College of Graduate Studies

Graduate Council Minutes

September 13, 2022

Present: Wissam AbouAlaiwi, Marcelo Alvarado-Vargas, Arun Anantharam, Brian Ashburner, Tomer Avidor-Reiss, Larissa Barclay, Dan Boden, Frank Calzonetti, Saurabh Chattopadhyay, Madeline Clark, Jim Ferris, Bashar Gammoh, David Giovannucci, Gary Insch, Ahmad Javid, Andrea Kalinoski, Kristen Keith, John Laux, Patrick Lawrence, Linda Lewin, Patrick Frank (for Bindu Menon), Mark Mason, Scott Molitor, Ling Na, Patrick Naranjo (GSA), Jeanine Refsnider-Streby, Patricia Relue, Jason Rose, Barbara Saltzman, Youssef Sari, Connie Schall, Joseph Schmidt, Rebecca Schneider, Zahoor shah, Ekaterina Shemyakova, Snejana Slantcheva-Durst, Joseph Slater, Weiqing Sun, Jami Taylor, Jerry Van Hoy, Eileen Walsh, Kandace Williams, Rebecca Zietlow.

Absent: Defne Apul, Noella Haughton.

Excused:  

Guests: Mark Bercheni, Boyce Morin, Don Poulson.

Call to Order, Roll Call, and Approval of Minutes

The meeting was called to order, the roll called and the Minutes of February 8, February 22, March 22, and April 5, 2022 were approved.

The agenda was reordered to accommodate guest presentation and report of the Membership Committee.

Executive Reports

Report of the Executive Committee of the Graduate Council

On behalf of Graduate Council, Chair, Dr. Wissam AbouAlaiwi welcomed Council members to the first meeting of the 2022-2023 academic year.

GCEC l Summer 2022

GC Chair and Vice Chair met with the new Interim Provost, Dr. Risa Dickson. She was supportive of GC and open to meeting with us and GC as a part of shared governance.  We also plan to invite her to GCEC and GC at least once per semester.

GCEC met and COGS Acting Dean and Interim Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, Dr. Scott Molitor. Dr. Molitor supportive of student concerns, including international students concerns with cost of Student Health Insurance.

• Guest Speakers
  President Postel was invited to attend a GCEC and GC meetings each semester. Fall semester, he will join us GCEC on September 20 and GC on November 22. Spring semester he will meet with GCEC January 21 and GC on April 13. We encourage your comments and concerns. We will most likely try to hold that meeting in person but include hybrid option for those who cannot attend.
  
  Additional guests will be invited to speak on topics of importance to graduate education and graduate students.
  
  
• Concerns
  We received an update on concerns brought up by graduate students and GSA related to international graduate student health insurance and overworked students. Dr. Molitor and GCEC responded to those concerns and recommend handling at program/department level to find resolution. We understand graduate students work hard, but that they should not be required to work extra-long hours.
  
  
• Proposed GC Chair Initiative
  Recognition of accomplishments of graduate students and their advisors for their accomplishment at GC. Please feel free to contact GC Chair, Dr. AbouAlaiwi.  
  
  
• Standing Committees
  
  GC Vice Chair, Dr. Patrick Lawrence has been working to populate Standing Committees.  Please consider serving.

Report of the Vice Provost for Graduate Affairs and Dean of the College of Graduate Studies

Dr. Scott Molitor, Interim Vice Provost for Graduate Affairs and Acting Dean, College of Graduate Studies provided the following updates:

For the past four months I have been serving as Interim Vice Provost for Graduate Affairs and Acting Dean of the College of Graduate Studies, replacing Dr. Amy Thompson who took the Provost position at Wright State University.  It has been a pleasure working with GCEC, Terri Hayes and her colleagues in COGS -- a great group of staff. I thank them for all they have done and their patience with me getting onboarded into my new role.  I was an associate dean in Engineering for almost eight years, with roles in undergraduate affairs, academic affairs, and faculty affairs, pretty much running  the gamut of academic administration, except for graduate affairs!  However, I have been involved in graduate education across the institution.  I have taught graduate courses in Engineering and the College of Medicine and Life Sciences, supervised the thesis and dissertation research of students in Engineering, Medicine and Life Sciences, Natural Sciences and Mathematics, and Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.  I have also served on thesis and dissertation committees in Arts and Letters and the Judith Herb College of Education as well as Health and Human services.  You are stuck with me until June 30, 2022 when my interim appointment ends.

