Summary of the Graduate Affairs Committee meeting March 21, 2013

Committee members present: Steve Cook (GAC Chair), Steve Easterbrook,
Nosayba El-Sayed (student member), Wayne Enright, Ken Jackson,
Allan Jepson (Grad Chair), Bogdan Simion (student member),
Vinod Vaikuntanathan

Regrets: Ken Jackson, Yashar Ganjali

Invited presenter:  Faith Ellen

***Item 1: Faith (as a member of the Admissions Committee) was invited to
express her concerns about admitting MSc and PhD students to our program
who do not have an undergraduate CS background.  Two such students were
admitted this year, both of whom were highly qualified in their
proposed research areas.  The admissions committee suggested that
we need a policy on this.

Wayne pointed out that in the past we have not admitted people without a
CS background, and instead suggested that they enroll as a special
student to take CS courses to fill in their background, and then reapply
for admission.

Faith suggested that as a compromise between denying such people
admission, and admitting them unconditionally, we could admit them
on condition that they take certain specified courses as part of their
breadth requirements. The committee requested that Faith come up
with a more detailed proposal along these lines, specifying who would
decide which breadth courses are necessary (perhaps a special breadth
committee?) and what would be the basis for the decision.
   Faith should send this draft proposal to the committee for discussion
(perhaps via email).  Ultimately such a proposal should come up for
discussion at a faculty meeting (or Brown Bag meeting).

***Item 2: Steve E. proposed a new course for approval by the committee
(see the attached description).
The course is titled "Systems Thinking for Global Problems".
He has taught this course once last summer as part of the Munk School's
Dynamics of Global Change Program, and will be teaching it again this
summer.  However the DGC program is coming to an end this year, and he
would like to keep teaching the course.

Wayne pointed out that other departments offer similar courses, and
it is important to verify that the proposed course does not have too
big an overlap with existing courses.

Allan pointed out that Steve also teaches CSC 2602H "Topics in Analysis
and Computation in Continuous Models:  Computational Models of Climate
Change", and this course might overlap with the proposed course.

Steve agreed to put an exclusion between the two courses.

The committee agreed that Steve should submit the course again to
the whole committee for discussion and voting, after due diligence
in verifying little overlap with courses from other departments, and
with the understanding that no student could get credit for both the
new course and 2602H.