2009 October Executive Committee Minutes

WAGS Executive Committee Meeting Minutes

16-18 October, 2009
Coeur d’Alene Resort, Idaho

Saturday, October 17th

The meeting was called to order at 8:30 am. New committee members were welcomed and introduced themselves. A copy of the treasurer’s report was circulated and approved. The minutes from the 2008 meeting were forwarded by email. There were no corrections or additions suggested.

Las Cruces Evaluations

The committee members reviewed the Las Cruces conference evaluations. The discussion turned to the number of conference attendees. Specifically, what approaches can we take to increase conference attendance, not only by the graduate deans, but also graduate office staff members?

Increase Conference Attendance

It was decided that the first day will not be a separate workshop. The conference will be a 2.5 day workshop in which all types of sessions will be interspersed throughout the conference. All members of a typical Graduate School “team” (i.e., deans, associate/assistant deans, staff, etc.) will be asked to suggest and lead workshops that they feel would be helpful to their colleagues.


Increase WAGS Membership

We also discussed overall membership in WAGS. It was suggested that we obtain a list of the institutions present at the recent Montreal CGS conference. In addition, we can cross reference the western states CGS membership with WAGS membership to determine if any CGS-member schools are not members of WAGS. WICHE should have a list of western institutions that we can use to identify potential WAGS members. Finally, it was also suggested that we follow up with some form of personal contact with the Canadian schools.


Session Topics for the Annual Meeting/Plans for Annual Meeting

The following topics were derived from the survey of “hot topics” that were submitted by WAGS members.

  1. Managing Graduate Programs in a Fiscally Challenging Environment
  2. Roles and Responsibilities of the Graduate School Team – Deans, Associate Deans, Assistant Deans, and Staff
  3. Organization of the Graduate School
  4. The Future of Graduate Education (Debra Stewart, plenary)
  5. Student funding
  6. Access and the Diversity Pipeline – from the Perspective of Student Professional Development and Service
  7. Distance Education
  8. Software and Technology – Do They Help or Hurt?

By-law changes
Linda La Grange and Joey Benoit will work on changes to the by-laws that will allow us to expand our membership categories. We will also restructure the membership fee schedule.

Thesis finalists
The selection of the thesis award finalist was the final item of business.

The finalists for the Innovation in Technology Award were:

Ahmed Awad El Sayed Ahmed – University of Victoria
Ross Corriden – University of California, San Diego
April Kloxin – University of Colorado at Boulder
Andres Mahech-Botero – University of British Columbia


The finalists for the Outstanding Thesis Award were:

Christopher Cox – University of Alberta
Jonathan Hammell – University of Calgary
Yegor Malinovskiy – University of Washington
Fengdan Wan – University of Victoria
The meeting was adjourned at 10:-00 am October 18, 2009.

The meeting was adjourned at 10:-00 am October 18, 2009.

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