Update on Initiatives:

The report of Reimagining COGS Task Force is seeing many recommendations are being implemented:

• Admissions/Enrollment Management
  We have now moved the budget line of COGS Admissions staff supervised by Tara Hanna to Enrollment Management, but they report to both Enrollment Management and me, and are still located in University Hall.
  
  
• Graduate Assistantship Offer Letters and budgeting of Tuition and Stipends
  With graduate student funding moving from COGS to the colleges with the transition to the IBB budget model, the budgeting and offer letter group now supervised by Beth Gerasimiak has been moved under Brenda Grant in Academic Finance to integrate processes for faculty and student employments.
  
  
• COGS units
  The remaining units of COGS include academic and student services and graduate student success under Teri Green, as well as graduate administration including relations with Graduate Council and GSA supervised by Terri Hayes.
  
  
• COGS Name
  We will be going to the Board of Trustees for final approval. It doesn't look like it's going to happen this month, but probably at the December meeting, a request that the College of Graduates Studies be changed to something else such as the Graduate School or Office of Graduate Affairs. The name is still to be determined, and if anybody has any strong feelings on the name, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
  
  
• Diplomas and Degrees
  Diplomas will no longer read that the degrees are awarded by the College of Graduate Studies, but rather by the academic colleges in which the students are enrolled. This change will be made starting Fall 2022, given the plans to change the name of the College Graduates Studies before the end of Fall 2022.
  
  
• Graduate Enrollment and Student Success Committee
  My predecessor, Amy Thompson had convened a large group to formulate a strategic enrollment and student success plan for the College of Graduate Studies. That initiative has been put on hold due to the larger university-wide strategic planning process.  Once the university's strategic plan has been approved and put in place, we can go back and revisit our own internal strategic planning process.  I will keep you updated on that as we go along. A number of recommendations that were already put into the draft strategic plan have been implemented in the areas of recruitment, retention and student success.
  
  
• Dean’s Goals
  Being interested in process improvement, I am trying to work on our existing processes to make things as easy for everyone as possible. A number of initiatives already preceded in this area, in particular, the work of the admissions group and the enrollment management group on transitioning our application process from Banner to Slate, which is well underway. We hope you will see a huge difference in the ease of processing offer letters, funding and application process time. We work with other processes including Graduate Faculty Membership applications. Platforms should be online as much as possible. We are going to be looking to transition those processes and workflows online so that you don’t have to chase down forms that require signatures. So more to be coming on that as well.
  
  
• Student Health Insurance
  The international student health insurance issue is one we are going to hear more about.
  
  
• International Students – face-to-face instruction
  During the pandemic it was acceptable for international students to take online courses. However, the guidance from the State Department has been updated this summer to indicate that international students need to return to face-to-face instruction.
  
  Some graduate students are having difficulty finding face to face courses for their degree or certificate programs.  There have also been some issues with last minute changes to course modality from face-to-face to online. We wanted you to be aware that international students should be back in face-to-face classes.
  
  
• Graduate Assistantship Tuition on Grants
  We are looking to establish a formal policy on the funding of graduate student tuition on grants. The funding of GA and TA tuition and stipends has been distributed to the colleges for IBB. However, we would like to maintain a central process to award tuition dollars for students that receive stipends from externally funded grants.  I will be working with the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs to develop a formal policy and process on that as well to avoid any confusion. I have  been getting some questions asking whether a particular student qualifies or who is providing the tuition for a particular grant and things like that. We want to make sure a policy and procedure are in place so that the rules are clear. 
  
  
• Graduate Faculty Mentorship Training (development)
  
  AbouAlaiwi mentioned issues between a graduate students and advisors, so we will be looking into the development of training for faculty who mentor graduate students. Hope to have more information on this later in the year. 

Issues and concerns may be directed to Dr. Molitor who is happy to work with GCEC.

Discussion:

Q:    Is there a minimum number of credit hours that international students need to take face to face?

