Draft Minutes of The Graduate Affairs Committee meeting Dec 12, 2014

Present: Jacqueline Bermudez, Christina Christara, Stephen Cook (Chair),
Ken Jackson, Peter Marbach, Ioan Stefanovic

Regrets:  Mike Brudno,  Allan Jepson (Grad Chair), Bogdan Simion

The purpose of the meeting was to consider the possibility of some
faculty members increasing the stipends that DCS offers to MSc and
PhD applicants by using their grant money to fund something like an
entrance scholarship.

The committee agreed that if something like this is allowed, then the
Grad Admissions Committee should have the final say on which students
are offered such scholarships.  

Here is a possible way in which this might be organized.
Such entrance scholarships should be treated like Wolfond Scholarships,
but have a different name (say "Special" scholarships).  Any faculty
member who wants to offer such a scholarship to a particular applicant
using his/her grant money should notify the Admissions Committee.
The Admissions Committee should rank the top applicants for both
Wolfond and Special scholarships in the same way.  If there are W
Wolfond scholarships available and S Special scholarships requested
then the top W+S applicants will be offered admission scholarships,
and the amount of the scholarship should be the same for both kinds
(for next year the Wolfond Scholarship will be $10K).   A faculty's
request for a Special scholarship will be honoured only if the applicant
is ranked among the top W+S applicants (but the scholarship will be
called "Wolfond" if the applicant is among the top W candidates).
If the applicant is among the top W+S applicants, and accepts the offer
of admission, then the faculty member will pay for the scholarship
using grant money, whether or not the applicant was among the top W
candidates (and whether or not the candidate ends up being supervised
by the faculty member).

This is just a preliminary proposal, open for discussion.