January 12, 2004

Room 158, Norman Hall

Members Present: James Algina (alternate for Jennifer Asmus), James Archer, Dale Campbell, Dave Honeyman (alternate for Craig Wood) Mirka Koro-Ljungberg, Linda Lamme, Anne McGill-Franzen (alternate for Elizabeth Yeager), Jeanne Repetto (alternate for Maureen Conroy), Terry Scott, Nancy Waldron

Members Absent: Jennifer Asmus, Maureen Conroy, Craig Wood, Elizabeth Yeager

Others Present: Dick Allington, Brian Boyd, Phil Clark, Maria Coady, Tom Dana, Dottie Delfino, Dean Emihovich, Candace Harper, Diane Hoppey, Ester DeJong, Kristen Kemple, Dean Kranzler, Barbara Pace, Diane Strangis, Jane Townsend

Nancy Waldron called the meeting to order at 2:08 p.m.

Agenda and Minutes

  1. Approval of agenda for December 12, 2004

Lamme proposed rearranging the agenda submitted by Waldron in order to discuss the new business items sooner. Waldron approved discussing new business items after announcements. Lamme made a motion to approve the December 12, 2004 meeting agenda. James Archer seconded the motion. The FPC unanimously approved discussing the new business items after the announcements on the agenda.

  1. Approval of the minutes for the December 1, 2003 minutes

Algina motioned to approve the December 1, 2003 minutes as is. Repetto seconded the motion. The FPC unanimously approved the minutes.

Announcements

  1. FPC Agenda Committee Meeting

The next meeting is scheduled for February 16th from 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon. Agenda items for this meeting should be sent to Conroy or Waldron before that date.

  1. Position Announcement for the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs

The position announcement for the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs has been forwarded to COE faculty. All faculty are encouraged to nominate qualified individuals and share the position announcement with colleagues at other universities. The application deadline is February 16, 2004.

New Business

1. Proposal on Doctoral Research Requirements

Waldron invited Algina and Clark to present proposal from the Ad Hoc Committee on Doctoral Research Requirements. Repetto seconded motion to approve the Ad Hoc Committee’s proposal. The committee presented the following recommendations pertaining to doctoral research requirements:

  • Have same requirements for students pursuing an Ed.D. or Ph.D. Clark reported that 95% of the Ed.D. students were from the Department of Education Leadership, Policy, and Foundations, and that his department had unanimously approved having the same requirements for Ed.D. and Ph.D. students.
  • Eliminate the track system that is current in place requiring students to select a qualitative track, a quantitative track, or a mixed track that have a designated set of required courses.
  • Require students to take 12 credit hours of research methodology courses. This is an increase from the current requirement of 9 or 10 hours.  Courses can be selected from research methodology courses in quantitative and qualitative. A list of research methodology courses in both disciplines that are currently provided by the College of Education through the Research Methodology program in the Department of Educational Psychology was presented. Alternate courses not on the list could be substituted by a supervisory committee, and must be approved by the Dean of Graduate Studies and Technology.

Honeyman questioned if EDF 6401 would count toward 12 credit hours. Algina responded that the decision of the committee is that it would not count toward the 12 credit hours. Honeyman questioned if the decision to not count EDF 6401 would create a “bottleneck” of students trying to take EDF 6403.

Repetto questioned whether it would be difficult for students who are pursuing proficiency in both disciplines (mixed methods) to take the required courses. Algina responded that students can take courses outside of the College of Education.

Lamme presented a resolution unanimously approved by faculty in the School of Teaching and Learning (February 2003) that stated that the College of Education should not require “a set of specific courses.” The resolution stated that the college should set a minimum number of hours for graduate level research, but the student’s doctoral committee should be granted the decision-making authority to approve the courses that meet those requirements. In addition, those research hours could be fulfilled by taking courses from across the university, or courses not taught by a research methodologist. Lamme stated that there are several methodologies that STL faculty use and could be courses or part of courses for doctoral students including: discourse analysis, content analysis, policy analysis, process-product observational studies, ethnographic interview, critical theory, meta-analysis, survey methods, and historical analysis.

Scott stated that the requirement to take 12 credit hours of course work taught by faculty in research methodology is viewed by many faculty as a minimum foundation that doctoral students should have. Doctoral students often take additional methodology courses, and also research courses in their respective discipline in addition to these foundation courses.

Comments were made about the limited number of qualitative methodology courses offered by the college in contrast to quantitative methodology courses. There was discussion of whether this list could or should be expanded to include offerings in other COE and university departments.

There was a discussion over the issue of autonomy, and whether approval of research courses should be at the supervisory committee level, at the department level, or should be a college-wide decision.

Waldron commented that the contrasting views about whether to have college-level research requirements as compared to department or program requirements, and the development of a prescribed list of research methodology courses were the issues raised last year through faculty forums. This led to FPC establishing the Ad Hoc Committee on Doctoral Research Requirements to craft a proposal that was acceptable to a broad range of faculty and improved upon the present requirements. The present proposal gives additional flexibility to supervisory committees when selecting research methodology courses, as compared to present college requirements with designated tracks.

Waldron suggested tabling the issue until individual faculty and respective departments could provide input on the proposal. Waldron suggested placing the committee’s proposal on the FPC website and establish a comment period, in addition to having FPC members discuss it with faculty in their respective departments.

Emihovich stated that she was on an AAU list-serve and would obtain information from other colleges’ of education regarding their research requirements and how decisions about those requirements are made. Once obtained, the information will be shared with the departments.

Campbell made a motion to table the proposal until comments were received from faculty. Repetto seconded the motion. The motion to table the proposal was approved by FPC.

2. Follow-up on Dean’s Budget Report

Dean Emihovich presented the revised 2003-2004 budget to the FPC, along with new narrative information. Emihovich stated that Summer A 2004 was not included in the budget. Emihovich indicated that there will be monies for Summer A, but at present a specific amount could not be given because she had not discussed the needs of the departments with their respective chairs. Algina stated that the money allocated toward instructional funds was different from the last budget submitted to FPC. Delfino stated that the difference was due to adding the spring semester to the budget. Waldron questioned whether the budget should be presented in the same format in April 2004. FPC members agreed that they liked the revised format of the budget information.

Dean Kranzler presented a Fact Book on COE that was compiled. It contained a variety a statistics on the college and the respective departments. The information will be available on the website.

Committee Reports

Waldron asked if there was any pertinent information the committees wanted to share. No committee reports were presented.

Report from the Dean

Dean Emihovich is looking for faculty names for three committees:

  • Search for research director
  • Planning for the 100 year celebration of COE in 2005
  • Scholarship of Engagement awards. A category for graduate students will be added to the awards this year.

Adjournment

A motion was made by Repetto for adjournment and seconded by Campbell. The meeting was adjourned at 3:50 p.m.