S.03-38
For Information
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Simon Fraser University
Senate Graduate Studies Committee
Annual Report to Senate for 2002
February 2003
Submitted by Dr. Jon Driver, Dean of Graduate di r
Comnosition and Mandate of the Committee
The current membership of SGSC is the Dean (chair), Registrar (or designate), Librarian
(or designate), chairs of the five faculty graduate program committees, one other faculty
member from each of the five graduate program committees, two graduate students, the
Graduate Issues Officer of SFSS, and the Assistant Director Graduate Records (non-
voting).
SGSC has established a regular monthly meeting schedule, in an attempt to spread the
workload of the committee more evenly over the year. A list of meetings and activities
for 2002 is attached as Appendix A.
SGSC is responsible to Senate for admissions (delegated to the Registrar and the Dean),
maintenance of academic standards, changes to existing programs, evaluation of new
programs, and administration of the graduate general regulations. SGSC approves
admissions under Special Arrangements (via a subcommittee), and may act as an appeal
body for student progress reviews.
Graduate Studies at Simon Fraser Universit
Masters programs are offered in each faculty, doctoral programs in all but Business
Administration, and graduate diploma programs in Arts, Business Administration and
Education. In addition, the Dean of Graduate Studies office administers the Special
Arrangements Program that provides a home for students with individual
interdisciplinary programs of study and research. Summary statistics on enrollments and
award of degrees are available from the Analytical Studies web site (see Appendix B of
this report for data on enrollments and credentials awarded).
During the calendar year 2002 a number of new graduate programs were at various stages
of development. The Masters of Public Policy was approved by Senate, and will begin in
fall 2003. A cohort special arrangements program (MBA in Global Asset and Wealth
Management) was approved and has already enrolled students. A Ph.D. program in
Women's Studies received a full review, and was approved by SGSC early in 2003.
Graduate programs from the former TechBC were incorporated temporarily as cohort
special arrangements programs.
In 2002 the Dean participated in a number of external reviews of SFU's academic
programs. Generally there have been positive assessments of graduate programs. A
common concern of many reviews in smaller programs is the lack of courses dedicated to
graduate students, and an attempt to address this issue will be made in 2003.
Enrollment and Graduation
Graduate enrollments in degree programs increased steadily from the late 1980's to the
mid-1990's, and have remained relatively stable since then (see Appendix B). This
stability is the result of a number of factors. There were relatively few new graduate
programs approved in the late 1990's, and the number of faculty members available for
graduate supervision did not increase significantly in the mid to late nineties.
Furthermore, funding levels for graduate students have increased slowly, while
employment opportunities outside the university were relatively good.
There was a significant increase in graduate enrollment in 2002, as measured by graduate
headcount in 2002-3. This is mainly because of the development of graduate diploma
programs in Education and Business Administration, as well as the incorporation of
graduate programs from the former Technical University of B.C. Enrollment in Masters
and Doctoral programs across the campus has also seen a modest increase over the
previous year.
Data on credentials awarded are presented in the second table in Appendix B. There has
been no clear trend in the number of degrees awarded, but there will be an increase in the
future as the current enrollment increase has an impact on graduation. It should be noted
that the proportion of doctoral to masters students remains relatively low (less than 20%).
SFU figures are consistent with the national average
(15%
based on 1998 data). The SFU
figures are comparable to Victoria, Calgary, and Saskatchewan, while UBC, Alberta,
Toronto, Waterloo, McMaster and Guelph have slightly higher percentages of Ph.D.
graduates.
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Assessment Committee for New Graduate Programs
This committee is a sub-committee of SGSC.
In 2002 the ACNGP met three times, and recommended approval of the Ph.D. in
Women's Studies and the Masters of Public Policy.
Funding for graduate students
Financial support for graduate students continues to be a concern, particularly as we have
to compete for students with universities in provinces that provide a provincial
scholarship plan. Unfortunately, late in 2002 the Science Council of BC announced the
cancellation of the GREAT awards program that funds students involved in
university/industrial partnerships. However, at the national level there continues to be
recognition from the federal government of the importance of graduate education.
