Graduate Faculty Council Meeting Minutes: November 19, 2003

Whetten Graduate Center, Room 200
3:00 P.M.

  1. The meeting was called to order at 3:08 P.M. Associate Vice Provost Jim Henkel presided.
  2. It was moved, seconded, and passed without dissent on a voice vote to approve as distributed the minutes of the 10-1-2003 meeting.
  3. J. Henkel provided an update on the impact of the new SEVIS regulations. China, Korea and India were the countries most affected. The importance of timely application materials was stressed as last minute admission requests will NOT be guaranteed.
  4. The new Electronic Graduate School application process was demonstrated by J. Henkel. Several points were highlighted:
    • The Graduate School is encouraging students to submit self-managed applications, (ie the applicant is responsible for obtaining all the necessary documents and then sending it in along with the application as a complete package.)
    • An application fee waiver mechanism is available for those departments that wish to pay an application fee for one or more students. Special fee waiver codes can be obtained from J. Henkel at the Graduate School.
    • Once an on-line application to UConn is begun, departments have the ability to monitor each person applying to UConn even before the completed application is submitted. There were several concerns expressed about students' privacy rights. Several suggestions were made to deal with this potential problem including a disclaimer statement alerting prospective students of their information being available and/or a checkbox indicating a student's interest in the department initiating contact with them. [Note: a disclaimer exists on the application web site noting that application data may be viewed by the institution prior to formal submission.]
    • To-date, 70% of the applications received are web-based .
  5. The GEC members who do not have conflicts of interest with us will serve as the jury for the Pilot Program for Recruitment of Graduate Students.
  6. The 1 st revision of the NRC graduate faculty interest survey (as of 11/4/03) was distributed. We are still in the collection phase. There are a number of fields present that are too small (less than 10 Ph.D.'s within 10 years) and these cannot be ranked.
  7. The Graduate School Post-doctoral trainees and fellows policy was discussed. Reasoning for the creation of this definition was provided along with the Executive Committee's decision and recommendations for establishing a salary scale.
  8. Adjournment was at 4:47 P.M.

Respectfully submitted,
Carleen Morneau
Secretary

P R E S E N T
  • Abe, K.
  • Alexandrescu. A.
  • Anderson, G.
  • Barnes-Farrell, J.
  • Bohlen, W.
  • Brown, R.
  • Cillessen, A.
  • Clifford, J.G.
  • Cormier, V.
  • Cromley, E.
  • Cusson, R.
  • Doyle, M.
  • Dunne. G.
  • Enderle, J.
  • Fernandez, M.
  • Frasca. S.
  • Frogley, A.
  • Lillo-Martin, D.
  • Makriyannis, A.
  • Markus, E.
  • Marsden, J.
  • Miller, T.
  • Schlichting, C.
  • Segerson, K.
  • Sheehan, N.
  • Shvartsman, A.
  • Warner, G.
  • Vitale, R.

Graduate School: J. Henkel (Executive Committee), A. Lanzit (Assoc. Director-Graduate Admissions)

Graduate Students: Adam Rabinowitz and Andrea Knorr

Regrets: W. Abikoff (sabbatic), L. Achenie, A. Albert (sabbatic), J. Arbogast, F. Archambault, A. Basu, S. Boggs, J. Boster, H. Brody, A. Calabrese (sabbatic), D. Cournoyer, S. Geary, J. Greger, C. Hagan, A. Hand, D. Herzberger, M. Hesselbrock, O. Karan, L. Klein, S. Korn, B. Kream, C. Maresh, J. Mathieu, G. Maxwell, B. Mayer, R. McAvoy, R. McNeal, N. Mukhopadhyay (sabbatic), E. Pagoulatos, D. Rios, E. Schultz (sabbatic), J. Segal, G. Semenza, L. Silbart, E. Smith, D. Stern, L. Strausbaugh, P. Streifer, X. Tian, K. Tracy, J. Troyer (sabbatic), S. Weller, S. Wheeler, B. Zhang