Faculty Meeting: 2/17/2023

Background:

At the faculty meeting on February 10^th we voted 10-1-1 to approve a policy about deadlines for Advancement to Candidacy for current students that incorporates the new Division of Graduate Education steps for supporting students who are behind in their benchmark tasks. On February 17^th we voted to reconsider in light of the fact that this is a substantial matter and should be voted on outside the meeting to give everyone an opportunity to vote.

The deadlines and their consequences were carefully constructed to preserve a student’s ability to take a leave of absence from the program, or withdraw with the intention of re-applying, as legitimate ways of postponing a final dismissal. To qualify for a leave of absence a student must be in good academic standing, so under this policy a leave of absence would have to be requested before (missing) the fallback deadline (2^nd week of Fall term of the 5^th year of the program). Withdrawing and preserving the opportunity to re-apply would have to be done before the recommendation to dismiss is sent to DGE at the beginning of the Winter term of the 5^th year.

Proposed:

ATC POLICY FOR CURRENT STUDENTS

Students are to advance to candidacy by the end of Spring term of their 4th year.

If a student does not advance to candidacy by this deadline, the Graduate Advisor will put them into contact with an Academic Case Manager at the Division for Graduate Education (DGE) and will set a second, “fall–back” deadline of second week of fall term.

If the student fails to meet the second week of fall term deadline, the Graduate Advisor will send the student an “Academic Plan” letter that will state that they must advance by the end of the seventh week of Fall term or they will be  recommended for dismissal to DGE.

If they do not advance by the end of the seventh week of Fall term, then the Graduate Advisor will recommend dismissal to DGE at the onset of the Winter term, to be effective Spring term.

The fall–back and final deadlines would be followed uniformly by the Graduate Advisor (subject to the usual caveats about accommodations granted by e.g. CAE, or official adjustments to a student’s timeline due to, e.g., parenting responsibilities).