Recommendation from the Faculty Senate Graduate Studies Committee for a change in Graduate Catalog

Recommendation from the Faculty Senate Graduate Studies Committee for a change in Graduate Catalog

The Senate Graduate Studies Committee is charged by the Senate with approving graduate program policy statements for each graduate program at the University. It is the understanding of the members of this committee that the written graduate program policy document represents the official agreement between the unit and the student for applying and administering the academic requirements of the program. Alternatively, the undergraduate requirements are stated in the undergraduate portion of the university Undergraduate and Graduate Catalog and this serves as the official agreement for undergraduates.

We would like to recommend that the new Graduate Catalog would

a. be separate from undergraduate catalog;

b. include a summary of each program and its existing program policy statements;

c. be published online in HTML format for easy navigation;

d. be published online in PDF format for archiving and legal purposes;

We are making these recommendations based on the following reasons:

1) All of the policies would be in a single document, which would serve as the authoritative source for all graduate programs;

2) The general format of degree descriptions and other requirements will be uniform throughout the catalog, but there will be ample space available for a detailed description if needed;

3) For the students looking for admission, one source will be easier to compare multiple programs and degrees offered;

4) For the students in the UD programs, it will be easier to adhere to the requirements imposed by the policies in the catalog that was active at the date of admission because online archives will be available and paper copies of the past catalogs would not be needed;

5) The online format will make it easier for the faculty, administration, senate committees, and graduate offices to examine the policies and degree requirements yearly and to make necessary changes if needed, while currently the policy documents are only examined if a change in the program is submitted;

6) These changes reflect the visions of current graduate students as confirmed by the Graduate Student Senate vote and comments;

7) These practices are currently followed in many of our peer institutions.

Sample layouts of the online catalog is provided for review.

Sample Web page layout. Page 1.

Graduate Catalog 2009

Graduate Degree Programs

Graduate Catalog 2009

Accounting

Description

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Admission Requirements

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Requirements for the degree

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Financial Aid

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Program Policy Statements (a hyperlink)

Based upon each program’s statements, a hyperlinked table of contents would be created here for easy navigation throughout the document.