Council of Graduate School Programs
Regular Meeting
November 30, 2001
13th Floor, Lewis Towers,
Water Tower Campus
MINUTES
[Approved, 2/1/02]
Members Present: Gad Bensinger, Steven Brown, Pamela Caughie (chair), Kerry Cochrane (for Yolande Wersching), Andrew Cutrofello, Fran Daly, Joseph Durlak, Mary Elsbernd, O.S.F., Mark Frasier, Thackery Gray, Maureen Hellwig, Susan Hirsch, Claudio Katz, James Keenan, Fred Kniss, Mary Manteuffel, Marcia Maurer, Joan McLane, Steven Michels, Duarte Mota de Freitas, E.J. Neafsey, Jon Nilson, Marie Opatrny, David Ozar, Diane Suter, Pauline Viviano,.
Members Excused: Barney Berlin, Susan Cavallo, David Chinitz, Randolph Lucente, Michael Maher, Yolande Wersching, Alan Wolfe.
Graduate School Deans: Trevor Bechtel, Max Caproni, Marianne Gramza, William Yost.
Guest: Ken Olsen (Department of Chemistry), Shelley Roberts (Department of CIEP, attending for Barney Berlin).
Call to Order
Pamela Caughie, chair of the Council, called the meeting to order at 1:00 p.m.
Approval of Minutes
Dr. Caughie proposed including additional material from the chair's report in the minutes of the Council's September 28, 2001 regular meeting. There were no objections. The Council approved the minutes as revised by a unanimous vote.
Dean's Report
William Yost distributed a written report and provided an overview of its contents. He requested that the Council consider the new policies proposed in the report at its next meeting.
Program Review Committee's Report
James Keenan, chair of the Program Review Committee, summarized the Committee's report regarding the ten-year review and evaluation of the graduate programs in Chemistry. He reported that the Committee recommends that the graduate programs in Chemistry be continued and urges the necessary investments to enable these programs to prosper.
In the discussion that followed the role that finances play in review was a major topic. The Council does not have access to information on finances and reviews programs only in terms of academic quality. Given Loyola's stringent finances and the fact that the outside evaluators had expressed concern that greater investment in the Chemistry program was necessary for long-term quality and viability, Council members raised the issue of whether the basis for review must change. Council has called a moratorium on reviewing, and the Program Review Committee is evaluating what changes need to be made in the process. In the case of Chemistry, Council members did specify that the department needed a strategic plan to increase external funding.
The Council recommended that the graduate programs in Chemistry be continued by a vote of 19 in favor and 0 opposed, with 3 abstentions.
Curriculum Committee's Report
Marcia Maurer, chair of the Curriculum Committee, summarized the Committee's questions regarding distance learning, and she requested input from Council members by January 1, 2002. Dr. Maurer stated that the Committee is plans to formulate and propose distance-learning policies for future consideration by the Council.
In response to questions, Dr. Maurer explained that the goal of the policies was to define distance learning for Loyola and give structure to the course approval process. University-wide standards are desirable, but at the same time the Council needs to avoid putting a straight jacket on an evolving pedagogy.
Chair's Report
Dr. Caughie delivered the following report:
Having recommended that we discuss the dean's handouts from our November 2nd meeting [The Costs and Benefits of Doctoral (Ph.D.) Education at Loyola University Chicago, and Niched, Focused, Specialized, Non-Generic Synonyms for the Future of Graduate Education at Loyola University Chicago] via email, I have prepared a summary of the exchanges shared with me.
On the dean's report, with the list of 10 criteria:
One GPD remarked that there is nothing about congruence with the mission of the University (though one might respond that this is addressed in #7, added value to undergraduate education and #10, other value-added contributions), and that there is no suggestion of a genuinely collaborative process by which such criteria might be determined.
Another GPD wrote to the Dean concerned that the criteria for determining allocation of resources takes no consideration of the disproportionate support programs now get from the Graduate School. Such criteria as quality of applicants, delivery of grad education, and graduates competition in the marketplace are all influenced by the resources a program has. This person suggests either holding programs with generous resources to higher standards, or assessing programs by comparing students with assistance across programs and then comparing students without assistantships.
