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Thursday, November 14, 2013

Correction to grades due dates

Recently, the grades due dates on the One Stop website were incorrect. The final day to submit grades is Friday, December 27 (not Sunday, December 29). These changes are now reflected on the One Stop website and Academic Calendar.


2013 GAPSA Outstanding Adviser Award

In an effort to acknowledge excellent advising among U of M graduate and professional faculty, the Graduate & Professional Student Association (GAPSA), in partnership with the Student Conflict Resolution Center, the Provost's Office, and the Graduate School, acknowledged five advisers for their outstanding service to the University. Award recipients were recognized at GAPSA's Annual President's Reception on November 4. Congratulations to all the winners!

2013 Outstanding Advising Award Winners:
Jake Bailey, Ph.D. | Earth Sciences
Kathleen Call, Ph.D. | Health Policy and Management
Brad Greiman, Ph.D. | Agricultural Education
Pamala Jacobson, Pharm.D. | Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology
Donald Truhlar, Ph.D. | Chemistry

Interdisciplinary Faculty Advisory Committee formed

A new Interdisciplinary Faculty Advisory Committee has been formed to advise the Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Education on issues, trends, best practices, challenges, and opportunities in intercollegiate, interdisciplinary graduate education. The goal is to enhance the University's ability to foster interdisciplinary inquiry and prepare future generations of interdisciplinary scholar/researchers.

Committee co-chairs are Professors Mary Jo Kreitzer (Director of the Center for Spirituality and Healing and Professor in the School of Nursing) and Susan Galatowitsch (Professor and Head of the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology). Committee members are listed on the Graduate School website. More information about the new committee and its initiatives will be provided as the committee's work progresses.

Spring 2014 registration now open

Queued registration for spring 2014 began on Tuesday, November 12. Open registration begins December 6. As a reminder, colleges and programs are now able to place/remove the following holds:

  • OJ - general hold

  • OM - too many incompletes

  • OG - doctoral program not filed

  • OF - master's program not filed

  • OL - GPA requirement not met



If you are interested in being able to place/remove holds, please email Amber Cellotti directly. However, in order to be able to place holds and give access, you must have completed Student Data Inquiry and Student Data Update training in PeopleSoft. If you're not sure you have completed these, you can check your training history on the HR website.

Upcoming deadlines

Monday, December 2: Deadline to apply for December 2013 graduation. Students must download their graduation materials and submit the Graduate Application for Degree no later than this date.

Monday, December 16: Deadline to apply for spring 2014 advanced master's status. Students seeking an advanced status must have an approved Graduate Degree Plan (GDP) on record and have completed all GDP coursework and thesis credits (if plan A) prior to the deadline.

Change to Financial Aid Satisfactory Academic Progress Policy

Federal regulations require the financial aid office to monitor satisfactory academic progress toward completion of degree for financial aid recipients. This review includes a qualitative component (GPA) and a pace or progression component (credit completion ratio) to ensure students complete their degree within the maximum timeframe.

Beginning fall 2013, the credit completion ratio component of the policy changed from 75% to 67%. This will ensure the University is in alignment with guidelines prescribed by the Department of Education.

ESUP update

Several project teams have spent the past eight months in Interactive Design & Prototyping (IDP) sessions looking at the 8.9 functionality versus the 9.0 and reviewing all modifications that have been made up to this point. Currently, 60% of modifications have been removed. The teams have also written over 500 functional designs and are currently working on business process documentation to facilitate training opportunities.

The change management and communication team will work to ensure stakeholders know what the changes are and how they are impacted by them. Next steps include preparing test scripts, performing security analysis, starting system training, and completing plans for training, change management, and communication.

Staff should continue attending Town Halls and RAC meetings and reading the weekly update emails. Additionally, tech staff should connect with IDEAA. IDEAA is a community of practice around Integrating Data, Enterprise Architecture, and Applications. It is how the University developer community can discuss ESUP and data integration. The main goal is to get information about changes to data integration to those that create applications and reports.

If you know of somebody in your unit who fits that description, please make sure they are aware of the opportunity to participate in this community of practice. More information is available at http://z.umn.edu/ideaa.

Liberal education contact information

Please contact the following people regarding liberal education (LE) questions and/or concerns:

Partial credit waiver for LE requirements
For future requests, advisors can send an email directly to APASLE@umn.edu with the details for the particular request for each individual student.

Please note that these waivers have already been done for the appropriate international students for fall semester 2013. Also note that if you sent an email requesting a partial credit waiver to Laurel Carroll between September 30 and October 9, those requests have been transferred to Margo Mueller, and she will be reviewing them, so you don't need to resubmit them. If you have questions about a particular request, please contact Margo at 6-7867, m-muel@umn.edu.

Petition to waive/substitute an LE requirement
Academic policy petitions requesting to waive an LE requirement should be directed to 220 Morrill Hall, attention: Leslie Schiff, schif002@umn.edu, 5-8653.

Request to place returning students under "old" LE requirements, to evaluate U of M quarter courses for LE and WI, and other requests related to degree requirements
Please direct these to Suzanne Bardouche, bardouch@umn.edu, 6-9159.

Questions about whether a current course has been approved for LE
Contact Leslie Schiff, schif002@umn.edu, 5-8653, or Rachel Rodriguez, webe0354@umn.edu, 4-1328.

FERPA Q&A: Posting information on social media

Question: What should you do if a student posts a question or comment on social media and the response would require release of private student data?

Answer: Students are often more relaxed about posting their private information in public spaces than they should be. Even if the question was asked in a "public forum," such as Facebook or Twitter, we should never include private student information on any social media site.

If you are able to answer the question with general, publicly available information, please do so, as other students (or readers) may be interested in the response. If the person has posted private information, you may want to send a direct message to him or her explaining the importance of not posting that information publicly.