DISTRIBUTION DATE:  November 5, 2007
Robertson Hall, Room 208

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, Janis Paul, Samir Barman, Denise Beesley, Michael Bemben, LeRoy Blank, I-Kwang Chang, Clarissa Dobrinski, Sudarshan Dhall, John Duncan, Charbel Khoury, Thubi Kolobe, Sam Stalcup, Maureen Taylor, Irvin Wagner

Absent: William Ray, Julia Abramson, Sanaz Aghazadeh, Sally Beach, Charity Gillman, Mary Linn, Theodore Trafalis, Bret Wallach

Guests: Randa Shehab, Miranda Sowell, Pramode Verma

General Business

• The minutes from October 2, 2007 were approved.

• CDRP – CDRP had not met; however, Dean Williams explained the purpose of CDRP and announced that he, as Dean, would represent the Graduate College in the program.
• Faculty Senate – Dr. Trafalis was not at the meeting; however, he submitted the following electronic report for the minutes.
• The main topic of discussions in the October meeting of the Faculty Senate was the   Contribution Strategy and Health Insurance Options Committee Final Report. Remarks concerning the strategy and health insurance options were presented by the Human Resources Director Julius Hilburn. He referred that the committee benchmarked OU to 14 other universities and 5 other organizations including companies such as Dell computers. He said that OU spends more than the benchmark universities and organizations. For example the average employee contribution for PPO family coverage for peers is $380 per month and the OU contribution is $778 per month. Hence OU needs to optimize expenses.  The objective is to increase university funding for health insurance benefits by approximately $2 million in 2008 (90% from the university and 10% from employees).  The objective is to provide a fair approach to our university community by providing help to members with lower incomes. 
• Then he provided a summary of the committee recommendations. After the presentation there were a lot of discussions from the faculty senate. A faculty senate member, that he was insuring his family through another plan not related to the university, claimed that the proposed new plan will be beneficial for him and he will come back to the university plan for his family. 
• Mr. Hilburn said that the final decision will be with President Boren and soon we will receive a letter from him.
• Inter-liaison Report
• Dr. Duncan reported that the Health Sciences Center Epidemiology Review Summary and the Biostatistics Review Summary are now complete.  Dr. Kolobe updated the Council on the many issues regarding Responsible Conduct of Research that are currently being discussed at the Health Sciences Center.

• The College of Business has raised the minimum scores needed to satisfy English proficiency requirements for Master’s and Doctoral level business applicants.  The new requirements are:
• TOEFL:   600 (Computer Based), 250 (Paper-Based), 100 (Internet Based) 
• IELTS 7.00 issue

Discussion Items                                           

• Responsible Conduct of Research task force – Dean Williams talked to the Council about many of the issues regarding the Responsible Conduct of Research and asked for volunteers for a task force to look into the matter further.
• Interdisciplinary degree programs – Dean Williams indicated there are concerns about the admissions process for interdisciplinary degree seeking students.  He told the Council the subject will be on an upcoming Graduate Council agenda for further discussion.

• The Industrial Engineering Master of Science, Engineering Management area of concentration, proposed program modification was approved.  The changes include a decrease of 2 hours in the total number of hours for the degree, which will accommodate the new 2 hour course modules in the MBA program.  The proposal will align the Engineering Management area of concentration with the core in the thesis option MSIE, and eliminate the need for courses offered outside the department by providing more IE electives.

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.

C S 5033. Change prerequisite
ECE 5543. Course addition
TCOM 55443. Add crosslisting; change course number; change perquisite; change description

With no further business, the meeting adjourned at 3:32 p.m.  The next regularly scheduled meeting will be December 4, 2007.