On the costs/benefits statement:
One GPD wrote to the Dean about the suggestion that the 3-2 teaching loads are linked to Ph.D. programs. Not only does that suggestion go against senior administrators assurances in the past, but it also gives every department a vested interest in retaining its doctoral programs. The load should be linked to research productivity. (The dean's response was not shared with me.)
We also debated the formula for determining the cost of dissertation supervision. It seems most programs do not give course releases for such supervision. Only two of those GPDs who responded (there were more than a dozen) to my email question of Nov. 5 said that they did receive such course release. However, one of those was not a doctoral program but as a science program, the department did offer 2-1 loads (the standard in the dept. being 3-3) to research-active faculty working with MS students.
In the School of Education, where faculty have an especially heavy dissertation load, such course release was negotiated last year. If a faculty member were supervising more than 10 dissertation and independent study students in any one year, that person would be eligible for a one-course reduction. (Each dissertation student was counted as .5 per semester so that to receive the release the faculty would actually have 20 students.)
This GPD raised the question of why 600-level courses don't count in the faculty's credit hour load Don't students pay for these courses?
I raised the question of whether dividing faculty salaries into percentages for teaching and for research/service an arbitrary formula devised by the Dean for his specific purposes, or is it a new administrative policy something like the BSI (base/supplement/incentive) policy at the Medical School? [For example, I recently figured out that half my salary is now in the WOST budget when I receive no more than 1/5 of my salary is the stipend I receive for directing the program. Who made that decision and why? It makes the program look more expensive than it is.] The Dean responded that these were his methods; no one else is doing this.
The Dean responded in an email to all of us that he was dead set against not counting dissertation supervision against teaching load and that the cost of dissertation supervision should equal that of a 3-credit course. The formula he presented (50% salary) is the most conservative he could think of in assigning cost to dissertation supervision.
Finally, there is the long email that I sent to the Dean and his responses (in bold) which was attached to the agenda for this meeting. You can read it at your leisure, but I will highlight some of the key points, beginning with the cost/benefits statement.
1. Allocation of resources is the administration's business. However, Council plays a consultative role and has the expertise on specific programs and therefore should be provided with the information to offer informed recommendations. For example, the Dean gave us his recommended policy on GPD compensation last year and asked for our input. We responded to him individually, and then never hear about the proposed recommendations again. There should be some follow-up discussion in Council before the policy is implemented.
2. If most programs are not nationally ranked, as my GPD survey revealed, then how do we respond to the fifth criterion on national ranking? The Dean suggested several measures (see the email exchange) but emphasized that we need to begin paying attention to national rankings.
On niched/focused statement:
1. What are the benchmarks by which our progress toward the goal of being a premier undergraduate institution will be measured? I also asked about the logic of the sentence that claimed we could become a premier undergrad institution only if we have focused PhD programs. One could argue that it's the programs, not the focus, that matters. The Dean suggests selective admissions as the main criteria for determining premier status. I would add that library resources, quality of faculty, student-teacher ratio, acceptance rate, ACT/SAT scores, class rank of students, and determining schools we want to compare ourselves to are just a few measures that should be included. But the point is we need a University-wide conversation on what we mean by ?premier.?? Becoming a premier undergraduate institution might be costly. The Dean insists that focused programs are a means to the end of excellence.
2. The Dean also reiterated his argument that generic doctoral programs won't lead to excellence. His advice is to focus.
3. The Dean also said he wasn?t pushing interdisciplinary programs on existing programs but encouraging us to look across traditional boundaries.
4. I ended by raising the question of how we recruit and retain excellent research-active faculty if we cut our graduate programs, and I might add, increase our course load. The Dean agreed that that was a concern.
In the discussion that followed Dean Yost was asked if the criteria for evaluating the quality of programs had been altered and whether they would be implemented quickly. He responded that he already recognized the need to add a clinical component and that he was deciding whether the faculty survey was a useful tool for measuring quality. He said he would implement the criteria for this year's budget process.
New Business
No new business was raised.
Adjournment
Dr. Caughie adjourned the meeting at 3:10 p.m.