Minutes GAC Nov. 27, 2015
Attendance: Christara, Jepson, Marbach, Nikolov, Sabet, Salakhudinov, Shepherd, Spooner 
Regrets:  Hwang, Fairgrieve, Liu

1. [Sponsor ACG] Whether non-DCS graduate courses should be allowed to count towards MSc and PhD breadth, such as various ECE, Math, and Stats courses. If this is to be allowed, what are appropriate criteria and what is the process for making such a decision?

Proposal was rephrased and split into the two proposals, 1a and 1b, below.

Proposal 1a. It is proposed that individual graduate courses offered by other departments within UofT will be considered for Methodological and Research Area breadth  credits for our MSc and PhD programs, starting in Fall 2015.   Nominations for suitable course offerings would be taken from both DCS faculty members and graduate students.  Given a nominated course offering, the Associate Chair, Graduate Studies (ACG) would seek a recommendation from the faculty in the appropriate research area within DCS for whether the nominated course should be considered sufficient for a Methodological and/or Research Area breadth credit. The ACG would be able to make the final decision or, in borderline cases, could seek the advice of the GAC.  If possible these decisions should be made within the first one or two weeks of term, or sooner.  Suitable courses that are regularly offered by other departments could be pre-approved and announced in the previous term.

(Note that currently PhD-M students, with a masters degree from elsewhere, can use courses taken during their previous masters degree towards their PhD breadth credits. Also, MSc/PhD students can seek to obtain breadth credits for graduate courses taken towards a degree that was not completed, or taken as a non-degree student.)

Discussion:

This would increase the selection of courses available for breadth, which can be an issue in some areas due to current CSC courses not being offered.

Proposal (1a) was supported by 7 of the 8 committee members present.   Two GAC members (Cook and Fairgrieve/Liu) who were not present at the meeting providing positive votes by email.

The individual with the negative vote pointed out that the current breadth rules have already anticipated students wishing to take courses from other departments by keeping the breadth requirements reasonably lightweight.  In addition, the proposed decision process requires a potentially error-prone judgement call, which is avoided by our current system.

The proposal was accepted.

ACTION ITEM: ACG is to take this recommendation to the DCS faculty for broader discussion and possible adoption.

Proposal 1b. All MSc and PhD students can apply to have graduate courses taken as part of previous degrees, and possibly at other universities, be considered for breadth credits.  (There are some already instances for which the current breadth rules allow this, see the Note above.)

Discussion:

It was noted that this would require something similar to the previous breadth review process.  Decisions would be based on previous course descriptions, assignments, marking schemes, text books, etc.  

For CSC cross-listed courses it was noted that there are sometimes different requirements for undergraduate students versus graduate students.  This would need to be accounted for.  

A critical issue is the potential noisiness and subjectivity of the necessary decision here.

Also, if Proposal 1a is adopted, then the increased range of possible breadth courses would partially alleviate issues for students not getting credits for previously completed courses and then being forced to choose from a limited range of options.

Vote: 3 in favour, 5 against, 2 in support by email.  A substantial majority was not obtained. This proposal was therefore not approved.

ITEM 2. It was decided to postpone discussion on this for a subsequent meeting.

ITEM 3. [Sponsor CSGSBS] Make the grad skills seminar mandatory for our grad students to take, possibly including attendance of the distinguished lectures.

Discussion:

Attendance at the distinguished lectures was removed from the requirement.

By "mandatory" it was understood that this was not to be a formal degree requirement (which would require seeking formal SGS approval, which in turn would mean specifying detailed course requirements). 

Instead, attendance would be taken at the grad skills seminars.  New MSc and PhD students who were not attending would be reminded by the Grad Office of the requirement that they attend.  Students who continued to miss the seminars would be asked to meet with the ACG to discuss the situation.

This was approved with seven votes for, one abstention, among the eight members present.

ACTION ITEM: ACG is to take this recommendation to the DCS faculty for broader discussion and possible adoption.