Council of Graduate Students - Summary of Discussion - 26 July 2001
President J. Briggs Cormier called a Special Meeting of the Council of Graduate Students for July 26 to discuss the G-QUE Report and vote on a resolution endorsing the major conclusions of the report. Quorum (15 delegates) was not met and the resolution was not voted on. The following Summary of Discussion is not presented for delegate approval but instead offered in the hope of informing future discussion on the G-QUE Report.
In attendance were:
- Current Delegates: Travis Beck, Jill Burkart, Kim Foster, Stacza Lipinski, Joe Pirone, Marsha Robinson, John Shea, Michael Triplett
- Officers and Executive Committee Members: J. Briggs Cormier, Mike Daniels, Ed Lasseigne, Allyson Lowe, Ron Meyers, Joe Pirone, Marsha Robinson, Jim Siddens
The G-QUE Report is a comprehensive report analyzing various aspects of graduate student life at The Ohio State University. The latest draft that has been distributed spans two volumes, with a total of seven hundred pages. While the bulk of the report concerns the graduate student census, questionaires were also sent to graduate studies chairs, deans, and people who were admitted to OSU but chose not to attend.
It is the first project specifically designed to study graduate student quality-of-life in such a manner and stands to attract much nationwide attention to Ohio State and the Council of Graduate Students.
The G-QUE Process: Past and Future
In late 1997, president Katherine Carberry Skestos, responding in part to the reception of the Quality of the Undergraduate Experience (QUE) report, began to work with her Executive Committee to develop a similar survey concerning graduate student issues. In talks with the Graduate School, this planned survey grew into a census. The Graduate School agreed to fund the printing, distribution, collection, and analysis of the data, and work with CGS in presenting the ensuing report.
CGS gratefully accepted this offer and helped constitute a G-QUE Committee. This committee, made up of graduate students, faculty, and staff from both the Graduate School and many major University offices, divided itself into three subcommittees and working with OSU's Survey Research Unit, began the process of drafting the questionaire.
This questionaire was hand-distributed to every graduate student on campus in Spring Quarter 1998, with incentives offered for participation. Surveys were collected over the next two quarters, with several general reminders sent to those students who had not yet responded. When collection ceased, approximately a quarter of the graduate student population had returned their survey.
Once the results had been tabulated, the three subcommittees began drafting their reports and delivered three relatively shallow presentations of the data. The difficulties of writing by committee, especially with such staggering amounts of data, led the subcomittees to charge Dean Susan Huntington with drafting a more in-depth report, in regular consultation with the G-QUE committee.
Over the last year and a half, CGS has met and corresponded with the Dean on a regular basis concerning the status of the G-QUE and has provided her with detailed comments on several drafts. Preliminary reports have been presented to the Board of Trustees as well as to a CGS delegate meeting in the fall of 2000.
Recently, the CGS Executive Committee met with the Graduate School to come to consensus on some remaining issues, focusing on data analysis and presentation. Chief among them were (1) the presentation of the data concerning graduate student exploitation; (2) language expressing the need for university-wide publication of grievance procedures and the development of a standard GA handbook; (3) updating the call for procedures protecting intellectual property and copyright to reflect the fact that existing procedures are inadequate; and (4) ensuring that the results from the G-QUE study are not unscientifically generalized to the entire graduate population. After a long, but amiable, discussion, Exec and the Graduate School were able to come to agreement.
The Executive Committeee is therefore able to recommend endorsing the major conclusions of the report. Exec has agreed to form a working group with the Graduate School to do the final wordsmithery, and hopes to see the report off to publication before August 3. Once the final draft of the report has been received, Exec feels confident that it will recommend the complete endorsement of the report.
CGS and the Graduate School will then put together an Implementation Committee to prioritize the report, draw up a timetable for those priorities, and work with appropriate University offices to put the recommendations of the G-QUE into effect.
The report will be published in two forms. The first, a full version of the report, will be sent to all senior administrators, all Graduate Studies Chairs, all Department Chairs, all Deans, and all CGS delegates, and all graduate student association presidents. The second version, containing just the executive summary and recommendations, will be sent to every graduate student and faculty member.
