, but someone would need to obtain the document – could this be accomplished via Printing and Mailing Services?
    • Jennifer didn’t see anything wrong with graduate certificates being transcript visible, and stop there. Others agreed with her. The unit may still print a certificate if they prefer.
• APA requested the Council to determine whether the following verbiage in the third sentence of paragraph two be retained, modified or omitted. If modified, how? “Annual reports will briefly summarize program status and provide statistics on enrollment and student progress.”
  • Steph reviewed what other institutions do, and many include the certificate program as a subset with the Graduate Program Review. Since many certificate students take a course year, an annual report may not be meaningful. These institutions don’t request entire analytics for certificate programs as they do with graduate programs.
    • Jennifer agreed that yearly may not be meaningful. She was also worried about the amount of data.
    • What is the value of the data and how would the Graduate School use it? Steph felt that she would want programs to review certificate data and determine whether it should be part of a degree rather than a standalone certificate.
      • OSU has certificates not associated with a program.
      • Could certificates be included in the annual data provided by the Graduate School? Data by Major code can be generated via Core.
      • The College of Business offers certificates to allow students who have already graduated to continue taking advanced courses.
      • A review would determine whether or not the courses are still being taught.
      • All certificates have a contact person, and they could ensure that courses are available, assist students, etc.; reflection may reside with only one person. The Graduate Program Director may not be aware of certificate details; there could be a disconnect between the two individuals. Another felt that the program director would ask the certificate coordinator to reflect on the certificate.
      • One expressed concern about the workload and tracking placement of certificate students.
      • Ryan suggested that Steph draft bullet points for what she would like to see if a certificate review was included in a degree program review.
      • Jennifer felt it should be a snapshot and had no interest in a full blown review. The review could be similar to graduate programs.
      • One questioned the purpose of the data collection. The policy should reflect the underlying purpose.
      • One noted that the new budget model may drive certificates.
      • A summary of the certificate status would be sufficient for a biennial certificate assessment. Have certificate programs reflect on their data when information for graduate programs are sent to units biennially.
      • Steph will prepare a draft for the Council to review.
      • Will the Graduate Council or Graduate School contact each of the certificate directors to begin submitting X information for all certificates?
      • Second paragraph, second sentence: Change “… annual reporting …” to ‘biennial’ (every other year), and delete the next-to-last sentence of the second paragraph.  

Actions:

• Bill moved to approve all proposed changes; motion seconded and passed with no dissenting votes.
• In response to the question from Academic Planning and Assessment about providing a document suitable for framing, the Council agreed that this is at the discretion of the certificate program and is their responsibility if they choose to do it.
• Lisa Ganio will communicate changes to Caryn Stoess in Academic Programs and Assessment.

Documents:

• Certificate – Graduate – Revised policy showing clean version of the revisions approved by the Graduate Council
• Certificate – Graduate – Revised policy showing mark-up text
  • Minutes excerpted from the June 12, 2003 Graduate Council meeting

Double Counting of Credits

1. e.g., MS + Certificates

• If admitted into a Master’s program, why should students be able to claim to be eligible for a certificate program? The transfer policy allows one to only transfer one-third of the credits into a certificate, which would be 6 credits.
• Rosemary will talk with the University of Kansas, which has over 100 certificates, and allows students to stack certificates to achieve a Master’s degree.
• One of the problems at OSU is that two students could take the same courses, but one graduates with only a Masters and one graduates with both a Masters and certificate. If one earns enough credits for a certificate, should they be allowed to receive the certificate if they didn’t indicate an intent to apply for a certificate program?
• How complicated is it for the Graduate School if students can apply for a certificate after they’ve earned the credits? Transfer credits and residency requirements complicate things.
• One argued the importance of the residency requirement.

2. AMP student + Certificate + transfer to Ph.D.?

• Not discussed

Minutes prepared by Vickie Nunnemaker, Faculty Senate staff