Attendees:
Click here for original Minutes from 9/11/2002
Approval of the Minutes of the 4/24 and 5/1
Faculty Senate Meetings
Reports of Faculty Senate standing committees
Discussion of Impact of and Response to the
Graduate Tuition Policy
Presentation by the
Dean of Graduate Studies
Input from Senators
and general discussion
Approval of the Minutes of the 4/24 and 5/1 Faculty Senate Meetings
President Peter Persans brought the meeting to order, asking
for a moment of silence in memoriam for the victims of
There was concern about the amount of time it took the notes
to be released after the last spring meeting. Possibly in special
circumstances, like the very last meeting of the year, or if a quorum is
absent, electronic approval may be considered in the future. The April 24
minutes were approved, and the May 1 minutes were corrected and approved.
Reports
of Faculty Senate Standing Committees
President Persans asked for reports from the standing
committees. Most committees had not met as yet. The new members of the Faculty
Senate and its committees are listed at
http://www.rpi.edu/dept/facsen/documents/NewFacsen/facsen3.htm.
Discussion
of Impact of and Response to the Graduate Tuition Policy
Provost Peterson presented some of the principal issues and
initiatives his office will be undertaking for AY 2002-03, which will have
direct impact upon the faculty. (Slide
attached)
Peterson elaborated on the third item, the
"revision" of the Gifts, Grants and Memberships Policy. Actually
there has not been a policy as such; there is tradition, and a whole cluster of
different portions of a policy. A review will be undertaken on how to make a
determination of what is considered a gift or grant and how we handle Center
memberships. The guidelines that have been in use for the last 18 months may be
formalized and presented to the Faculty Senate. The Vice President of Research
will have a check-off process, when working with industrial partners, to
determine if proposals will be sent to Contracts and Grants, or Institute
Advancement. ABET has recently tightened up their guidelines in terms of what
they allow institutions to count as externally funded research and how gifts,
gifts in kind, and cost-sharing are counted.
As part of the Middle States, ABET, and the AACSB
accreditation processes, we've had discussions, information and pushback about
how we measure outcome, the quality of our students, the goals we want to
accomplish as an institution, and how we assess those outcomes institute wide.
The Middle States initiative, which has been underway for some time, will
probably come to closure sometime during this academic year.
President Persans asked for names of people to serve on a
committee to revise the Handbook for Academic Staff. This will be an extensive
undertaking, particularly important with respect to Promotion and Tenure. The
revisions will be prepared and brought forward to the FS for review and
approval, hopefully by the end of this academic year.
Presentation
by the Dean of Graduate Studies
Tom Apple, Dean of Graduate Education, recently attended the
Council of Graduate Schools and brought back some "best practices"
and issues important to faculty members. (Presentation
attached.)
Yearly review of graduate students, particularly regarding
expectations for the coming year, staying on track to finish dissertations,
long range goals, timely passing of qualifiers and candidacy exams, management
skills, teaching skills, and career guidance were discussed. Across the
Institute, we scored of 2.5 on a scale of 1 to 5 in "career guidance"
from our survey of May graduates. Apple asked for feedback from Department
Chairs and faculty members as to the viability of having guidelines or rules
for the review, possibly in written form. Comments on how to enforce this
review if it should become a "rule" and a number of measures that
could possibly be taken were discussed. As far as career counseling, it was
suggested that the university as a whole do workshops and sessions. The survey
will be made available to the Faculty Senate.
Tom Apple and Gary Gabriele will be going on the road in the
next couple of months to do focus groups in five or six companies where our
students are 0 to 5 years out. In addition, the NRC rankings are going to
require a survey of our graduates who are a couple of years out. We have been
chosen as one of seven schools to have a committee come to study the effect of
some of the proposed changes. It appears the plan is to collect data from the
2003-2004 Academic Year.
Input
from Senators and General Discussion
President Persans brought the discussion around to the
responses received from faculty regarding the Graduate Tuition Policy.
Conversation touched on the loss of top students in Humanities; the impact on
ability to recruit by not being able to offer 4 or more years of support; the
drop in Masters students in many programs; "sticker shock" on
proposals due to the tuition charge; the loss of part time students (i.e., GE
and Knolls especially) to Union or remote programs; and across the board,
faculty members are hesitant and conservative in making offers without clear
funding.
President Persans adjourned the meeting, and due to time
constraints would like to resume this discussion at the next meeting.