Graduate Faculty Council Meeting Minutes: October 1, 2003


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

  1. The meeting was called to order at 3:12 P.M. Vice Provost Janet Greger presided.
  2. It was moved, seconded, and passed without dissent on a voice vote to approve as distributed the minutes of the 3-26-2003 meeting.
  3. Update on the newly approved GA Health Insurance Policy: The new health insurance plan is a good plan, although not as good as the employees' plan, but better than those for GA's at competing universities. The State of Connecticut has determined that graduate assistants are NOT employees since they are paid on a stipend. Therefore, the reason for this change. This newly created GA Health Insurance Policy is also available to fellows on federal training grants.
  4. a) The Task Force report: The REVISED POLICY FOR UCONN GRADUATE SCHOOL and resulting brochures were distributed to members. Here are the main points:
    • The rules of doctoral dissertation & masters' thesis were simplified. If a department wants to impose tighter restrictions then that is their prerogative.
    • Simplified Application Process

    5. J. Henkel reported on electronic applications to Graduate School. The university will accept VISA as a form of payment for Graduate electronic admissions. As with anything new, some problems will be experienced but departments should be able to be more proactive in the admission process.

    The Self-Managed Application Process encourages applicants to submit "complete" application packets.

    b) Graduate Alumni Database Shared with the UConn Foundation

    The NRC survey of doctoral programs will ask us to assess the professional success of our alumni. To do this, we need a database to track our alumni. The UConn Foundation "Millenium" database and the Graduate School's PeopleSoft database are being merged.

  5. Update on survey of faculty interest in NRC-determined fields of study.

    Faculty are encouraged to list themselves in more than one field of study. 90% of faculty have responded to the NRC survey. The responses were distributed. More analysis of the responses will need to be done.

    Emeritii and adjunct faculty can be included in the survey if departments feel they contribute to the ranking.

  6. Graduate Faculty Council Representation

    Currently, faculty can vote in only one graduate program constituency but they may be a member of several.

    E. Smith suggested that faculty should be able to vote in at least 2 constituencies of which they were a member. The group also discussed the possibility that faculty could vote in all graduate program constituencies of which they were a member. It was moved, seconded, and passed (23-2) to leave the current method of representation unchanged.

  7. Adjournment was at 4:42 P.M.

Respectfully submitted,
Carleen Morneau
Secretary

Present

  • Abe, K.
  • Achenie. L.
  • Alexandrescu. A.
  • Boster, J.
  • Cillessen, A.
  • Clifford, J.G.
  • Cormier, V.
  • Cournoyer, D.
  • Cromley, E.
  • Doyle, M.
  • Dunne. G.
  • Enderle, J.
  • Geary, S.
  • Hagen, C.
  • Lillo-Martin, D.
  • Klein, L.
  • Makriyannis, A.
  • Maresh, C.
  • Marsden, J.
  • Mathieu, J.
  • McAvoy, R.
  • Miller, T.
  • Pagoulatos, E.
  • Rios, D.
  • Sheehan, N.
  • Smith, E.
  • Stern, D.
  • Streifer, P.
  • Tian, X.
  • Warner, G.
  • Vitale, R.

Graduate School: J. Greger, and J. Henkel (Executive Committee)

Graduate Students: Kisha Tracy and Jeff Arbogast

Regrets: W. Abikoff (sabbatic), A. Albert (sabbatic), G. Anderson, F. Archambault, J. Barnes-Farrell, A. Basu, S. Boggs, W.F. Bohlen, H. Brody, R. Brown, A. Calabrese (sabbatic), R. Cusson, M. Fernandez, A. Frogley, A. Hand, D. Herzberger, M. Hesselbrock, O. Karan, S. Korn, B. Kream, E. Markus, G. Maxwell, B. Mayer, R. McNeal, N. Mukhopadhyay (sabbatic), C. Schlicting, E. Schultz (sabbatic), J. Segal, K. Segerson, G. Semenza, A. Shvartsman, L. Silbart, L. Strausbaugh, J. Troyer, S. Weller, B. Zhang