Bylaws of the Psychology Graduate Group, Approved April 23, 2007

I. Basic procedures

Rules: All rules of the School of Arts and Sciences will be followed. (These, and other supporting material, can be found in the Graduate Manual web page.)

Meetings: The graduate group (GG) meets twice a year at times decided by the graduate group chair (DGS) and the department chair.

Procedures: Votes will be open, but secret on matters of membership in the GG. The DGS can count email votes if the graduate chair decides that there was no realistic chance that they would have changed following discussion. The DGS can decide to put any issue to vote by email. The DGS will set the agenda and determine procedures, making an effort to be consistent with procedures used by the Department. Decisions will be made by a majority of those voting. Abstentions will not count.

Amendment of these by-laws is also by majority vote, under the conditions just described.

II. Graduate Group Chair (DGS)

The DGS oversees admission (done by the admission committee, described below), preparation of the budget (in consultation with the Graduate Dean and with the head of the business office), planning of courses (in consultation with the department chair and the director of undergraduate studies), and assignments of teaching assistants (in consultation with the director of undergraduate studies). The DGS also, with the help of an assistant, monitors the progress of students through the program, provides advice to them, consistent with the graduate manual, and approves exceptions to the rules when allowed by the rules stated in the manual. The DGS also appoints student committees, as specified in the manual. The DGS also answers questions from prospective applicants.

Appointment of DGS: The DGS is nominated by the department chair and voted on by the GG. The chair then forwards the nomination to the graduate dean, as specified in the School's rules. The normal term for the DGS is 3 years. If the vote is negative, a new nomination will be made after a period of consultation.

Executive committee: The department chair, consulting with the DGS, will appoint a committee each year. Membership on this committee should change slowly, so that it has a substantial institutional memory. The main function of this committee is to handle admissions, but it is also an executive committee, serving to advise the DGS and to make decisions that are too urgent to put before the GG or that do not require such broad consultation (but do go beyond the usual tasks of the DGS). The committee will include at least one member of the clinical faculty. Otherwise, the committee should represent psychology broadly.

III. The graduate group

The graduate group (GG) gives the MA and PhD degrees. It sets the requirements and makes decisions about individual cases. The current requirements are listed in the graduate manual.

Membership in the GG is decided as follows:

All department faculty are automatically members.
All retired department faculty in residence (as determined by the DGS) are members, unless they choose not to be.
Faculty outside of the department can become extra-departmental members. Rules of the School of Arts and Sciences (SAS) specify what categories of faculty are eligible. Nomination for membership must be made by a letter signed by 5 current members of the GG, one month before a meeting of the GG. Electronic submissions and signatures are acceptable. Votes on nominations will take place at a meeting of the GG.

Invitation to join the graduate group should be based on scholarly achievement in psychology (broadly defined), competence to supervise graduate work in psychology, and likelihood that membership would be renewed (according to the criteria described below). Scholarly achievement and competence to supervise students may substitute for each other to some extent. (This allows appointment of promising junior faculty who would be excellent supervisors but have not yet built a substantial record of achievement, or of accomplished senior scholars who have little interest in being a primary supervisor of a student but might be willing to serve on a committee. The weighing of these dimensions must be decided on a case-by-case basis.)

Membership of EDMs is for a three-year term. Renewal will be decided by a committee, which will consist of the executive committee plus one EDM (unless the executive committee already has one).

Criteria for renewal should be used to guide the committee in their decision-making, rather than applied algorithmically in each case. Current EDMs will be evaluated based on the application of these criteria starting at the time of their adoption, not retroactively.

All current and future members will be told the renewal criteria.

In advance of each member's renewal, they will be sent a questionnaire asking about their activities in the graduate group since their last renewal. The renewal committee will use this information in their work. Only those who return the questionnaire will be considered for renewal.

The criteria for renewal are:

Participation in the graduate program at some point in the three-year term, in at least one of the following forms:
1. Teaching a seminar, or giving guest lectures in a graduate course in which Psychology graduate students typically enroll.
2. Serving as the advisor to a graduate student, serving on a student's committee, and/or serving on a 699 committee.
3. Organizing a journal club or brown bag-type series that is attended by psychology graduate students.
4. Playing a major role in some aspect of the graduate program other than teaching or advising, for example: writing a Training Grant that benefits psychology graduate students, assisting in graduate admissions and recruitment, serving on a search committee for a new Psychology department member.
Although graduate group meeting attendance is not strictly required, GG members should make every effort to attend meetings of relevance to their educational roles, for example, if one their students is being evaluated, and should speak with the DGS in advance if they are unable to attend. To assist this process, the secretary of the GG will record attendance.

For this to all make sense, the DGS needs to regularly ask EDMs to participate on committees, etc. 699 committees are particularly good here, as it is not required that the EDM be in the area.

The GG should reconsider these criteria after a few years of experience with them.

IV. Rules for graduate students

The rules are stated in the graduate manual.

V. Admission

Admission is decided by the admissions/executive committee. The committee considers readiness to do graduate work, appropriate match of interests with faculty, and ability to contribute to scholarship. It also attempts to distribute students to faculty who do not have many students supported by internal funding.