Faculty to Vote on New Ph.D. Program, Next Years’ Courses

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences will vote on a new Ph.D. program at the Business School and will vote whether or not to approve course offerings for the 2018-2019 academic year at its monthly meeting Tuesday.

The Faculty first heard about the proposed Ph.D. program at its meeting last month, when Business School Dean Nitin Nohria presented a proposal to create a joint HBS and FAS Ph.D. degree in Business Administration. The proposal seeks to replace the existing Doctor of Business Administration degree currently offered by HBS to better reflect the scholarly nature of the work conducted by D.B.A. students.

The Faculty Council—FAS’s highest governing body—voted to approve Nohria’s proposal in March, but its vote is purely advisory.

The Faculty will also vote on whether or not to approve a preliminary list of FAS courses for the next academic year, as typically occurs at the last faculty meeting of each academic year. The preliminary list includes courses for undergraduate students, graduate students, and Extension School students.

Though many course instructors have yet to finalize their courses' schedules and section information, the Faculty Council gave its initial approval of the courses at its meeting last week.

FAS is set to release a final list of course offerings in June.

Dean of Undergraduate Education Jay M. Harris will also present a proposal concerning updates to the Q guide, an evaluation system students use to give feedback on professors and courses.

The Standing Committee on Undergraduate Educational Policy created a subcommittee last semester to reevaluate the Q guide in light of plans to move to the guide to a new platform in spring 2019, according to a report by the subcommittee.

“The decision to undertake this work was prompted by the recognition that the last review was conducted more than ten years ago, by faculty interest in improving the questions, and because our existing technology supporting the Q is obsolete,” the report reads.

The subcommittee is currently working with a survey design expert to draft new questions for the Q guide, according to the report. They also plan to hold focus groups with students to test the questions before piloting the questions with some courses in spring 2019.

At the meeting, Government Professor Dustin Tingley will also present a “syllabus discovery tool” he developed with the guidance of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning.

—Staff writer Angela N. Fu can be reached at angela.fu@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @angelanfu.

—Staff writer Lucy Wang can be reached at lucy.wang@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @lucyyloo22