Graduate Council Minutes

February 25, 2016

MEMBERS PRESENT

Voting: Professors V. Anand, J.R. Chimka, T.P. Cronan, N.D. Dennis, V.H. Hunt, K.S. Grover, J.B. Kerr, K. Korth, D. Shirey; Mr. T. Talafuse

Non-Voting: Professor P.R. Koski; Dr. S. Adams

MEMBERS ABSENT

Voting: Professors K.L. Needy, J.T. Scott, F. Spiegel, R. Warren; one representative from the Graduate Dean’s Student Advisory Board

Non-Voting: Professors J. Ganson, M.T. Miller, Y. Murphy-Erby, A. O’Leary-Kelly, L.J. Robertson

SECRETARY: Ms. T. M. Fisher

GUESTS Professors M. Arnold, R. Farley

The meeting was called to order at 2:00 p.m. by Chair Patricia Koski

Minutes for the January 21, 2016, Graduate Council meeting stand approved, as no changes were suggested. (Please review the Graduate Council Minutes).
Professor Koski reported that the Academic Appeals Committee heard several cases by e-mail but did not meet this month. There were no other committee reports.
There was no old business.
New Business, Program Changes
1. Professor R. Farley proposed to eliminate the concentration in Student Affairs and College Counseling in the M.S degree in Counseling (CNSLMS).
2. Professor P. Koski proposed to delete the graduate certificate in Preparing for the Professoriate (PROFGC), but told the Council that the courses offered in the certificate will continue to be offered.
3. Professor M. Arnold proposed the creation of a graduate certificate in Statistics and Analytics (STANGC).
Following discussion all program proposals were approved unanimously and will go next to the Faculty Senate. These program changes may be viewed at https://nextcatalog.uark.edu/programadmin/). Program proposals are also listed in Attachment A.
New Business, Policy Change: The Council approved the changes to graduate faculty status contained in Attachment B. These changes will go into effect immediately and will be retroactive.
A long-standing policy of the Graduate School is that Law students are not eligible to hold graduate assistantships outside the Law School. The Council was asked whether they wished to change this policy. The Council decided that since there has been no opposition to the policy, it should stand.
The Council reported on feedback from constituencies with regard to the following proposal:
Currently, there are many active graduate students who are not enrolled and therefore are not reflected in the 11th day enrollment census reports. We have enrollment requirements only for students who are post-candidacy doctoral students, international students, and students who are on assistantships. We don’t want to have a more extensive continuous enrollment policy because of the cost to the student. It is likely that we would lose many more students with such a policy. However, particularly for the humanities, our graduate enrollment is under-reported.
To solve this problem, we propose that students who are not enrolled in classes and who wish to remain active in UAConnect be required to enroll in a place-holder class with all but $50 of the tuition waived (per semester). This would allow students to retain access to library holdings, their e-mail addresses and other University benefits and they would not have to reapply to the Graduate School and pay an application fee if they wish to resume enrollment. We would discontinue our practice of creating affiliate students. Students who fail to enroll each semester would be assessed a penalty upon readmission.
Feedback suggests that opposition to the proposal would be centered primarily in those areas with a large number of part-time students. Discussion is continuing with a variety of constituencies.
The course change reports listed in Attachment C were approved unanimously.
The graduate faculty recommendations contained in Attachment D were approved unanimously.

There being no other business, the Council adjourned at 2:55 p.m. The Council will meet next on Thursday, March 17th, 2016, in Upchurch Conference Room of Bell Engineering.

Submitted by: Patricia R. Koski, Chair

Approved by: Kim Needy, Dean