Simultaneously, localized versions of the report are being assembled for each college and department on campus, detailing that unit's strengths and weaknesses and illustrating how they compare to the university as a whole. CGS and the Graduate School will jointly present both the general and specific reports in a series of local meetings. Throughout these reports, however, care will be taken to ensure that respondents' anonymity remain preserved (for instance, some combinations of age, race, and gender will uniquely identify an individual person within a department).
In addition, various university-wide offices will receive the subset of the raw data relevant to their mission, so that, for example, the University Library could examine how library satisfaction levels differed across colleges and programs.
It is expected that many units will use this raw data (as will CGS itself) to probe further into areas of interest and report their findings to the university at large. The Graduate School is planning to publish a newsletter that will use part of its space to publishing interesting and surprising "nuggets" of data that subsequent analyses develop.
Discussion
- It was noted that there is very little discussion of GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender) issues in the Report, and none at all in the executive summary. In part, this is due to the fact that nearly five years have passed since the questionaire was developed, and the one question (do you feel you have experienced discrimination based on sexual orientation?) that does address these issues was itself only added to the questionaire after significant discussion. The report cannot speak to issues on which it has no data. No one considers the report to be the last word on any issue, and it is certain that future surveys ought to address GLBT issues in greater detail.
- One of the recommendations (4.3) concerns the nature of grievance procedures at the university. Currently, individual programs vary widely on how they handle grievances internally. Some programs have highly formalized procedures, while others rely solely on informal measures. The Graduate School frequently advises students on how to deal with potential grievances, and formally hears several cases a year. Grievances concerning unfair GA termination or unfair Master's/Candidacy/Oral Exam administration must be heard by the Graduate School, as only they have the power to compel reinstatement of appointments or retaking of an Exam. It was pointed out that many students are reluctant to initiate any kind of grievance procedure, as they fear it will harm their professional career. Any resolution procedure that can preserve the anonymity of the complainant should be publicized as well as possible.
- The report also recommends improved advising of graduate students, but it is unclear on what kind of incentives and/or enforcement measures can be offered to truly improve the process. It seems impossible to develop comprehensive evaluation measures that preserve student anonymity. Exec hopes that the department-specific presentations of those questions dealing with advising will help in this area, but more work is definitely needed.
- While the report states up front that it is concerned more with quality-of-life issues rather than curricular issues, recommendation number 1 deals exactly with curricular issues. In general, the ordering of the recommendations is a presentational issue: it is best to start with the recommendations that aren't directly related to financial issues so that the entire report isn't just seen as a call for money. True implementation priorities will be set by the Implementation Committee.
- The background of recommendation seven is that, inter alia, the Academic Plan is virtually devoid of any mention of graduate issues -- a sign that graduate programs do not enjoy the priority that they ought to in the University community. Recommendation seven specifically calls for the inclusion of graduate student concerns in a number of university oversight projects.
- Given that the G-QUE data was collected so long ago, how is it still relevant? If the report recommended things that had already been done, this might be a concern. But none of the recommendations are things that have been addressed in a university-wide manner since the data was collected. Thus the data will serve as a baseline: after future initiatives address the concerns expressed by the G-QUE Report, future surveys can compare their results to those of the G-QUE in order to evaluate those initiatives.
- With the discussion of the current budget climate, how do we have any hope of accomplishing anything? First of all, many of the recommendations, while requiring an outlay of time on the part of university faculty and staff, have no direct budgetary impact. We hope to draw attention to these recommendations. Secondly, there is always room in the university budget for high-priority items. It is the job of CGS and the Graduate School to convince the community that graduate issues are indeed a high-priority. Given that the university's goals include cultivating a host of highly-ranked departments, and that such rankings depend heavily on the quality and reputation of the department's graduate education, a strong case can certainly be made for this priority.
Respectfully submitted,
Mike Daniels
CGS Secretary
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