A:    They need to be enrolled full time but one course can be online.  For undergraduate students 9 of 12 credit hours must be face-to-face and for graduate students I believe it is 6 of 9 credit hours.

Q:    Clarification requested on tuition support on grants.

A:    This is not a change in policy, we will proceed the way we have doing things. However, the process will be formalized so that everyone is aware of what the rules are. If the faculty member is pre-tenure, then COGS will fund the tuition on grants they can fund stipends for.  If faculty is tenured, but the funding limit in direct costs is less than 100K annually, then COGS can support. Furthermore, investigators cannot fund out-of-state surcharge on federal grants, so COGS will pick up the tab on out-of-state surcharges on all funded positions. Since these rules have not been published, we want to make sure they are outlined and made available for reference.

Q:    Will there be a limit on number of years graduate students are funded? Or is it up to the graduate program?

A:         That is a good question that requires some conversation.  Again, COGS will only provide tuition for grant-funded initiates as mentioned. Certainly, we will want to hear from the individual colleges since they will be responsible for funding students. That is definitely worth a larger conversation.

Report of the Vice President for Research
Dr. Frank Calzonetti provided the following report.

• University Research and Fellowship Opportunity (URFO) Program Deadlines

These two programs that require a letter of intent and external reviewers.  Letters of intent are reviewed by the Research Council and those worthy of moving forward are sent to external reviewers. These award are up to $50,000 and are due October 17, 2022. We will conduct an internal review and have the full proposals due by January 19, 2023.

The deArce-Koch, Research Award and Fellowships and Archeological Research Endowment Fund have varied award amounts and all share the same deadline of January 19, 2023.

The following two programs, Publication Subvention, which is academic press (not for page charges for journal articles) that is scholarly, worthy of publication but unlikely to bring in profits, and Small Awards which supports research activities, do not have deadlines.

Discussion:

Dr. AbouAlaiwi inquired about Interdisciplinary Awards budget which was $100k but is now $50k.  Are you planning to award more proposals?

Dr. Calzonetti replied that we took a cut a couple years ago and cannot increase it this year due to fiscal challenges. It is unfortunate that it is not funded at the level it should be.  I have advocated for increases in funding to these programs and would like to get this to a more reasonable level.

Research Goals for 2022-2023
A number of entities including Research Council provided the Office of Research with a number of goals.

• University is conducting an assessment of benefits and costs of moving from R2 to an R1 Carnegie classification and determining the appropriate steps. We are working with Anne Fulkerson in Institutional Research and Laura Haller in Grants Accounting and have briefed the President and Provost. Institutional Research, Anne Fulkerson, and her team have looked at classification metrics that Carnegie uses for comparing as well as correctly reporting our metrics to Carnegie.  Carnegie will pull the metrics from fiscal year 2023 that we are in right now for the next classification decision.
  
  Although R1 is very high research intensive, there are other items for consideration, for instance:
• Number of doctoral degrees awarded across the university including humanities and social sciences.
• Number of research staff outside of tenure-track positions
• Amount of non-STEM research and development. Our performance for STEM R&D is fine, but we fall short on number of non-faculty member research staff and number of Ph.D. output in humanities and social sciences and the amount of non-stem research and development. 

Classification and Reporting
In looking at our doctoral programs to ensure we are reporting as social science programs and opposed to professional programs. I am working with Grants Accounting to see if there is non-stem research and development we are missing and we have discovered there is some non-stem R&D that was classified as STEM. While we cannot predict that these changes will move us into the R1 category, we are suggesting that Anne continue her work for accurate reporting to Carnegie. When we have a budget that is more reasonable we can to look at the type of investments we can make in these other areas. As an example, we have 1 Ph.D. student in History, however, 4 or 5 would be better and we won’t be able to do that in one year.

Recognition goes out to Anne Fulkerson and her team in Institutional Research and to Connie Schall who have been working diligently on this effort.

Dr. Connie Schall added that an area we had counted research expenditures and had to reclassify as non-STEM was education.  A person doing research focused almost exclusively on education rather than traditional STEM, would be an example of need for reclassification. 

