Graduate Council
March 9th, 2009
Minutes
Attending: Dave Amare (Psychiatry), Danielle Traister (Law),
Elizabeth Faga (SSD), Suzanne Devkota (BSD), Madeleine
McLeester (SSD), Melissa Rosenzweig (SSD), Mary Leighton
(SSD), David Mihalyfy (Div), Debra Erickson (Div), Lily
Chumley (SSD), Greg Davidson (Hum), Rod Edwards (Hum),
Elizabeth Hutcheon (Hum), Jacqueline DeFoe (PSD), Raoul
Ruparel (SSD), Jasmine DeJeors (SSD), Owen Kohl (SSD), David
Lyons (Div), Jim Shilkett (Booth), Frank Bednarz (Law),
Melissa Barton (Hum), Tom Perrin (Hum), Celeste Moore (SSD),
Jarrod Wolf (College), Jamila Michener, Michael Deuser
I. Intro / Overview of the Forum (Brian Cody)
A. Goals of the forum:
1. Students gain understanding of decisions and
deliberations under way
2. Administrators gain understanding of student concerns and
experiences
3. Students can visualize and understand funding trends for
the future
4. All participants feel that they’ve been understood and
have understood
5. A clear sense of resolution and next steps
B. Student concerns (advanced residency committee)
1. No/limited information available pre-entrance about time
to degree
2. Lack of information about course planning, fellowship
opportunities
3. Different funding situations due to international status,
family situation, departmental peculiarities
4. Teaching opportunities and teaching aid
5. Advanced residency tuition, tuition increase
6. Lack of departmental structure, information about course
and other planning, disconnect between professors and students
7. Dissertation workshops and support (inter or
intradepartmental)
8. Support for career goals outside academia
II. Report on Advanced Residency Committee
A. Cathy Cohen
1. The committee began meeting in spring 2008, working on fair
methods of supporting AR students and lessening time to degree
2. In order to support AR, we realized we have to focus on SR
years as well
3. Have talked with departmental chairs, students, deans
4. Committee will make recommendations to the provost, who
will then evaluate, discuss, and decide which recommendations
to accept
5. AR tuition will increase, but student out-of-pocket
payments will remain the same next year
6. Overall graduate student support has been making
significant progress recently
7. Hum/SSD students in SR years will get a 2.5% stipend increase
B. Q&A;
1. Has there been discussion about extending health insurance
provisions for AR students?
-That’s actually in the purview of a different committee
(student affairs)
-We know it’s a real priority for graduate students
2. A stipend increase for SR students is great, but it takes
more than 5 years to reach the degree – what about help for AR
students?
-We’re trying to extend/expand dissertation fellowships
-Increased teaching remuneration
-Tuition you pay for AR next year is not going to increase
3. There are areas of the university where dissertation
fellowships are being cut because of economic reasons (not
necessarily direct budget cuts). is the university able at all
to take steps in response to this? Such as offering healthcare
grants, or suspending AR tuition for those who have lost
dissertation fellowship funding?
-It’s not possible to completely suspend AR tuition
-We have to think of a system that can alleviate AR funding
pressure but still maintain the excellence of grad programs
4. When will the committee make recommendations?
-Recommendations will be made in the spring, not
implemented until fall
-Committee isn’t quite finished working yet
5. Raising the AR fees by 5% wouldn’t make that much
difference to students who find a way not to pay (teaching,
fellowships, etc) – but it’s difficult for those who do have
to pay. Are waivers possible for those in the latter situation?
-I don’t think waivers can happen next year – how to decide
who would get one, and where would we get funding for them?
6. Some pre-GAI students have to pay AR starting in the 5th year
7. Is there discussion of dissertation fellowships being
extended beyond the eighth year? Or a case-by-case evaluation?
-It depends on the division to some extent (some endowed
fellowships have restrictions, some don’t)
-There are a limited number of fellowships to go around
8. In the anthropology department, time to degree is not
viewed negatively – there need to be department-specific
discussions of a viable, useful, efficient time to degree that
we should fund
-AR committee has met with department chairs to discuss time
to degree and reasons behind it, and we are considering info
from peer institutions as well
9. Where exactly do AR tuition fees go?
-They are part of general divisional revenue – departments
don’t really have separate budgets
10. How and why did the AR tuition system come to be? It seems
illogical to ask people to pay just when they no longer have
stipends/income.
-The current AR program was first put in place in 1984; prior
to that, residency was counted by full-time registered
courses...there was no program after that. Grad students just
stopped registering, we had no idea who was an active grad
student until they graduated
-AR was established as a less expensive way to access
full-time student privileges – this was especially important
for international students’ visa purposes
-There was also an ‘Active File’ status to remain registered
and have library privileges only – this was eliminated in 2000
-The idea of AR was a way to keep access to full-time
privileges while students worked on advanced degrees; fees
were meant to be low enough for students to handle
11. AR students pay only a certain amount out of
pocket...could you raise the fee only for those who have it
covered, and not raise it for those who are broke? To what
extent is this real vs. on paper money?
-AR tuition is going to increase 5% across the board, but the
amount that students pay out of pocket will not increase next year
-Tuition paid is still real revenue money
-This doesn’t mean committee won’t recommend restructuring
of AR
12. I wonder if university couldn’t negotiate with fellowship
funding organizations/foundations to allow more funding to AR
students?
13. If the AR committee is considering heavy loans as a viable
funding option, given the economic situation...please don’t.
