UI Graduate Faculty considers closing some doctoral programs

The University of Iowa Graduate Faculty will meet at 3:30 p.m. Thursday to consider closing eight master's and doctoral degree programs with low enrollment or faculty numbers.

The group also will discuss and vote on the suspension of admissions leading to closure for two programs.

The group will meet at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, May 6, to discuss and vote on the recommendations.

Some of the eliminations and halting of admissions stem from the recommendations of the graduate education task force, which spent months reviewing and ranking the UI's more than 100 graduate programs before issuing a report to Provost Wallace Loh in February.

But other proposed actions have been in discussions since before the task force report, Graduate College Dean John Keller said Monday. “Some are ongoing and have been in the works for a while,” Keller said.

Once the Graduate Faculty votes on the program changes, the proposals go to Loh and then to the state Board of Regents next fall. The proposed closures to be voted on Thursday are the “major agenda items coming out of the task force,” Keller said. It's hard to say if other closures will be recommended in the future, Keller said, but “these are the substantial things that are ready to have action taken on them now.”

The graduate education task force in its report to Loh listed 14 programs as needing additional review, and officials said the report could result in changes, mergers or closures. Not all of those 14 programs are up for consideration at Thursday's meeting.

The Graduate Faculty will vote on closing programs in Russian; comparative literature; oral and maxillofacial surgery; social studies in education; preventive medicine and environmental health; German; women's studies; and statistical genetics.

Only about half of those programs have students enrolled, and three of them stopped admissions in recent years.

The group also will consider suspending admissions leading to closure for health and sports studies and the master's in stomatology, in the College of Dentistry.

The Graduate Faculty also meets today to vote on adding a master of fine arts in The Book Arts.