Through IR analysis Social Sciences, Humanities, and Education, we want to ensure those Ph.D. degrees are listed in non-STEM where appropriate and accurately report the good work the university is doing.

Discussion:

Dr. Jim Ferris noted that more faculty are needed in history to properly teach more PhD students.

Dr. Calzonetti replied that is understandable as a lot of work and guidance goes into Ph.D. students. Thought are there are other faculty members on campus that may be able to contribute to some of these doctoral programs.

Dr. AbouAlaiwi inquired whether R1 status has minimum requirements to maintain, funding levels, or number of research staff.

Dr. Calzonetti replied that they do not really have specific floors for these metrics.  It is more of a moving target, an analysis in comparison to other universities.

Report of the Graduate Student Association

Patrick Naranjo, President of the Graduate Student Association (GSA) introduced himself as the new GSA President for 2022-2023.  He is a third year law student.

The GSA held its first General Assembly meeting of the year Friday, September 9, 2022. There were over 60 attendees and over 15 of 20 college reps.  We discussed benefits of the GSA and how it helps students with Graduate Research wards and the annual Midwest Graduate Research Symposium.  We talked about the future plans of the GSA to become more active and communicate.

Issues discussed were:

• Student health insurance for international students, which creates a stressor affecting their mental health, particularly for international students, paying almost $1000 per semester. I explained that I would bring to Graduate Council. An HR rep is attending today to speak on health insurance.
• Parking, which affects everyone. Insufficient parking spaces is viewed as Parking overselling spaces it does not have.

Talked about future plans of GSA since the past couple of years there was less activity due to COVID.  GSA plans to be more active and create a sense of community.

Discussion:

Dr. Tomer Avidor-Reiss asked whether GSA would continue to assist in funding other graduate student symposia, such as the one hosted by Biological Sciences.

Patrick Naranjo replied yes that the GSA sponsors each spring and plans to continue to do so this year.

Chair AbouAlaiwi noted that the issues shared by the GSA are important are important and that the Graduate Council is dealing with them seriously especially health insurance. GCEC meets with the President next week and we will discuss with him. Continue to communicate back with the graduate students as they may not be aware of details.

Information and Discussion Items
Overview of Graduate Council functions and Standing Committees of the Graduate Council

Dr. Patrick Lawrence, Vice Chair of GC provided a brief overview of GC Standing Committees with a description of the committees and seated and vacant seats. He expressed appreciation to the committee chairs noting legacy the committees is helpful particularly with new members.  Some key committees that are very active, including the Curriculum and Membership are fairly well represented.  I will be reaching out to solicit volunteers to fill a few gaps. All committees, where active or ad hoc need to be populated as it our responsibility as a part of shared governance.  

Graduate Student Health Insurance
Don Poulson and Mark Bercheni, Human Resources and Boyce Morin of University Health Plans were pleased to accept the invitation to attend Council to provide an overview of the UToledo student health insurance and an overview of healthcare in the United States [PowerPoint presentation attached].  Most schools require health insurance because there are consumer protections. Student plans have been designed for universities. 

Overview of UToledo Student Health Insurance

• Medical, dental and prescription plan premiums
• Commonly Used Insurance Terms
• Benefits at a Glance
• For the lowest out-of-pocket cost please visit The University Health Center on Main Campus or The University of Toledo Health Science Campus Student Health and Wellness Center
• Healthcare providers are not paid by the government. They are private businesses that bill for the services they perform. Average charges of some services listed.
• Overview of Health Care and Insurance in the United States – Boyce Morin

Healthcare providers are not paid by the government. They are private businesses that bill for the services they perform.   Average charges of some services are listed in the presentation. To cover the cost of these services, most people in the U.S. purchase health insurance. Health Insurance companies in the U.S. are highly regulated, both in terms of required benefits and patient protections. Policies are “filed” each year with regulatory agencies to ensure compliance with Federal and State Laws.

-           Healthcare Overview
-           Health Insurance Overview
-           Market Overview
-           Student Health Insurance plans are required to follow regulations

Cost of living and attending school in the U.S.

International student admission document, I-20, lists costs of living and going to school in the U.S. Part of the visa process and qualifications is that they must have sufficient funds available to support themselves during their entire course of study.   