-What we are trying to determine is the university’s
responsibility to fund students through their studies, versus
what should be the student’s burden
-Most students/faculty don’t actually know what the median
time to degree is
14. We probably won’t ever be able to convince department
chairs to reduce time to degree – departments are the ones who
are practicing the field. Being paid to attend graduate school
is the only way some programs can even exist.
15. It’s the segue from SR to AR that is not smooth – GAI
might even make it more difficult to make the transition
16. The anthropology department here is one of the best in
the country, so cutting time to degree may actually break what
doesn’t need fixing – it very much depends on the discipline.
Is there a possibility of adjusting AR fees according to
discipline?
III. Teaching Availability for Next Year
A. Cathy Cohen & Divisional Deans
1. Under the GAI, students must teach 5 points by end of 5th
year
2. We know there is concern about the availability of
positions next year
3. (Presentation slides about numbers of GAI students,
teaching points, teaching positions by division and overall)
4. 1659.5 teaching points available next year; 879 teaching
points required from GAI students
5. Cathy will come back early spring quarter with updates
B. Q&A
1. Anthropology students are expected to be out of the country
4th and 5th year – should we be considered on a different year
scale?
-We’re not going to penalize students who are doing fieldwork,
teaching expectations are on those who are here
2. Have you factored in those without teaching requirements
but also without funding? (so they need to take teaching
positions anyway)
-We don’t know who those students are, no way to know if/how
students will decide to teach
-We understand that ‘need’ is different from ‘requirement’
3. Were these numbers formulated before policy was established?
-They were, and we are continuing to refine them
-We started developing the GAI in fall 2006; wanted to move
quickly to have it in place by admissions season – so in a
sense we did not crunch the numbers before that time
4. How are you reconciling the application process (where
positions are determined by professors/departments) with the
desire to fill positions?
-We have discussed teaching requirements with the College
making sure those who are required to teach get the necessary
positions; expect the College to cooperate
-College has declared that it would like to choose lecturers
independently, but not necessarily so for TA positions
-Divisions provide a lot of funding for teaching in the College
-Teaching requirements are not new; different departments have
found their own ways to work it out over the years
-Teaching in the Core is decided through the Collegiate Masters
5. Given that it’s better for grad students to teach later on
in their careers, and better for undergrads to be taught by
more mature grad students, what is the point of having the
requirement to teach in the 1st five years (as opposed to
anytime in the graduate career)?
-We have found that helping students learn how to teach
earlier in their career is actually beneficial
-If we provide the proper support and training, you can be a
great teacher 3rd or 4th year
-There is another committee looking at pedagogical support for
grad students
-In an academic career, you are often evaluated on teaching
ability as well as research – teaching needs to be part of
graduate education
-The 5 points system is new, but not teaching requirements
in general
-We don’t intend for people to teach in 1st or 2nd year
6. It sounds like the priority for teaching positions goes to
those with the teaching requirements; what do people who have
financial need but no requirements do? Is there someone who
can monitor these things and help people find positions?
-We try to accommodate all students who want a teaching
position, but there is no guarantee (also need is subjective)
-We will track those people
7. For those who are required to teach, and we do everything
we can to get a position but don’t get one, what happens to
our funding?
-First place to go is your department and dean of students
(and contact Cathy)
8. Do you have a figure for those students teaching in year
6 or above?
-We asked the deans to give us the numbers for students who
were teaching in years 1-5, then estimated by percentage
9. For the anthropology department, where we are in the field
years 4-5, would there be any flexibility regarding teaching
requirements, so that stipends for those years are not cut so
severely?
-We will work with the anthropology department
-What we have in place is not different from the policy of
peer institutions
IV. Budget Cuts
A.SSD
1. There’s plenty for everybody to hate in the budget, and
it’s not a position we would like to be in or planned to be in
2. University endowment has dropped from $6 billion to $4
billion, and we are still waiting on enrollment numbers for
next year
3. We have been asked to reduce division budget expenditures
by $3 million from this year
4. About $1 million will be cut from admin/operating expenses
5. We will mostly eliminate visiting professor positions
6. We are slashing intake of new PhD students by about 1/3
next year, with very carefully regulated offers
7. We are trying to realize some additional tuition revenue
through expanding the masters programs
8. We will continue to support the financial commitments we
have made to current students, at the price of deeper cuts
elsewhere
9. There will be a mall cut in number of Core lectureships
and prize lectureships
10. Departments have had to cut their operating budgets as
well, eliminating some TAships and lectureships
11. Slower rate of adding/replacing faculty; less staff
support for students and professors
12. Impact of this year’s endowment reduction will not
actually hit until fiscal year 2011, but budgets are being
reduced so as to prepare for it (maybe even too optimistically)
B. Humanities
1. We are doing similar things as SSD – smaller incoming
class, fewer faculty appointments
2. Not yet making staff cuts, but not refilling some open
positions
3. We are honoring all financial commitments to graduate
students
C. Q&A
1. We have heard summer provost grants will be cut this
year, is that true?
-That’s under Kim Goff-Crews’ purview this year
2. Can the university manage its endowment so as to avoid this
kind of dip even in bad economic times?
-All of higher education is being hit by this, though overall
we have lost less value than market as a whole
-We may have to increase endowment pay outs; we are already
consuming principal as it is
-We haven’t seen this drastic a collapse in equity markets
since the 1930s
-Since the end of WW2, equities have grown faster than
inflation, and endowments have been increasingly aggressively
invested
3. Were these budget cuts factored into the teaching
position numbers?
-Cathy will check again
4. Is there ever going to be a hard cap on the funded years
of study?
-It’s not in the recommendations right now, but can’t say that
it will never be
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