Graduate Meeting Minutes
February 10, 2015
10:00 a.m.
Concord Room
1. Admissions – Christi Lamb
All applications for graduate programs are sent to Admissions. A letter is automatically sent to the applicant from admissions for unconditional/conditional acceptance. Graduate Assistants should follow up with conditional acceptance letters to the students.
Coordinators and Graduate Assistants should have access to the graduate server and review the status of graduate applications for their programs.
Coordinators and Graduate Assistants need training in Argos for reporting. Contact Miranda Martin for this training.
2. Registrar – Susie Lusk Business – Vickie Blankenship
Coordinators need to review the catalog for prerequisites for their courses. Graduate assistants and coordinators asked to not place a hold on nine hours since some programs allow them to take more. Graduate assistants need to keep up with this through Banner.
A report can be designed in Argos to automatically send letters to the students who have not met the initial program requirements.
The registrar’s office will only accept the addition of courses for graduate students if signed by the graduate assistants/graduate coordinator.
As a reminder, grades of “I” will automatically convert to a grade of “F” at the end of the next semester. This can affect a student’s academic progress (SAP).
EDPD courses/students do not receive loans and are not included in enrollment verification.
Christie Lamb enters the graduate code upon admission.
Electronic official transcripts will soon be available through Clearinghouse. This excludes EDPD students. They will need to request a hardcopy of their official transcripts from the registrar.
Graduate courses should have an “02” level restriction except for “certification only” courses, which should have an “03” level restriction.
Students taking undergraduate and graduate level courses create problems throughout all offices. For example, if a student is taking undergraduate and graduate level courses, his/her loan is restricted to the undergraduate level, therefore, they may have to pay the balance from their own pocket.
Business holds are placed on a student if it is $200 or more.
Admission files (accepted only) for the graduate program should go to the registrar’s office and not to the various program offices. This is a more secure way of housing the transcripts.
All programs need to develop a form to accept transfer credit. The education graduate program has a form developed.
3. Financial Aid – Debbie Turner
Student Academic Progress (SAP) requires a 3.0 GPA, 67% successful completion of courses each semester, and a 150% timeframe for completion of the program (50 hours for Health Promotion, 90 hours for MSW, and 54 hours for M.Ed. and MAT).
If students do not meet SAP, they will not be eligible for loans.
If a graduate student receives a grade of “I,” “NG,” or “F,” in one semester, they will receive a letter of warning. If this is not rectified the following semester, they will be ineligible for loans. They may submit an academic/financial aid letter of appeal to the Appeal Committee.
Dr. Barnes will check DegreeWorks to see what is available for the advisor to help determine the status of the student(s).
4. Geography Alliance
Sarah Johnson, Social Sciences assistant, will now take care of creating Geography Alliance courses and the enrollment of the students. These students are non-degree seeking and no longer part of the education graduate program.
A new form is being developed for Geography Alliance applicants.
5. Forgiveness Policy
Dr. John David Smith, Coordinator of the MSW Program, asked about the possibility of allowing a D/F Forgiveness Rule to added to the MSW bridge program. The Coordinators will research other institutions to see if this is a common practice.
6. Repetition of courses
The repetition of courses needs to be determined.
7. Graduate Program Coordinator Policy
Dr. Barnes asked that the Coordinators research other institutions’ policies.
8. Online Evaluation Tool
Dr. Nolan, Coordinator of the MA in Health Promotion, reported that she piloted the online graduate program evaluation using the Quality Matters tool with her courses. Unfortunately, the response rate was very low. Dr. Liptak suggested that we check the validity/reliability of this instrument.
9. Distance Education/Online Policy
Dr. Barnes reported that the HLC requires an online distance education policy. This policy is being worked on by Dr. Barnes and Dr. Shani Salifu, Coordinator of Distance Learning and will be brought to the Coordinators in the near future. Dr. Salifu is researching other institutions’ online policies.
10. Quality Matters Training/Requirements
All graduate faculty teaching online courses needs to go through QM training. Some faculty have completed the “reviewer” training and are eligible to review the alignment of the QM standards for online courses.