MEMBERS PRESENT: Barbe, Blickhan, Cebula, Cole, Factor, Gowen, Griffiths, Gupta, Harris, Johnson, Lefticariu, Lockard, Lusk, Mini, Montgomery, Musial, Nuzzo, Osorio, Powell, Razvi, Rintala, Rose, Russell, Swanson, Varland, Waas

MEMBERS ABSENT:  Schmall, Sivasubramaniam

OTHERS PRESENT: Stelling (Secretary), Van Mol (Catalog Editor/Curriculum Coordinator)
 
The meeting was called to order at 10:00 by T. Daniel Griffiths, chair.  The minutes of the 530th meeting held October 7, 2002 were moved to be approved by Rintala, seconded by Lockard.  The minutes were approved.

Announcements
Griffiths wanted to explain his use of the term “misunderstanding” at the first Graduate Council meeting with regards to discussions of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) on tompaine.  He was not criticizing tompaine or anyone in particular.  Tompaine serves an important function on campus.  However, when discussions get heated there is an increase in the likelihood that there will be misunderstandings or misinformation whether intentional or not from all sides of the issue being discussed.

Committee Reports

· New specialization in pedagogy and curriculum development in physical education in the M.S.Ed. in physical education
· Deletion of the specialization in sport management in the M.S.Ed. in physical education
· Deletion of the specializations in curriculum leadership, outdoor teacher education, and secondary education in the M.S.Ed. in curriculum and instruction.

UNIVERSITY WIDE
     Interdisciplinary Courses                       IDSP *445 (new course)

COLLEGE OF BUSINESS
    College-Wide                                         Change in mission statement

 Department of Accountancy                       ACCY 622 (course revision)

                                                                   Change in phase two requirements

COLLEGE OF EDUCATION
     Department of Counseling, Adult and             CAHA 659 (new course)
     Health Education
                                                                           CAHE 616 (course deletion)

                                                                           CAHC 566, 603, 636 (course deletions)

                                                                           CAHA *400, 586, 590, 597, 598, 620, 622, 686, 697, 698 (course revisions)

                                                                           Change in non-thesis option

    Department of Educational Psychology             EPFE 525 to 625, EPFE 622X (course revisions)

    Department of Educational Technology,            ETT 616X (course deletion)
     Research and Assessment
                                                                           ETT 586, 686 (course revisions)

    Department of Kinesiology and Physical           Requirement change in specialization in
    Education                                                         adapted physical education

    Department of Literacy Education                    LTDH *452, *467, *468, *469, 552, 567, 568, 569, 587, 666 (course deletions)

                                                                           LTLA 542 (new course)

                                                                          Change in course work offered

    Department of Teaching and Learning             TLCI 586C, 590C, 597C, 686C (course deletions)
                                                                          TLCI 550 to CAHA 555, TLCI 651 to CAHE 651, TLCI 657 to CAHA 657 (course revisions)
 

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY
     Department of Technology                           TECH *412, *414 (course revisions)
 

COLLEGE OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SCIENCES
     Department of Communicative Disorders     COMD 593 (course revision)

                                                                       Change in non-thesis option
 

COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES
    College Introductory Section                         New course designator, WOMS (Women’s Studies)

                                                                         ILAS *430, *434, 520, 530, 539 to WOMS (course revisions)

                                                                         Requirement change for certificate of graduate study in women’s studies

    Department of Anthropology                         ANTH *435 (new course)

    Department of Communication                     JOUR *410, *460, *485 (course revisions)

    Department of Computer Science                 CSCI 580C (course deletion)

                                                                       CSCI 580 N, U (new courses)

                                                                        CSCI 563, 564, 567, 569, 588, 589 (course revisions)

                                                                        Change of required courses for M.S.

     Department of Economics                           ECON 640, 642 (new courses)

    Department of Foreign Languages and         New Certificate of Graduate Study in
    Literatures                                                   Spanish Language, Literature, and Culture

                                                                      FLSP *414, FLTE 594 (course revisions)

     Department of Geography                         GEOG *435 (new course)

                                                                     GEOG *413, *464, *467 (course revisions)

    Department of History                               HIST *427, *430, *431, *433 (course deletions)

                                                                     HIST *459 (new course)

                                                                     HIST *422, *455, *477 (course revisions)

                                                                      Change in foreign study in history

    Department of Mathematical Sciences         MATH *402, *412 (course revisions)

    Department of Physics                               Change in M.S. requirements

                                                                     Change in Ph.D. requirements

    Department of Political Science                  POLS *469 (course revision)

    Department of Sociology                           SOCI *454, *457 (course revisions)

                                                                    Change in non-thesis option
 

COLELGE OF VISUAL AND PERFORMING ARTS
    College-wide                                             New Certificate of Graduate Study in Museum Studies

    School of Art                                             ARTH to ART *465, 557, 665 (course revisions)

                                                                     ARTE *480, 520, 523, 530, 541, 551, 561, 620, 623, 630, 641, 651, 661 (course revisions)

    School of Music                                         MUSC *433, *434, 568M, 591V, 660 (new courses)

