Agenda
Thursday, March 14, 2024
2:00 p.m.
This meeting will be held remotely via Zoom. The link and password to join the meeting may be found via the meeting’s email notice.
1. Motion
“Whereas FGS Council is the pan-university Committee of Senate responsible for graduate and postdoctoral educational development, and has authority over the academic standards of the Faculty, including in support of the university’s mission to achieve excellence in teaching, and in the development and maintenance of uniformly high standards of graduate and postdoctoral educational development,
“FGS Council hereby advises Senate Executive and, by extension, Senate of the following factors that must be considered in any assessment of the academic integrity of graduate courses:
“1) graduate students are to be understood as scholars and practitioners, apprenticing in the academic and professional programs in which they are enrolled;
“2) teaching and learning in graduate seminars is a collective process of all participants, guided by the instructor; in courses with both master’s and doctoral students, the mentorship provided by the latter to the former is an important example of this;
“3) even more than in the design and practice of many undergraduate courses, attendance in graduate courses, particularly in seminar format, is commonly 100% or close to it, and that attendance is a critical component of the learning outcomes of the course;
“4) directly related to the above, student leadership is a common feature of graduate courses, where leading discussion is no mere item of assessment, but a component of the learning outcomes of the other students;
“5) in addition to meeting academic learning outcomes of the course, class leadership and participation also fulfill professional-skills-development goals, as part of larger degree program outcome expectations;
“6) graduate courses and their specific learning outcomes are often directly connected to other milestones in graduate programs, such as the development of MRP, thesis and dissertation proposals, and comprehensive exams, and a “remediated” version of a course could fail to provide the necessary support for further academic success in the program;
“7) after the labour disruption has ended, some graduate courses (including those that have continued) may need a full replacement of missed time, and Senate Executive should allow for the possibility for programs and instructors to defer completion of courses through the summer and/or fall terms as needed.”