01/2007: Spring 2007 Graduate Adviser & GSAO Meeting Notes
Updated: May 16th, 2011
Graduate Division
University of California, Berkeley
MEETING OF GRADUATE ADVISERS
AND
GRADUATE ASSISTANTS
SPRING SEMESTER 2007
January 11, 2007
GRADUATE DEAN MARY ANN MASON
ANNOUNCEMENTS
- After seven years as Dean, I will step down in July and return to teaching. I have enjoyed serving as Graduate Dean very much.
- Late-breaking news from the Governor: No non-resident (NRT) increases.
- A 7% increase for all graduate student fees and 10% increase for professional schools are planned. To offset the 7% increase, we will seek additional funding from the campus to increase block grants.
FUND RAISING FOR STUDENT SUPPORT: NAMED FUND INITIATIVE
$1.3 million raised so far. Graduate Division will match the first $10,000 per donor. For more
information, contact Kasia Allen, 642-8614, and see the Named Initiative Fund.
SURVEY OF DOCTORAL STUDENTS ON CAREER, FAMILY, AND LIFE PLANS
Graduate Division has surveyed all Berkeley doctoral students past the first year; a 50% response rate was achieved. We will survey doctoral students at eight more UC campuses this spring.
Preliminary findings indicate that a significant percentage of women, and men to a lesser extent, are shifting away from pursuing faculty careers at R-1 institutions due to family/life balance issues. Graduate Advisers and Assistants are urged to inform graduate students about available programs and services; see A Guide for Graduate Student Parents and memo on Graduate Council Student Parent Policies.
A new policy for paid childbirth leave for support doctoral students is under development and will be announced soon.
NEW ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR GRADUATE STUDENT LIFE, ANDREW SZERI
Upon completion of the NRC survey, Associate Dean Andrew Szeri will assume new duties as
Associate Dean for Graduate Student Life.
CARMEN MCKINES APPOINTED AS OMBUDSPERSON FOR STUDENTS AND POSTDOCS
Carmen brings to this position extensive experience in managing and mediating conflict and in problem resolution. In this Ombuds role, Carmen will handle a myriad of undergraduate and graduate student issues and postdoc concerns requiring mediation, consideration and respect for differences, open lines of communication, assisting parties in finding possible solutions for resolving disputes. Carmen can be reached at 642-5754.
ASSOCIATE DEAN JOSEPH DUGGAN
ADMISSIONS (contact: Stuart Fryer, 3-5157)
Please see the Admissions Office page.
Staff update: Corinne Kosmitzki is the new Assistant Director of Graduate Admissions. Joining
Admissions are Mai Nazif as an International Evaluator, Elizabeth Varela as an Administrative
Assistant, and Nicole Plante as a Senior Clerk.
If you have not yet received your admission allocations, contact Corinne Kosmitzki, 2-7405, ckosmitzki@berkeley.edu. Special requests for changes in the allocations should be emailed to grdean.acad@berkeley.edu.
Admits will, as always, be processed in the order in which they are submitted. We anticipate turn-around times of 3-5 days for domestic cases, 5-7 for Taiwanese, Japanese, and Korean applicants, and 5-10 for other internationals, with somewhat longer times during the Fellowship competition.
As of January 11, applications were up by about 400 over last year.
DEGREES (contact: Carol Rachwald: 2-7330)
Please see the Degrees Office page.
Staff update: Rocio Sánchez is a new Student Affairs Officer in Degrees. Ke Ren has joined the Degrees staff as an Administrative Assistant.
The deadline to apply for the Filing Fee for spring 2007 was January 19, 2007.
Beginning this semester, the Registrar has raised the Late Registration Fee to $150. It will be charged to students who failed to be completely registered by February 2, 2007.
Students who wish to participate in a Designated Emphasis must submit the petition to add the DE prior to taking the Qualifying Exam.
Beginning in summer 2007, the requirement for filing a thesis or dissertation during one of the Summer Sessions is registration and enrollment in three units, rather than four.
Graduate Division may sponsor an informational meeting for new and experienced Graduate Advisers next fall. Please email suggestions for topics to grdean.acad@berkeley.edu. Departments are urged to keep folders of students they think will return in the future for graduate study. Graduate Division can keep folders for only a certain number of years and quite often must depend on the departments to retain old records.
Attendance at QEs: A QE chair should never begin to administer an exam if a committee member is absent. Call Associate Dean immediately so he can review the situation and make recommendations, 642-5472.
