Senate tweaks dissertation committee composition; hears report on Residential Education

At its Oct. 27 meeting, the Faculty Senate approved revisions to the composition of dissertation committees and heard a presentation from Residential Education.



If Microsoft founder Bill Gates was willing to sit on a Stanford doctoral student’s dissertation committee, would he be allowed to do so? The answer at the Oct. 27 Faculty Senate meeting was probably not.

The question came up during a presentation by history Professor Richard Roberts, chair of the Committee on Graduate Studies. The senate was being asked to consider the following modifications to the membership of PhD orals and dissertation reading committees, effective Sept. 1, 2011.

For the dissertation reading committees, the recommended changes included:

• Emeritus faculty are now counted the same as current Academic Council faculty, rather than as non-Academic Council members.

• An exception to the policy has been added that a co-adviser who is an Academic Council member must be appointed if the principal dissertation adviser is an emeritus member of the Academic Council. A co-adviser is not required during the first two years following retirement for emeritus Academic Council members who are recalled to active service.

• Non-Academic Council readers can be appointed to the Reading Committee if they hold a PhD and as long as the majority of committee members are Academic Council faculty. (This allows efficient use of affiliated and consulting faculty who possess expertise in the dissertation field as well as representatives from industry or other university faculties.)

For the orals committees, the changes included:

• Emeritus members of the Academic Council may serve on oral exam committees, and are not considered "non-Academic Council members."

• The number/s of non-Academic Council members allowed was also made specific for committees larger than four examiners ("one of four or five examiners or two of six or seven examiners").

Roberts explained that no changes to these membership policies had been made since 1994-95. Since then, "there has been a significant change in the nature of scholarship and the place of scholars in the wider world." Doctoral students have become increasingly interested in the applied sciences and want to have scholar practitioners on their dissertation committees to better advise them in the application of their knowledge, he noted.

During the comment period a lively discussion ensued about the stipulation that all members of these committees hold doctorates.

Stephen Stedman, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, asked whether there was a process for waiving the requirement that a scholar practitioner hold a PhD. He noted that many "top flight" practitioners may hold law degrees, for instance, and have published extensively.

"Does that mean that Bill Gates could not serve on one of these committees?" Lucy Shapiro, professor of developmental biology, interjected.

"My sense is that you would keep Bill Gates off this committee," Roberts said. "It’s part of our process to have people of the higher rank evaluating you for that rank."

Stedman noted that students who aren’t getting the right expertise seek out the scholar practitioner. "It should be about expertise, not about rank," Stedman said.

Roberts noted that students can have as many informal advisers as they like. And while there may be a mechanism for requesting exceptions to these rules, that would not be something that would be accommodated "as a normal course of operations," he said.

Chris Golde, associate vice provost for graduate education, noted that the issue is not simply about rank. At least part of the rationale for the policy is that people with PhDs have supervised others and have been through the doctoral process and have an understanding of it, she said.

Following the discussion, the senate approved the committee’s recommendations.

During his presentation, Roberts offered highlights of the committee’s 2010-11 annual report. The committee had recommended senate approval for an additional joint degree program – a joint JD/MD. He praised the Law School for contributing a major service to students by integrating itself into the wider university.

The committee also recommended senate approval for a new interdisciplinary program (IDP) in stem cell biology and regenerative medicine.

The committee reviewed renewal of existing programs "with an eye toward improving programs, sharpening the intellectual rigor of the core curriculum and encouraging best practice in graduate student advising," Roberts said.

The committee had evaluated and recommended nine IDPs for senate approval for periods of two to five years. One of those was a two-year renewal for the Master of Liberal Arts (MLA) program and a three-year renewal for the interdisciplinary program in the Center for Russian and East European and Eurasian Studies to encourage that program to "deepen its rigor." He noted that the other programs that had been up for review were deemed "robust enough to warrant five-year renewals."

Stedman asked why the MLA program was approved for only two years instead of the usual five, based on the program’s decision to reevaluate its own curriculum. He said the decision suggested a lack of confidence in the program despite its long record of success.

Roberts responded that the committee couldn’t "see what the new curriculum and the core courses would look like." While he said the MLA program serves its mission of reaching out to the community and providing graduate education to "unconventional students," the curriculum hadn’t changed in more than 20 years. He said the current curriculum was very tightly linked toward Western civilization studies. He added that the committee is considering an expedited review process in cases such as this that would streamline the review process to focus on particular issues.

Update from Residential Education

Earlier in the meeting, Deborah Golder, dean of Residential Education, gave a report on the changes in and the vision for ResEd. The organization operates under the Division of Student Affairs and is responsible for "the people and programs, the formal and informal" within the residences.

"Almost every undergraduate lives on campus all four years and this gives us a tremendous opportunity, and I would argue, responsibility, to take full advantage of our time with them in residence," Golder said. She noted that when she arrived at Stanford in 2009 her mandate was to bring the quality of the residential experience in line with students’ classroom experience.

Under her tenure every job description in the office has been rewritten and half of the professional staff are new to their current roles. Her mission is to foster a culture of creativity, accountability and consistency, and strong business practices.

The office also is dedicated to helping students, who often "communicate in 144 characters," develop interpersonal skills and learn what it means to be part of a community, practice responsible citizenship and contribute to their intellectual development. "Instead of asking the neighbor down the hall to turn down their music, they Tweet," she said.

"I sometimes think about the residences as a laboratory, a place to experiment, to practice and to explore, a place within which to work to prepare students to engage in the complexities of modern society."

Golder outlined three priorities: crisis response, the arts and faculty engagement.

She noted that in the decade before her arrival, Residential Education had focused on case management for troubled students. While the university was ahead of the industry in this regard, it had focused on crisis management to the exclusion of programmatic and educational efforts.

Golder said that Residential Education still focuses on students who are "in difficulty," and that the residence deans are key to that effort. However, they are working to develop systems that help the university react more quickly and effectively. The office now has a case-management system that helps the staff look at trends longitudinally.

"We have served the student well in crisis, but now we are serving students well," she said.

On the programmatic side, Golder said Residential Education has been working with the office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Residential and Dining Enterprises to create space for students to engage in artistic endeavors. Together they are working to create arts spaces in the residences, including providing pianos, lighting and sound equipment, and performance and rehearsal space in the dorms.

Golder said the cornerstone of the faculty engagement efforts is the resident fellow program, in which faculty and senior staff live in the residences. She encouraged faculty to consider being resident fellows or to engage in the residences in other ways.

"Not everyone can move into a dorm, we fully appreciate that, but that cannot preclude our faculty from making connections with what is happening in the dorms." She encouraged faculty to partner with Residential Education in other ways; for instance, by coming to have dinner in a dorm one hour a month or even once a year to talk about their personal passions or their scholarly research.

"Our residences afford us an opportunity to know students and to build authentic and meaningful relationships, not just for their own sake, but relationships as a foundation for learning."