Here's one example. In section I.C the old OP read as follows:
“The Graduate Faculty is empowered to determine university-wide policy concerning the graduate programs and concerning research activities. The Graduate Faculty can formulate and recommend policy regarding research-related operations, activities and incentives, provided compliance with all regulatory and funding agencies is ensured. The Graduate Faculty evaluates and recommend changes to new and existing university policy.”The new version, in marked up form, reads as follows:
“The Graduate Faculty is empowered to determine university-wide policy concerning the graduate programsThe rationale for this change reads as follows:and concerning research activities. The Graduate Facultycanmay formulate and recommend policy regarding research-related operations, activities and incentives, provided compliance with all regulatory and funding agencies is ensured. The Graduate Faculty may evaluatesand recommendschanges to new and existing university policy.”
The role and empowerment of the Graduate Faculty in formulating research policy should be modified and restricted, reflecting the 21st century reality that many research policies are now dictated and driven by regulations and requirements of laws, governmental agencies, and external granting agencies that supersede campus views; these are most simply addressed through changes in campus policy designed by the Office of Research and Development Administration.This rationale doesn't justify the change, to my mind. Note that the previous language did include a rider "provided compliance with all regulatory and funding agencies is ensured". The changes do not simply comply with a new environment in which external agencies "supersede campus views": they reduce the role of the faculty in directing research and instead (as the rationale disarmingly makes clear) assign more of the oversight to ORDA. That is, they do not simply reflect a "21st century reality" but contribute to changing the reality on campus, by giving faculty less of a role in determining "campus views".
Being a humanist, I don't do much funded research, so am not aware of all the complexities here. And perhaps faculty on the grad council are confident that this is the right approach. I welcome comments and correction. But in the meantime, I'll plan on voting no.
Details on the changes can be found on the grad school website.
The procedure for changing the graduate school operating paper is actually a bit odd. The graduate council itself does not vote on the changes, but various committees contribute revisions. I served on one of these committees and actually went through it initially to remove references to obsolete practices, and just to perform some copy editing. Apparently, once the relevant committees have gone through the document, it goes immediately to the full graduate faculty for ratification.
ReplyDeleteThe revisions that you've noted were initially introduced by the research committee, chaired by Sara Baer. These revisions kept the basic language of the original: "The Graduate Faculty can formulate and recommend … The Graduate Faculty evaluates and recommends …" The "may/can" issue seems to be a product of revisions at the executive committee stage. There was some discussion of this change at the April meeting of the graduate council: Associate Vice Chancellor Rice argued that "can" doesn't work because of the complexities involved in research regulations. Frankly, I fell down on the job here and did not recognize or comment on the more pervasive and fundamental changes in authority that you note. The explicit rationale appended to the final document did not appear in the final revisions distributed to the graduate council for the April meeting.