Increased funding to the national granting agencies results in more graduate funding
through research assistantships (from faculty member research grants) and through direct
funding in the form of scholarships and fellowships. The granting agencies have stressed
the importance of graduate training as a component of faculty research grants, and one
way to increase graduate support at SFU is to encourage more faculty members to apply
for research grants and to include graduate student support in their budgets.
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In 2002 the Dean created a small working group that is examining graduate funding at
SFU. Some proposals from this group can be expected in 2003.
The tuition fee increase that commenced in 2002-3 added more funds to the internal
awards budgets for the 2002/2003 academic year. We increased the number of entrance
scholarships for fall 2002, and added more graduate fellowships.
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Appendix A Senate Graduate Studies Committee, Activities 2002
Meetings were held in January, February, April (two meetings), May, June, September,
October, November
Graduate curriculum changes were approved in Biological Sciences, Business
Administration, Communications, Computing Science, Earth Sciences, Economics,
Education, Gerontology, History, Linguistics, Mathematics, Molecular Biology and
Biochemistry, Political Science, Psychology, Resource and Environmental Management
A program committee (a subcommittee of SGSC) was established to oversee the
individual Special Arrangements program.
Approved Masters in Public Policy
Approved MBA (Global Asset and Wealth Management) as cohort special arrangements
program.
Approved masters and doctoral programs in Computer Arts and Design Sciences as
cohort special arrangements programs. (NB these were pre-existing graduate programs at
the Technical University of British Columbia. This mechanism was used to temporarily
transfer these programs to SFU while the long term plans for the Surrey campus were
under development).
Ten individual applications for admission under Special Arrangements were considered
and eight were approved. One student transferred from a departmental program to Special
Arrangements.
SGSC developed policy on an approval process for new professional masters programs
and a policy on cosupervision (the latter coming to Senate in 2003).
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Appendix B. Graduate Enrollment and Credentials Awarded
Note: figures refer to headcounts; no allowance is made for full-time, part-time and on-
leave status
Graduate enrollments
Faculty
Fall
1997
Fall
1998
Fall
1999
Fall
2000
Fall
2001
Fall
2002
Change
97 to 02
Applied Sciences
443 446 466 452
476 523#
18.1%
Arts
751
777
752
730 769
755
0.5%
Business Administration
301
270 296 3441 416 438
45.5%
(GDBA only)
0
0
) J
0
)
(J) (1.0)
Education
532
468
451
641
1124
1279 140.4%
(GDE only)
0
0
0(155)(608)(721)
Science
375
377 393 393 432
450
20.0%
Total headcount
2402
2338 2358 2560 3217
3445
43.4%
% change from
previous year
I
-2.7 0.9 8.6
25.7
7.1
Total degree program
headcount**
2402
2338 2301 2345 2506 2594
8.0%
%change from previous year
-2.7 -1.61 1.9 6.9
3.5
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* ?
total of all graduate students, including those enrolled in diploma programs
* * ?
total of all graduate students enrolled in masters and doctoral programs
includes the addition of 51 graduate students at SFUSurrey
Notes:
a.
if diploma enrollments are excluded, the %change from 1997 to 2002 in the Faculty
of Business Administration is 2.3%
b.
if diploma enrollments are excluded, the %change from 1997 to 2002 in the Faculty
of Education is 4.9%
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Credentials awarded by academic year
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Faculty/credential
96/97
97/98
98/99
99/00
00/01
01/02
Applied Sciences
Masters
59
74
56
66
68
72
Ph.D.
14
20
15
16
22
11
Arts
Masters
103
122
104
138
134
140
Ph.D.
29
40
26
38
24
28
Business
Administration
GDBA
0
0
0
26
27
66
MBA
99
126
113
132
119
144
Ph.D.(SAR)
Education
1
GDE
0
0
0
0
0
3
M.Ed.
91
116
151
121
94
104
Other Masters
38
33
48
22
21
20
Doctoral
3
8
13
13
7
13
Science
Masters
48
55
57
49
51
61
Ph.D.
25
33
21
41
26
28
Total degrees
510
627
604
636
566
621
Total masters
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1
438
526
529
528
4871
541
Total Ph.D.
72
101
75
108
79
80
%
Ph.D.
14.1
16.1
12.4
17.0
14.0
12.9
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