DISTRIBUTION DATE:  April 2, 2008

All actions taken by the Graduate Council will have a twenty-one (21) day faculty protest period except for new courses, course changes and petitions which will be considered approved by the Graduate Faculty if no written protest is received in the Graduate College within seven (7) days.

Present:  Lee Williams, William Ray, Janis Paul, Sanaz Aghazadeh, Sally Beach, Michael Bemben, Sudarshan Dhall, John Duncan, Charbel Khoury, Maureen Taylor, Theodore Trafalis, Irvin Wagner, Bret Wallach.

Absent: Julia Abramson, Samir Barman, Denise Beesley, LeRoy Blank, I-Kwang Chang, Charity Gillman, Mary Linn, Sam Stalcup.

Guests: Gina Amundson, Angela Castillo, Dipankar Ghosh, Tim Laubach

General Business

• The minutes from March 5, 2008 were approved.

Program Modifications

• The proposed Master of Business Administration program modification was approved.  The change will require all full-time MBA students to enroll in two 0-credit hour professional development courses, which will better prepare them for professional careers.
• The proposed Instructional Leadership & Academic Curriculum (Elementary Education) program modification was approved.  The deletion of sub-concentrations, and specific courses within each sub-concentration, will allow students to create desirable programs of study and meet the needs in elementary education settings.
• The proposed Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum M.Ed. (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) program modification was approved.  The new experimental STEM area of concentration is a collaboration between the College of Engineering and the College of Education to provide more science and math teachers for the state of Oklahoma.  The concentration will be re-evaluated in two years and, if proven successful, will become a permanent area of concentration in the ILAC program.
• Graduate certificate time limit – It was determined that 3 years would be the appropriate time allowed for a student to complete a graduate certificate.

Special Programs

• Somer Erickson’s interdisciplinary degree program was approved

Discussion Items

• Admission to interdisciplinary degree programs – Dean Ray will draft language regarding the admission to interdisciplinary degree programs and present it to the Council for consideration.
• Appropriate time to enroll students in dissertation hours – there was discussion about the appropriate time for students to begin enrolling in dissertation hours.  Special permission to enroll in research hours allows departments to monitor enrollment.  This should ensure enrollment at the appropriate time; normally after all course work is completed and the student has passed the general exam.
• Deferred Status – there was discussion about a new time limit for deferred admission files.  Currently, files are held in the Graduate College for one year; however, holding them only one semester, when applicable, would simplify managing the files of students who are not able to begin their program of study in the semester initially planned.
• Final defense open to the public – it was determined that most departments represented in the Council announce final defenses within the department, some providing a reading copy for those interested.
• S/U graded courses: 50% of OU courses or 50% of all courses? – there was clarification on the S/U graded course policy.  There can be no more than 50% of S/U graded transfer work applied toward a degree and there cannot be more than 50% of OU coursework applied to a degree.

Committee Reports

• CDRP – CDRP had not met.

• Faculty Senate – Dr. Trafalis reported that there were two presentations in the meeting. The first one presented the state of student academic integrity at Norman OU campus.  Specifically, a summary of academic misconduct cases was presented for the time period 1995-2007 (2117 cases). The student academic integrity at Norman OU campus (excluding Law) is governed by the Academic Misconduct Code. Under the Code, faculty police and report misconduct, Student Affairs explains the system to students accused, colleges provide hearings and penalty recommendations, and the Provost considers appeals and assigns final institutional penalties. The system issues are to address “innocent” plagiarism, increase student involvement, reduce time to resolution and reduce the adversarial nature of system. Need to expand the idea of integrity in campus by encouraging cooperation between students and professors.

Janet Croft gave also a presentation concerning the textbooks on reserve program. She discussed textbook purchasing criteria, circulation of textbooks and how to access textbooks on reserve.

• Inter-liaison – Dr. Duncan reported that the last meeting of the HSC Graduate Council was on March 27, 2008.  The following items were discussed:
• Program Review Update: This project is in progress and about half completed.  There has been some discussion about the MOU for the Neurosciences Department, but this should be ironed out and finished soon.  The overall process will probably be substantially completed by the end of this semester.
• Clinical Translational Science:  Dr. Mark Fox, Tulsa (Internal Medicine) is working on finalizing a curriculum and should have a draft for the Graduate Council meeting in May.
• RCR Committee Recommendation: This RCR committee submitted a recommendation which was approved by the graduate council.  The plan is for implementation of RCR training for three student groups (see handout).  The Graduate Council will generate a standing committee to oversee RCR compliance and training.
• Tracking of Publications:  There is a strong desire to track all graduate student publications.  So far, there has not been a decision on how to do this. One recommendation was a form of self-reporting.  This is an ongoing discussion and will be taken up more in future meetings.

FYI Items

• The proposed changes to the English accelerated degree program call for updating courses in various groups of the undergraduate curriculum.  There were no changes proposed to the master’s program; thus, no action was required by the Graduate Council.
• The Department of Social Work has developed a new conditional admission policy that will allow BSW graduates with GPAs below 3.0 in the last 60 hours of coursework to complete 12 hours of graduate coursework.  Earning a grade of B or better in all 12 hours will allow the student to enter the Advanced Standing Program.

Course Changes

The following course changes and proposals were unanimously approved.  Only brief information regarding approved changes follows; however, original course change proposals will be on file in the Graduate College through the seven-day protest period if you have questions or concerns about any of the following.  Please contact the Graduate Council Secretary, Clarissa Dobrinski, at 325-3811 if you wish to review any of these materials.

B AD 5100. change long title
B AD 5200. change long title
COMM G4233. change prerequisites
JMC G4013. change prerequisite
JMC 5033 course addition
JMC 5043 course addition
JMC 5413. course addition
JMC 5683. change long title; change content; change description
NAS 5893. course addition

With no further business, the meeting adjourned at 3:55 p.m.  The next regularly scheduled meeting will be May 5, 2008.