Summary of the Graduate Affairs Committee meeting Oct 18, 2013, 1-2pm

Present: Michael Brudno, Christina Christara, Stephen Cook (Chair),
Eyal de Lara, Ken Jackson, Allan Jepson (Grad Chair), Aida Nematzadeh
(student member), Bogdan Simion (student member)

ITEM 1:  The issue of a limited grad course selection in the spring term
was continued from our previous meeting.  The current course timetable
was circulated, and we briefly discussed the availability of suitable 
courses for breadth in the spring term.  Aida offered to try to collect
more detailed information from graduate students about issues with the
selection of courses, and this topic will be revisited in a later meeting.

It was noted there is a related issue:
the results of student course evaluations have not been made available
to grad students for the last two years, due to FA&Sc's switch to electronic
course evaluations and FA&Sc's privacy concerns. These course evaluations are 
very useful to students for selectioning courses. 

Graduate student access to the electronic evaluations is expected 
to be resolved (by FA&Sc) starting in 2014-15.  

It was also pointed out that the electronic evaluations may not answer the
key questions that students may wish to know before enrolling, such 
as the expected work load and accessibility of the course for students 
with a range of backgrounds.

We should consider alternative ways of circulating student input on
courses, such as grad student surveys.

ITEM 2:  Allan distributed a Graduate Student Supervision Policy
Proposal (Oct 17 draft, available from the agenda) 

This was discussed at length, with suggested revisions.
Allan will distribute a revised proposal to the GAC, and further input 
will be sought during the DCSfaculty meeting on Oct. 22.

ITEM 3:  Revising the PhD checkpoints and suggested timelines. 

This is a continuation of the discussion from the previous meeting.
GAC members were asked to read a rough position paper before 
the next GAC meeting.  The position paper is now available 
from today's agenda, checkpointProposal_v1.pdf.

Discussion on this was postponed until our next meeting.

ITEM 4: Exclusions between graduate courses need to be announced to students.

ACTION: Grad office to add column to course timetable to list exclusions.