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Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Migrating workflow processes to new server

Workflow processes (e.g., Graduate Adviser Assignment, Preliminary Oral Exam Committee, Master's and/or Doctoral Final Exam Committee, Specialist Exam Committee, Graduate Student Registration Exception) migrated to a new server on Tuesday, March 19.

As a result, the links to the workflow forms have changed. Most users will not notice any changes, but please be sure to update your bookmarks to the new workflow links. Delegations have also been transferred to the new workflow.

If you have questions regarding this notice, please contact Stacia Madsen at grad-wfg@umn.edu.


New grad ed policy guides available

Two new graduate education policy guides are now available on the Graduate School website. The guides for the Master's Degree: Performance Standards and Progress policy and for the Doctoral Degree: Performance Standards and Progress policy were sent to Deans, Associate Deans, Directors of Graduate Studies, Plan Level Coordinators, RAC Members and the College Advisory Group on March 21.

Feedback regarding the guides is welcome. Please contact Karen Starry with questions or comments.

Friday, March 15, 2013

FERPA Q&A: Releasing information to accreditation organizations

Question: Can private student data be released to accreditation organizations without prior student consent?

Answer: FERPA specifically allows for non-directory information (which includes transcripts) to be shared with members of an accreditation team for the purposes of accreditation.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) available in May

Massive open online courses, or MOOCs, will be available in May. The University will partner with Coursera (coursera.org/minnesota), a leading MOOC platform, to develop free online courses. Anyone is welcome to sign up. Since there can be literally thousands of participants in a course, completing assignments is based on the honor system and often includes peer feedback. So far, five University faculty members plan to offer Coursera courses. The University does not currently offer credit for completion of MOOCs.

Portal welcomes U's new content management system

The University has recently acquired a new enterprise content management system - Drupal. This is a systemwide initiative available to and supporting all system campuses, and a great opportunity for the Enterprise System Upgrade Program (ESUP). The Enterprise Portal project will be working closely with the Drupal team so that content providers can enter content into Drupal for their websites and have it appear in the new portal.

Email for athletic eligibility questions

Please use the central email asrathl@umn.edu for submitting questions regarding athletic eligibility. By doing so, ASR is able to provide a more timely response, as the entire student athlete academic eligibility team monitors this account.

Friday, March 8, 2013

Reminder - current forms

For the most up-to-date forms for doctoral, master's, and certificate students, please use the forms on the website.

Faculty Role List Database - Deadline to Populate March 29

If you have not yet entered faculty role information for your program(s), be sure to do so no later than March 29.

Thank you to all who have worked diligently to populate the Faculty Role List Database! If you have not yet entered faculty role information for your program(s), be sure to do so no later than March 29. Once you have completed data entry for all your programs' degree objectives, please send an email to Amber Cellotti at grad-wfg@umn.edu; questions or comments may be directed there as well.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

New workflow for preliminary written exam

Effective Friday, March 1, the process for reporting Preliminary Written Examination (PWE) results to Graduate Student Services and Progress (GSSP) will be automated with a new online workflow.

The new process will be initiated by a Plan Level Coordinator (PLC) or Director of Graduate Studies (DGS) and reported directly to Academic Support Services for PeopleSoft entry and archiving in ImageNow; students will no longer submit a paper form to GSSP.
In addition to the new workflow, committee members now have the option to "pass with reservations." If a student is passed with reservations, he or she must comply with all components of the revised Doctoral Degree: Performance Standards and Progress policy. To remove reservations, a new form must be submitted and the option "remove reservations" must be checked. Students will receive an automatic notification alerting them of their status (with optional notifications to adviser(s), PLS, DGS, and CC).
The current PWE form (.PDF) will be removed from the Graduate Studies website and replaced with the new workflow link and "Information for Faculty and Staff" page under "Tools".
If you have questions regarding this notice, please contact Stacia Madsen at gradssp@umn.edu or 612-625-0168. Full contact information is available at http://www.grad.umn.edu/students/contactus/index.html.