APPOINTMENTS (contact: 642-7101)
Please see the Appointments Office page.
Staff update: Rebecca Margosian is a new Administrative Analyst in Appointments.
GSI TEACHING & RESOURCE CENTER (contact: Linda von Hoene, 642-4456)
Please see GSI Teaching and Resource Center website.
As a reminder, all first-time GSIs must meet Graduate Council requirements for teaching preparation by:
- attending the Spring Conference for GSIs on January 12, 2007;
- completing the Online Course on Professional Standards and Ethics in Teaching by the end of the third week of teaching; and
- enrolling in a semester-long, departmental 300-level course on teaching.
For these and other matters, see the Center’s website.
The Graduate Council policy on Appointments and Mentoring of GSI is at: the Center’s website and in PDF format.
Applications for the Summer Institute for Preparing Future Faculty can be found online.
ASSOCIATE DEAN ANDREW SZERI
SYSTEMS & TECHNOLOGY (contact: Chris Hoffman, 643-2534)
Gradlink-on-the-Web
gradsys@berkeley.edu – general email for questions and requests
In early December 2006, we released two new functions in GLOW:
- The new Departmentally Restricted Award Report allows departments to identify students supported on their departmentally restricted funds. This replaces a paper report that was sent out via campus mail or fax. In addition, by clicking on a button, departments can generate a paper form to use for identifying students who are to receive awards from those funds. In the future, we will create an online form for this purpose.
- The new Committee Information screen allows departments to view a student’s various committees, including the names of committee members and their positions.
Coming soon:
- Fellowships Competition Results Report – will show the results of the competition, including the names of all students you nominated and on any award they may have received.
- Access to GLOW for those working at the college or division level (e.g., development directors and diversity coordinators) and for staff who represent designated emphasis programs.
GRADUATE ADMISSIONS SYSTEM
Data extracts: Significant enhancements were made to the Data Extracts screen. Some of this work was done at the same time that departments were downloading and using data we thank you for your cooperation and patience. We’ve been able to provide a limited amount of assistance to departments on how to import this information into Filemaker and Access databases. As in the past, we do have templates in Filemaker and Access formats that you can use. Please contact gradsys@berkeley.edu, or Chris Hoffman or Stuart Fryer, if you would like to use these. See the online help page for the Data Extract screen.
Printing: Unfortunately, given the current setup, we are still receiving reports from departments that printing occasionally stops suddenly. The printer queues set up in the system are very fragile and jam very easily. If this happens, please do not keep trying to print. Instead, contact Graduate Division (Chris Hoffman, Stuart Fryer, gradsys@berkeley.edu), and they will ask IST to reset your printer. Because the system thinks that applications have been printed already, you will not be able to print applications by batch but will have to print them individually by Doc ID.
Development Roadmap: With our IST partners, we have been working on a high-level plan for upcoming work in the Graduate Admissions system. The highest priority will be placed on developing a system for requesting and accepting letters of recommendation online. Betsy Livak will be returning to work on this in a project management capacity. The second priority will be to rewrite the screens used by applicants. The current screens are almost seven years old!
Corinne Kosmitzki, Assistant Director in Admissions, will manage this project. It is our hope that online letters of recommendation and the applicant screen rewrite can happen in time for the next admissions cycle, but this represents a lot of work. Beyond that, the next phase of work will include two aspects. First, we will add a new module for Department Review and Decision-Making. Many of you have powerful systems in place already, and over the next year, we hope to evaluate several of these to see which one might be the best fit for other campus departments. As part of this effort, the Graduate Admissions screens that you use now will be rewritten or replaced. As always, we welcome your input and ideas. Please contact Chris Hoffman or Stuart Fryer, gradsys@berkeley.edu.
THE NRC ASSESSMENT OF RESEARCH DOCTORAL PROGRAMS
(contact: Andrew Szeri, 2-5472 or gradnrc@berkeley.edu)
Updates to our website are at www.grad.berkeley.edu/nrc.
- Faculty lists for participating programs have been submitted to the NRC.
- Faculty Questionnaires, distributed mid-January, were due February 15.
- Many programs held a special faculty meeting with Associate Dean Szeri regarding the Faculty Questionnaires, leading to a response rate, as of March 6, of 88%.
ASSOCIATE DEAN CARLOS FERNANDEZ-PELLO
GRADUATE SERVICES REORGANIZATION
The Degrees, Fellowships, and Appointments units are now combined into one unit, Graduate Services. Carolyn Chee is Director, Carol Rachwald is the Assistant Director of Degrees, and Maria Loza is now Assistant Director of Fellowships. The Graduate Student Services counter is in 318 Sproul Hall.
