Graduate Council Minutes

Thursday, 3:15 pm, September 10, 2015

1. 
   Welcome: Tammy Garland called meeting to order at 3:15.
   

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  Approval of minutes for previous meeting 9-10-15. Correction of the word “intergraded” to “integrated”. The minutes were then approved.
  

2. 
   Old Business:
   

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  Discussions were concerned with the processes and how to plan for a coordinated recruiting program with the colleges. The College of Arts and Sciences with Marcus Mauldin’s leadership have performed a formal assessment of recruitment activities for their college. Marcus agreed that his material could be shared with the committee. There were a number of different ideas of how we might move forward assessing what we do and what is best practice. More to come in the coming months.
  

2. Recruitment Flyers Amy Campbell

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  To be ready for the Graduate Fair on the 7^th of October, all information on the flyers is due by the 30^th of September. The Graduate School is paying for 300 of these flyers; if you want more you will need to contact April Cox and reorder as needed.
  

3. 
   New Business:
   

1. 
   Mocs One Yancy Freeman
   

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  We began about a year ago looking for a central location for services on our campus. Functional offices will include admissions, financial aid, records, and graduate school. The center will assist with the enrollment process and Bursar’s Office tasks. The Chancellor created a committee who made visits to Georgia State University, which has been recognized as a national best practice site. We also went to look at the University of Cincinnati to study what they do as well. Currently we are trying to make the process of registering easier for students. The Records Office has been moved to the University Center to provide a more seamless transition for students.
  
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  The Chancellor had two recommendations for Enrollment Services: start a summer bridge program for underrepresented students, and the second create a one-stop-shop center that would be a centralized location for students. This is for students who have questions about financial aid, records office and the bursar’s office. This will be open and ready in mid-November. Please come by and take a look at the space. Coming very soon, we will have an open house.
  

2. 
   Best Practice Dr. Elizabeth O’Brien
   

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  The university really does not have a true definition of candidacy, but a draft has been created for us (see attached). Please review and let us know if we should retain this definition and vote to adopt, or if the committee should revise? What prompted this is that we now have an electronic graduation application process, whereas prior to that we had a combination application for graduation and an application for candidacy in one form. When we started with the online forms, it separated this process. The definition of candidacy means the student has completed all his/her coursework and has passed preliminary or qualifying exams and is now ready to move forward with the dissertation. This definition does not fit us very well, thus we need to come up with a better way for the students to understand.
  
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  Discussion points from Council: The use of the word majority is not clear, and we should probably include the word “core” in the definition somewhere, for example “Completing the core course work”. We also need to look at what THEC requires at the master’s level, a definition may already be available. We could put in projects as determined by your department. The candidacy form is an audit for the liaison, they make sure all courses/requirements are complete.
  
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  The committee will work on this and bring back changes at the next meeting.
  

3. 
   Recruiting Fairs Dr. Randy Walker
   

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  Atlanta University Center- October 1
  
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  Dalton State- October 5, 2015 11:00-2:00
  
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  UTK- October 30, 2015 9-4:30
  

4. 
   Graduate School Recruitment Fair Dr. Randy Walker
   

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  October 7, 2015 from 3:00-6:00 in the Chattanooga Rooms. Please advise your students that if they apply on that day the fee will be waived.
  

5. 
   Graduate Student Association Shikha Patel, President
   

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  I am still looking for first semester graduate students, so if you have any body in mind please let me know. I am establishing a group to give me input on any issues they may have had while applying to UTC within the admissions process.
  
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  We had a social event this past week and had a good considering it was the first event. We are having another event each month. A tailgate at our homecoming game on October 31^st, thus please let your students know about that as well.
  

4. 
   Announcements:
   

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  The library manages the UTC scholar, which is where the final copies of all theses and dissertations are stored. In the past month we received two requests from students to change typos that they discovered in their theses, and another case that had actual data problems. This is a larger issue than just the Graduate Council but I wanted to say that maybe by next week we (the library faculty) will bring a proposed policy to discuss and resolve as a campus how we want to deal with these issues. An initial survey from the library, and in general conversations with Dr. Romagni and several other faculty, we are not going to change typos. However, we should address corrections for bad data since this may have an impact on UTC’s reputation. We are correcting the data error, and clearly documenting the original data and the date of correction. We just wanted you all to know how these issues are currently being handled.
  

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  Next Graduate Council Meeting is October 8^th, 3:15 in the Signal Mountain Room.