And, the student mut maintain residence abroad that they have no intention of giving up. 

To accept a domestic policy public benefit in the U.S. is contradictory to the language on the USCIS site.  It is a very gray area. If it were the intent of the U.S. government to offer free healthcare to all, I believe there would be a more public way of accessing this benefit, rather than finding a loophole to get this benefit. Boyce can speak to this as they have a pretty broad book of business, over 350 schools nationally. 

Boyce Morin stated that his firm works with 350 universities nationwide.  The core of cost conversation is around the cost of healthcare in general.  Roughly half of students are using a student health insurance plan at any given time.  Reality is this one agent marketing marketplace plans for international students saying they qualify for a tax credit when they are not actually taxpayers. It is not something we have seen before in that the subsidies are in fact, advanced tax credits.

Discussion:

Dr. Tomer Avidor-Reiss pointed out that the concern for students is there is no other  – concern from students there is no other option.  They found other cheaper options.

Don Poulson stated that perhaps Dr. Avidor-Reiss is referring to students finding plans on Healthcare.gov.  They are available to immigrants on visas but subsidizing is unclear and through conversations with OISS and Legal, thus, we did not want to promote. Part of the visa process is that they must have sufficient funds, from USIC site and maintain residence abroad, and that you have no intention of giving up, so to accept subsidy in U.S. is a gray area. If it was government intent to offer free health care, there would be a more public way to access.

Dr. Relue stated that her college has advised students to stay away from the exchanges so as to not jeopardize visa status should they wish to stay in the country under H1B.

Donald Poulson agreed that since laws change from U.S. administration to administration, we do not our students to jeopardize visa status to apply for H1B and have them come back later indicating that an exchange was recommended to them and having them encountering citizenship issues.

Patrick Naranjo (GSA) asked why students must pay for spring and summer together at a cost of $1500.

Boyce Morin replied that from an administrative perspective, not every international student leaves at end of spring semester and visa compliance would be a nightmare.  From an underwriting perspective, to lose a claim that summer premium, the spring premium be would be adjusted and it would essentially be the same cost.

Dr. Zahoor Shah stated an instance issues when a post-doctorate student joined in February, was denied insurance and was told he had to apply next semester. He was without insurance for a while.

Standing Committee Reports

Report of the Curriculum Committee

None.

Report of the Membership Committee

On behalf of the committee, member, Dr. Connie Schall, presented the Summer I and Summer II 2022 summary reports.  She explained the difference in Adjunct and Special membership.  Those with an academic position at another university would receive Adjunct.  Applicant not affiliated with university, would be approved at Special.  Adjunct and Special both have 3-year duration. The expectation is that all applicants will have a terminal degree within their discipline or 5 years’ experience equivalent which requires evidence. This is required to be consistent with our Bylaws and HLC requirements for graduate level teaching and advising.

Summer I = 20 applications reviewed.
Summer II = 13 applications reviewed.

Dr. Molitor added that in speaking at the new faculty orientation, he stressed the need to apply for Graduate Faculty membership. If you are aware of new faculty, please remind them.

Dr. Schall affirmed that a faculty member from another institution, external from UToledo, must also have graduate faculty membership at UToledo.  She stated that Terri Hayes-Lepiarz has done a terrific job making the application description clear.

Patty Relue questioned whether an external individual, not in academic position, but to supervise a master’s thesis committee, is that irregular?  Do we have a policy to refer to?  I am aware that faculty who have left UToledo may continue supervision of a committee. Who can or cannot supervise a committee policy?

Dr. Schall agreed that under the Special Membership category, their privileges can be extended to finish up supervision of a committee.  As to who can or cannot supervise that would be COGS.

It was noted that the Graduate Student Handbook states that a chair of a thesis or dissertation must have full membership.

Dr. Schall suggested a conversation with the Membership Committee about reconciling the need for a separate category to delineate those instances.

Dr. Giovannucci noted that when a major advisor leaves the university, yes, they may have special membership but another advisor takes over the role as a major advisor, because we recognize that a major advisor must have Full membership.

Old Business
None.

New Business

Adjournment
There being no further business, the Council adjourned at 2:04 pm.