FELLOWSHIPS (contact: Maria Loza, 642-7665)
Please see the Fellowships page.
Staffing Update: Solomon Lefler has moved from Admissions to Fellowships as a Student Affairs Officer. Ariana Paniagua is now a full-time staff member with Fellowships. She previously held two half-time positions in both Fellowships and the Graduate Diversity Program.
Multi-year fellowships have been changed from three-year to two-year packages.
Faculty members have been secured to serve on the 2007-08 Fellowships and Graduate Scholarships Committee. Recruiting participants was very challenging. Serving on the Fellowship Committee is a great learning experience. We urge all faculty members to volunteer for next year’s committee, to learn how the process works.
The Fellowships Competition Handbook is available online (username and password protected): www.grad.berkeley.edu/fellowships/secure/
GRADUATE DIVERSITY PROGRAMS (contact: Carla Trujillo, 643-6010)
Please see the Graduate Diversity Program website.
Staffing update: Karina Moscorro has joined the staff of the Graduate Diversity Program.
The incoming graduate student population includes ~11% URM students, 18% international students, and 47% women.
Please refer students to the GDP Brown Bag Workshops schedule. See updates.
Diversity Day: Sunday, March 11, 2007. Departmental Visit Day: Monday, March 12, 2007.
Diversity Coordinators:
See contact information here.
- Arts and Humanities, Josephine Moreno
- Biological Sciences, Audrey Knowlton
- EECS, Sheila Humphreys
- Engineering, Beatrice Lopez Flores
- Physical Sciences, Colette Patt
- Public Health, Abby Rincon
- Social Science, Gloria Chun
ACADEMIC SERVICES (contact: Sabrina Soracco, 643-9392)
For updates to the Calendar for Graduate Resources, Opportunities, & Workshops (GROW) and for resources on such topics as grant writing, scientific style and writing, dissertation writing, and scholarly publishing, please refer students to the Academic Services section on the Graduate Division website.
COMMUNICATIONS & EVENTS (contact: Lisa Harrington, 643-6011)
Please see http://www.grad.berkeley.edu/publications/index.shtml
Graduate Division website: A redesigned and improved site went online in September 2006 and has been tweaked based on your suggestions. Send feedback to gradweb@berkeley.edu.
eGrad is our monthly electronic newsletter sent to all departments for forwarding to graduate students, staff and faculty. Submission deadlines are the 15th of every month. Send items to gradpub@berkeley.edu.
Please inform Graduate Division of changes in staff and in email address by email to corten@berkeley.edu.
The Families Matter brochure and GROW (Graduate Resources, Opportunities, & Workshops) brochure are updated. To order copies, email gradpub@berkeley.edu.
Graduate Council Lectures for Spring 2007: Daniel Kahneman, who is a grad alum and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, delivered the Hitchcock lectures and Pulitzer Prizewinning historian Michael Kammen will deliver the Jefferson Lecture in Spring 2007. For details, see the Graduate Council Lectures website.
The Graduate Division directory from Chapter A of the Guide to Graduate Policy is updated.
The new pages reflect the reorganizations that took place during Fall 2006.
See www.grad.berkeley.edu/policies/guide for important information about the Guide.
ILAN ADLER, CHAIR OF THE GRADUATE COUNCIL
Priorities are set by the Divisional Council for consideration by the administration; graduate
student financial support is a high priority item.
The Systemwide Coordinating Committee for Graduate Affairs and the Committee for Educational Policy have proposed that GSI appointments be administered uniformly throughout the UC system according to a 2 tiered system (thus ending the four-step system that Berkeley utilizes): (1) a basic “GTA” (Graduate Teaching Assistant) position and (2) a “Graduate Teaching Fellow” position in which the student has greater responsibility for instruction, but is not the instructor of record. The Berkeley Graduate Council has responded that it is not in favor of the Systemwide proposal and that Berkeley wishes to keep its present system of appointment.
The Administrative Committee of the Graduate Council hears some student grievances, and has found that departments often make procedural errors through failure to be aware of academic policy. Departments need to assert the need for faculty to become thoroughly familiar with issues surrounding the administration of the qualifying examination, issues of probation and dismissal, and that high grades should not be assigned to students as “encouragements” but rather as a true reflection of the quality of their performance. Students also need to be better informed by departments of their right of appeal. The guidelines for the graduate appeal procedure are on
the web.
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