Graduate Council Minutes

Friday May 16, 2008

325 Graff Main Hall

 

Members Present: VJ Agarwal, Rob Dixon, Tim Donahue, Gary Gilmore, Ashley Olson, Kasi Periyasamy, S.N. Rajagopal, David Reineke, Bill Schwan, Michele Thorman

 

Members Excused: Ashley Burrows, Tom Kuffel, Jonathan Majak

 

Consultants Present: Ray Abhold , Lise Graham, Charles Martin-Stanley

 

Consultants Excused: Chris Bakkum

 

Guests: Mike Kennedy

 

Meeting called to order at 10:05 am by Bill Schwan.

  1. Minutes: Motion (Gary Gilmore/Tim Donahue) to approve the May 2, 2008 minutes (10-0-0; passed)
  2. Announcements.
    1. VJ Agarwal wants to work on the Graduate Appeals process over the summer and was looking for volunteers. Michelle Thorman, Ashley Olson and Gary Gilmore volunteered.
  3. Motion (Gilmore/Dixon) to convene in a closed session to (a) consider personal academic information for a student who is appealing an academic dismissal from a graduate program, (b) consider personal academic information to waive entrance requirements, and (c) consider information for waiving of graduate assistant requirements as provided in section 19.85 (1)(f) of Wisconsin Statutes. Roll Call vote was unanimous.
    1. Biology Appeal-Second Reading. 

                                                               i.      Mark Sandheinrich invited in to answer questions.

                                                             ii.      Motion (Dixon/Periyasamy) to support the strong extra curricular argument to allow the student to be selected for the GA position in biology for the Fall 2008 semester (8-2-0; passed)

    1. Computer Science: Waiver of TOEFL score requirement

                                                               i.      Steve Sanger and David Riley presented on behalf of the computer science program. They distributed a table comparing the TOEFL & IELTS scores. They answered questions about the language competency of the students from prior course interactions, requirements of the students in the program, and admission standards.

                                                             ii.      Motion (Rajagopal/Olson) to accept the 3 students with IELTS scores of 5.5 and one student with 76 iBT scores as recommended by the Computer Science program (8-1-0; passed).

                                                            iii.      Motion (Donahue/Reineke) to require these four students to take an ESL class for one semester (2-7-0; failed).

                                                          iv.      Motion (Dixon/Rajagopal) to encourage the Computer Science program to work with the ESL Institute to determine the functional requirements of language in the academic program and come forward with recommendations for future appeals below 550 (9-0-0; passed)

    1. MBA: TOEFL waiver

                                                               i.      Lise Graham provided information regarding the MBA appeal.

                                                             ii.      Motion (Donahue/Reineke) to admit the student to the MBA program (8-0-1; passed).

    1. MBA: Academic Appeal

                                                               i.      Lise Graham and the student provided information for the committee to consider regarding the external circumstances impacting the student’s academic performance.

                                                             ii.      Motion (Dixon/Donahue) to readmit the student to the program and allow her to take the extra elective class to raise her GPA to 3.00 and thus graduate.

1.      Thorman recommended a second reading

2.      Motion tabled until the second reading

  1. Meeting Adjourned approximately 12:30 pm.

                                                    

Respectfully Submitted,

Rob Dixon

 

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