December 13, 2017

Rice University
Plenary Meeting of the Faculty
December 13, 2017

Faculty Senate Speaker Jeffrey Fleisher called the meeting to order at 10:30 a.m. He welcomed faculty members to the plenary session to approve the December 2017 degrees.

Fleisher called Dean of Undergraduates John Hutchinson to the podium. Hutchinson stated that he met with Registrar David Tenney to review the list of December 2017 undergraduate degree candidates. The names of the candidates were provided to the assembled faculty members in a printed booklet, while the totals by department were shown on slides. Please see: UNDERGRADUATE DEGREE CANDIDATES. Hutchinson explained that because the deadline to submit final grades had not yet passed, the list was being put forward conditionally, assuming successful completion of in-progress courses. He said that no “exceptions” were being put forward. Hutchinson then stated that his endorsement of the list was a motion for the faculty to conditionally accept the candidates for December 2017 conferral.

Tenney was asked how many of the students were graduating early and how many were graduating late. Tenney replied that of the 81 undergraduate degree candidates, excluding transfer students, 42 were graduating in less than four years, while 33 students required more than four years to graduate.

The motion was seconded, followed by a unanimous vote for approval by the faculty present.

Fleisher called Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies Seiichi Matsuda to the podium. Matsuda stated that he met with Registrar David Tenney to review the list of December 2017 graduate-level degree candidates. The names of the candidates were provided to the assembled faculty members in a printed booklet, while the totals by department were shown on slides. Please see: GRADUATE-LEVEL DEGREE CANDIDATES. Matsuda said that because the final deadline to submit grades had not yet passed, the list was being put forward conditionally, assuming successful completion of in-progress courses. He said that no “exceptions” were being put forward.

Matsuda then stated that his endorsement of the list was a motion for the faculty to conditionally accept the candidates for December 2017 conferral. The motion was seconded, followed by a unanimous vote for approval by the faculty present.

Registrar Tenney said that since the faculty conditionally approved the degree candidates today, President Leebron would be able officially confer the degrees in January 2018, with a graduation date of December 2017. Fleisher thanked the faculty members for their attendance.

The meeting was adjourned at 10:45 a.m.