November 18, 2020

Attending:  Brett Welch, Theresa Hefner-Babb, Jerry Lin, Carly Cox, Joe Kruger, Xiangchang Li, Awais Saleem, Jeff Forret, Jeff Dyson, Dorothy Sisk

Guests: Natalie Tindall, Qingjiang Yao, Jill Killough, Jenny Zhou, Selahattin Sayil

Approval of Minutes

#459 – October 21, 2020

Move to accept: Sisk, Second: Saleem, Approved

Old Business

-Approval of Graduate Council bylaws: tabled last meeting due to insufficient time for council review.  Not all council members have reviewed bylaw revisions at this time. 

-Discussion/approval of stacked course review process:  Not all members have reviewed this yet.  Will table for today.  Requested email comments from council members.

-Discussion/review of Graduate Faculty applications:  FAC and CoE have not completed review, all others are complete.  Will need to complete missing portions and then finalize in December.

New Business

College of Education & Human Development

Nutrition, Hospitality & Human Services:  Dr. Killough attending to discuss “credit by experience” proposal for students with Registered Dietician (RD)/Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN) credentials

Jill Killough:  need to design form for communicating with Records

Moved to accept:  Sisk, Second:  Welch, Approved

College of Engineering

College-wide:  submitting a memo regarding the application of credits from a master’s degree toward a D.E. or Ph.D.  Zhou attended to speak on this item regarding the application of credits from one master’s degree toward one doctoral degree.  Request is to transfer up to 6 credits from master’s to doctoral with the approval of the dept chair and college dean.  CoE department chairs approve of this idea.  This is current practice but no official policy in place.  This helps to encourage students to return and complete another degree with Lamar.  Zhou states it is similar to their 4+1 program for undergrads.  In D.E. program, 27 hours of coursework is required.  This would allow CoE to lower that requirement.  Credit hour transfers currently apply at the same level.  Committee needs to decide if we will allow 5000 level credits to apply for 6000 level credits.  Kruger: are only 6000 level courses currently in the doctoral program or are there at least 2 5000 level courses in place already?  There are already some 5000 level courses in the doctoral level program per Li in addition to the 6000 level courses.  Both are counted toward the degree requirements.  Students taking 5000 level courses to apply toward doctoral degree need to potentially have additional, more rigorous assignments to show clear differentiation for accreditation purposes per Hefner-Babb.  Lin: need to have more detailed discussion with assessment office.  Asks council members provide short paragraph with their opinions and we will combine this and make a decision on the proposal in December meeting.  If we allow this for CoE, will we allow outside master’s transfer credit hours to be applied to doc level programs?  This proposal has not been reviewed by assessment office yet.  Forret:  asked if this decision would set precedent and yes, it would.  Hefner-Babb states that our policy needs to be consistent to avoid problems in application.  Would be best if this was a university-level discussion. 

Electrical Engineering:  requesting 4 course additions, details below.  Dr. Sayil has reviewed these courses and provided differentiation between grad and doc levels.  He described in detail the differences in these courses/levels.  Sisk asked for clarification on the comment that the doctoral level courses have more assignments.  Dr. Sayil responded that these additional assignments could not be completed without a deeper understanding of the subject matter.  He further explained that the term project or research paper/reports prompts review of existing papers and results in something similar to a conference paper.  Li comments that Dr. Sayil’s proposal is reasonable.  Kruger comments that he hasn’t had a chance to review these documents yet. He asked about notification when items are uploaded.  Will discuss this further later in the meeting.  Dr. Sayil asks that if there are further questions from the council please email him. Motion to accept: Sisk, Second: Li, Approved.

Mechanical Engineering:  requesting course addition, details below.  Also requesting change to course, specifically the course description.  Li described these requests.  Moved to accept: Sisk, second: Li, Approved.

College of Fine Arts & Communication

Deaf Studies & Deaf Education – requesting 4 course changes, see info below. Tabled for further review, CoFAC representative can reach out to Dr. Clark and ask for more info on why these changes are needed.

College of Fine Arts & Communication

Communication & Media:  Dr. Tindall and Dr. Yao attending to discuss proposed graduate program.  Program created at the request of college administration. Department had a graduate program years ago.  They have faculty qualified to teach graduate courses, and students demonstrate desire for continued graduate education.  Lin and Hefner-Babb previously reviewed this proposal.  Approval from THECB and SACS will be required.  More time to review proposal is needed to ensure the proposal is meeting THECB and SACS requirements.  Can be decided on in Dec. grad council meeting to forward for February BoR meeting.  Tindall expressed need for clarity of process and timelines for getting approval since this is not stated anywhere.  Yao: currently we propose two tracks, one project and one thesis.  For thesis students they are thinking of doing a thesis with 3 credit hours, but unsure if that’s allowable, and asks council to review that specifically. 

College of Business

Management & Info Systems:  M.S. MIS program requesting updates to catalog descriptions for 11 courses.  Changes are to description only, not titles.  These items were tabled in Oct because David Short requested these be submitted on the correct forms.  They have now been submitted on the forms.  Motion to accept: Saleem, Second: Forret, approved.

Roundtable

-discuss allowing additional representative from academic colleges to sit in graduate council meetings (non voting):  CoA&S would like their associate dean to sit in on our meetings as an observer without voting privilege.  Sisk: comments that this would open the door to other similar requests.  Forret: was there an issue that prompted this request?  Lin: No, but CoA&S would like to be more informed on council matters.  Sisk:  this is the responsibility of the college representative on the committee.  Hefner-Babb:  this group is meant to be a faculty-led.  Lin: will bring this up at next dean’s meeting.  Motion to deny request: Sisk, Second: Saleem, motion approved, request denied.

-representation of graduate council members from colleges based on number of graduate students per college: There was a question about the level of college representation related to graduate student numbers.  Would the committee support changes to the level of representation based on number of graduate students?  Sisk: faculty senate works this way and she thinks this is a good idea. Final decision not reached today but council members asked to think about it for further discussion.

-discuss the transferring in of expired (greater than six or ten years old) courses for credit:  assessment office suggests looking into “best practices” at other institutions and tabling for further discussion later

-review revised Graduate Studies scholarship policy … by degree credit hours

Lin: requesting Dec. 16^th meeting to wrap up older business, no disagreement though Dyson may not be able to attend.

Motion to adjourn: Sisk, Second: Dyson, approved.

Cc 11.18.2020