The following was recorded but further approval is needed before inclusion in the Graduate Catalog:

COLLEGE OF EDUCATION
    Department of Teaching and Learning         Deletion of the specialization in multiply handicapped, deaf or vision

The following items, along with those pointed out at the beginning of this committee report, are ready for inclusion in the Graduate Catalog:

COLLEGE OF VISUAL AND PERFORMING ARTS
     School of Art                                         Revisions to ARTE 582

     School of Music                                    New teacher certification section

Montgomery announced the winners of the Distinguished Master Thesis award: Yuzheng Guo, Department of Electrical Engineering, won first place and Robin Watkins, Department of Psychology, won second place.  Both winners receive a plaque and first place receives $300 and second place receives $200.  The first place winner’s thesis is also submitted to the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools competition.

The committee has also sent out a call for university fellowship nominees.  These awards of $6,000 for 10 months go to non-doctoral students.  The criteria are on the Graduate School Web site.  The deadline for the Graduate School to receive these nominations from departments is February 3, 2003.  The committee hopes this early deadline will allow for the winners to be announced in time for departments to know who to offer assistantships to.
 

New Business

Griffiths wants discussion to begin on increasing interdisciplinary research and scholarship via grants.  One problem is with indirect costs.  When more than one college is involved there can be disagreements as to where the “college” portion of the indirect costs go. This problem needs to be solved, possibly through discussions among the college deans.  Russell commented that work needs to be done on getting more of the indirect costs to the departments and to the colleges.  Griffiths said he received Dean Kitterle’s break down of other Mid-America Conference (MAC) universities’ indirect costs to colleges and departments.  This breakdown did not indicate
whether the colleges and departments have to use their own money to cover what is done at NIU by the Office of Sponsored Projects and by Grants Fiscal.

Mini said her department, Physics, just wrote a grant with Engineering and this problem came up.  Musial also commented that the personnel part gets “sticky.”  The principal investigator (PI) title is important.  If a grant has many experts working on different aspects of the grant then the grant has many co-PIs and a problem comes into play of who has what percentage of the work to perform and who gets how much of the credit.  There need to be better titles and better ways to get the work breakdown.

Rintala questioned if there is a way to assure that the money going to all these different entities on campus really goes toward research.  Russell also mentioned that merit needs to be looked into.  If a person cannot get credit for working on a grant to be counted towards their merit raise or toward their tenure then why should a faculty person bother?  Montgomery observed that one potential problem is that personnel policies are department-based; there is no way to assure uniform treatment. Swanson believes teaching should also be involved in any discussion about interdisciplinary research since there have been problems in the past in this area as well.

Illinois Association of Graduate School Fall Meeting

This conference, attended by Griffiths and Montgomery, was held at Eastern Illinois University October 24-25.

Montgomery explained this group was an informal confederation of deans from public and private higher institutions of learning.  Montgomery reported on the session given by Diane Gilleland, Deputy Director, Academic Affairs of the Illinois Board of Higher Education.  She spoke on assessment and said by 2004 all departments will use assessment; this is the IBHE’s mandate as part of the Illinois Commitment.  The weak link about assessment commonly is using the results to improve the program.  Gilleland will be brainstorming at the Council of Graduate Schools meeting in Washington, D.C. in December with various deans and associate deans to begin plans for a workshop.  This workshop would take place sometime in 2003 and would try to help universities make that last step happen: the step between doing an assessment and using the results to improve a program. Gilleland offered funding from her office for this, an offer the IAGS deans quickly accepted!

Lance Pressl, Vice President for Federal Relations and Public Affairs for the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) was the other speaker Montgomery summarized.  He stressed the need to get the message out about the importance of graduate education to outside audiences.  CGS is working on this problem  There is now a national concern about terrorism, which may provide one avenue for highlighting the value of graduate education.  One way this concern shows is how the NIH and NSF fellowships have been raised; there is some discussion in Congress on raising
them as high as $30,000 a year.  This could cause problems with other stipends offered under other grants or non-grant funds.  Pressl emphasized that academics are hesitant to deal with lobbyists but they really need to.  Griffiths agreed that Pressl’s talk was very informative and it is important for us to be more active in lobbying.  NIU has an excellent State and Federal relations office with Kathryn Buettner and Kenneth Zehnder.  Pressl also talked about what graduate education can do in areas such as national defense and how the new emphasis on national defense may increase support in science as well as non-science areas.

Griffiths discussed briefly the status of graduate programs available through the Illinois Virtual Campus.  One problem right now with the Illinois Virtual Campus is that public access is limited to community college campuses.

Rintala said, in reference to assessment that different groups look for different numbers from assessment.  Everyone needs to assess that students are able to grasp conceptual ideas, not just score well on tests.  Montgomery said that a common frustration among faculty is that there are no resources to effect program changes identified through assessment as necessary or desirable.  Musial agreed with Rintala and said what needs to be assessed is whether the student is better than when he/she began the program; may not have a better score than the last group of students, who may have started from a different level, but has improved from his/her capability at the beginning of the program.

The meeting was adjourned at 10:50 a.m.