Minutes
Tufts University Council on Graduate Education
October 4, 2006, 6:00-9:00pm
Mayer Campus Center
Medford
The meeting was called to order at 6:22pm. Present were David Walt (Chair), Art Donohue-Rolfe, Vin Manno, Ayesha Jalal, Bill Moomaw, Shafiqul Islam, Larry Feig and Peter Walker.
David Walt welcomed the two new members, Larry Feig and Peter Walker and gave the rationale and brief history of the committee. Committee members gave brief summaries of their backgrounds.
Minutes of the April 2006 meeting were approved for posting on the website.
Two important dates for UCGE members were highlighted:
1) Provost Council Meeting, Nov.6 - 8:30 and 10:30am
2) Provost Fellows Breakfast, Nov.13 - 8:30 and 10:30am
Agenda Item I: Provost Fellows Program
Discussion concerning the Provost’s Fellows program. David Walt explained nature of the program and the process of selection to the two new members. Since the first year of the program, there has been a consistent improvement in the quality of the students and the schools had expressed satisfaction that they were able to attract the best students. The prestige of being offered a fellowship rather than the money was mentioned as the most important reason why students awarded the fellowship opted for Tufts.
1. Vin Manno said he had received drafts of each school’s vision of the Capital Campaign and would report on how far they echoed President Bacow’s remarks on graduate student stipends.
2. Manno circulated statistics and discussed the procedural aspects of the Provost Fellows program, noting that the review process was now completely electronic. While there had been concern about the quality and depth of the applicant pool in the first year, the UCGE was very pleased with the pool the schools had put forward last year. 30 fellowships were offered and 19 came with the result that we were oversubscribed in budgetary terms.
3. Walt stated that the UCGE had now decided to evaluate applicants on a rotating basis so long as the schools remained within their quotas. This procedure was to avoid problems stemming from all the applications coming together and some schools making their submissions late. In addition, the earlier an offer can be made, the more it can be used to attract the best applicants.
4. Discussion took place about why some students were not coming to Tufts despite being offered a Provost Fellowship. It was pointed out that a high acceptance rate may not be indicative of our getting the best students. The need for early offers was suggested. As a recruiting tool, departments should inform students that they had been nominated for the fellowship.
5. Question raised about whether the Provost Fellows program was part of the Capital Campaign. Manno said there were university wide initiatives, of which one would be specific to the Provost Fellows.
6. Moomaw expressed concern about our offers being below that of competing schools. Manno referred to the Graduate Competitiveness Fund worth $1M which each of the schools had used differently.
7. The bulk of the discussion was devoted to the need to institute a mechanism for assessing the Provost Fellows program with two main concerns in mind:
a) how successful have the schools been in attracting the best students?
b) how well have those who were awarded the Provost Fellowship actually performed?
It was decided to ask Dawn Terkla to establish a methodology for an assessment of the Provosts Fellows program.
Members concurred that the main purpose of the program was to attract quality students to Tufts. Tufts may not be able to compete with some of the ‘bigger’ schools but was doing well in relation to several others. Walt pointed out that the institution of a need blind admission policy would enhance Tufts’ competitive edge. Manno said he would ask Dawn for a list showing how Tufts was doing in relation to its main competitors. Question raised about increasing the fellowship money to $10,000 per year and making fewer offers in order to become more competitive.
1. Walt recounted developments since the Provost Council’s meeting in the fall of 2005 when the Operational Changes Document was presented to the Provost, the Deans, and the faculty. At the meeting, there seemed to be ‘unanimity’ on the content of the document but the response had been quite heterogeneous and the Provost would have to push some of the Deans to do more.
2. Walt gave a history of the document on which the UCGE had spent a great deal of time, noting that its recommendations had elicited a very positive response from the Provost. The UCGE is not entirely satisfied with the level of response to the document. There was considerable built in flexibility in the document and the deans had a lot of leeway on how to proceed in implementing the recommendations.
3. It was decided to discuss the document again at the Provost’s Council meeting on November 6 so that it comes to the forefront. There was a need to discuss the document at the faculty level by placing it on the agenda of the meetings.
4. There was discussion on the relative marginality of doctoral level education for most of the schools. This situation contrasts with President Bacow’s emphasis on graduate research as a way to raise the Tufts profile. This discrepancy should be raised at the Provost’s Council meeting.
5. Hope was expressed that now that the Provost’s team is in place, the new deans would be able to act on the recommendations of the document. The representatives of the other schools also undertook to take up the matter of the document with their respective Deans with a view to encouraging them to act on its proposals.
There was discussion on the following inter-related issues:
a) Role of research centers in promoting graduate education.
b) Shafiq’s proposal for post-doctoral fellows
c) Department assessments.
d) New Ph.D programs
Research Centers:
1. Research being done at the centers could inject fresh vitality into the faculty. The centers bring in money and offer expertise, which could be utilized to promote graduate education. For instance, people working in the different centers could serve on Master’s committees. But there was a need for the UCGE to help establish criteria for this exchange between the centers and the schools in general as well as specific departments.
2. Peter Walker noted that 90% of the salary for the Nutrition Center came from grants and there are no tenure track faculty. While they wanted Ph.D. students, there was no funding mechanism in place and it was financially more feasible to have research assistants. Larry Feig gave the example of the medical school where some of the employees served as Ph.D. mentors and suggested Nutrition consider this model.
3. Since existing research centers were already contributing to the training of Ph.D. students at no expense to the departments, the UCGE considered taking up the issue of determining the structural, procedural and administrative issues involved in making this more prevalent.
4. Shafiq promised to send a review of interdisciplinary centers done by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research to members of the UCGE.
Shafiq’s Proposal:
‘Tabled’ for the time being due to financial constraints and not because of any problem with the idea.
Departmental Assessments:
1.The UCGE concluded that the proposed departmental assessments should be confined to Ph.D. programs.
2. While acknowledging that well functioning departments could carry out their own self-assessments, there was a strong feeling that external reviews of existing Ph.D. programs would be more objective and accurate.
3. Question raised by Shafiq about whether in addition to the shock and fear factor of these assessments, incentives could be offered, pointing to the disconnect between recommendations made by the assessors and the implementation.
New Ph.D. Programs:1. Manno said that there were several new Ph.D. programs under consideration with the Economics department proposal being in the most advanced stage.
2.The UCGE will play a part in helping the Provost decide which of the new programs under consideration meet the necessary criteria. A theoretical document on new degree programs had been prepared last year, which Manno undertook to circulate to the UCGE.
Meeting was adjourned at 9pm.
