Graduate Council

Voting members present: John Becker-Blease, Brian Dolan, Kim Halsey, Matt Johnston, Chrissa Kioussi, Ricardo Letelier, Mark Needham, Liz Schroeder, John Schuna
Voting member absent: Cass Dykeman
Ex-officio member present: OSU-Cascades – Ryan Reese
Guests: Lindsay Andrews, Kristin Nagy Catz, Karen Hanson, Marit Legler

Adult and Higher Education Graduate Major (EDD, EDM, PhD) – CIM #2076 – Lindsey Andrews

• Lindsay Andrews explained that the rationale of the proposal was to revise the Adult and Higher Education PhD curriculum, location and to add new required courses. This proposal is moving from a combined hybrid format to a full-time Corvallis-based program and the PhD will also become a more traditional program.
• Needham questioned the thinking behind moving the PhD back to campus since many units are moving to an online format to generate revenue.
  • Andrews responded that the PhD program is not a major fund generator, the Masters program generates more income and will continue to be online, and enrollment will be 4-6 and will focus more on outcomes.

Action: Johnston moved to approve revisions to the Adult and Higher Education Graduate Major (EDD, EDM, PhD); motion passed with 10 votes in favor and no votes in opposition.

Program Proposals

• Leadership in Higher Education Graduate Option – CIM #373 – Inactivation
• Community College Leadership Graduate Option – CIM #374 – Inactivation
• Financial Planning Graduate Option – CIM #440 – Inactivation
• Financial Planning Graduate Certificate – CIM #452 – Inactivation
• Adult and Higher Education Graduate Major (EDD, EDM, PhD) – CIM #375 – Change

Action: All of the above proposals were approved with 10 votes in favor and no votes in opposition.

Graduate Council Review of Course-Level Graduate Learning Outcomes – Kristin Nagy Catz, Assessment and Accreditation

• Nagy Catz hopes that she will catch programs with Learning Outcomes (LOs) issues and assist the originators in writing LOs before the proposal goes too far. She worked with the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) which prepared a new Student Learning Outcomes guide. 
• Letelier questioned whether Nagy Catz will assist in providing consistency in both undergraduate and graduate programs.
  • Nagy Catz hopes that there will be consistency among both groups; she also hopes that there is standardization.

• Halsey questioned whether Nagy Catz will be involved with course proposals.
  • Nagy Catz believed that she would also assist with course proposals.
• Becker-Blease proposed that, if there were a problem, the Graduate Council would roll-back the proposal, but will not vote to affirm it. Or completely ignore and accept as correct GLOs if they make it past the desk of Nagy Catz.
  • Becker-Blease noted that the Council has 20-30 proposals coming before the Council. Additionally, there are multiple proposals coming from OSU-Cascades that contain problems with LOs.

Action: Nagy Catz noted that no proposals are in her box – she will contact Caryn Stoess about proposals.

• Kim questioned whether Nagy Catz will also be evaluating proposals for assessment.
  • Nagy Catz is open to whatever is helpful to the Graduate Council.
• Letelier indicated that the Council needs help with consistency and understanding of what occurs in a graduate program. The major concern is how to achieve consistency.
  • Nagy Catz wants the process to be consistent for programs being put forward.
    • • Becker-Blease asked one critical question – where will Nagy Catz appear in the workflow? If she’s near the top, the Graduate Council representative reviews the proposal, and the Council can raise concerns, but it will remove disagreement between the Council and proposer related to verbs if Nagy Catz first does the primary screening.
  • Letelier noted that, if there is disagreement among the Council members, the proposal could be sent back to Nagy Catz.
  • Becker-Blease felt that, if the verb is fine, the Council can look deeper into the substance of the proposal.

Action: Becker-Blease will send Nagy Catz the courses currently in the queue for the next meeting. He will also add her to the Graduate Council Box folder.

• Following Nagy Catz’s departure, Becker-Blease stated that he doesn’t know where in CIM Steph Bernell or Nagy Catz are seeing these proposals as he’s not seeing their names – he wants clarification as to when their reviews are occurring.

Proposals for Discussion on November 1, 2022

Course Proposals:

• WR 561 : CREATIVE NONFICTION FOUNDATIONS: EXPERIMENTAL FORMS – CIM #21142
• WR 557 : FICTION FOUNDATIONS 4: EXPERIMENTAL FORMS – CIM #21127
• WR 542 : PUBLISHING – CIM #21143
• WR 539 : CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP IN SPANISH: TALLER DE CREACIÓN LITERARIA EN ESPAÑOL – CIM21141
• WR 554 : FICTION FOUNDATIONS 1: NARRATIVE CONVENTIONS – CIM #21122

Residence Requirements for the Doctoral Degree

• Hanson noted that Rosemary Garagnani initially drafted proposed revisions to the Residence Requirement for PhD last spring. There are two parts to the policy: 1) a minimum of 36 credits, and 2) the student must spend at least 3 terms of at least 9 credits each term either on-campus or at an off-campus site approved by the Graduate School. Should the last part of the policy be modified or eliminated as it’s quite difficult for the Graduate School to track off-campus sites?
• Becker-Blease noted that this policy is 30+ years old and was written when graduate education was fundamentally different than now. He has asked for feedback to determine if it’s important to have a co-hort experience.
• Hanson reminded all of the distinction of part-time and full-time – is it reasonable to expect that one who has done work part-time now be required to move to Corvallis to be a full-time student for three terms?
• Letelier questioned whether it should be applied across the board; different units may have different expectations. His unit sees extreme value of having co-horts; he was not comfortable voting without conferring with his colleagues.
• Dolan questioned whether this policy would supersede a program that wishes to maintain a co-hort.
  • Becker-Blease felt that a program could have higher requirements than university requirements.
  • Letelier felt that the policy should be applied broadly – he would rather have no policy than one that is restrictive.
  • Johnston acknowledged that there are not many part-time PhD students but requiring that they attend full-time in Corvallis may prevent them from finishing a PhD program.
• Kioussi stated that Pharmacy has no full-time PhD students – does the program need to be submitted to the Graduate School if they wish to have a modification?
• Becker-Blease felt that, if approved, all programs would need to be alerted that they need to explicitly adopt a residence policy. What is the approval process when a program wants to change their residence requirement?
  • Hanson suggested that a follow-up could occur with Curriculum Management.
• Johnston questioned whether the policy is now enforced or checked.
  • Karen responded that it’s not enforced consistently since they don’t know where students are located.
• Halsey asked how this affects in-state and out-of-state tuition.
  • Karen explained that whether one pays in-state or out-of-state tuition is determined at the time of admission.

Action: Reach out to Curriculum Management and revisit the response with the Council.

• Becker-Blease suggested that, perhaps, units could eliminate the residence requirements and, alternatively, programs may elect to not require this policy and their requirements would be filed with the Graduate School.

Minutes prepared by Vickie Nunnemaker, Faculty Senate staff