Graduate Faculty Rights & Membership

Rights and Responsibilities of Graduate Faculty Members

Only members of the Graduate Faculty may:

1. Chair or serve as other official member of a thesis or dissertation committee within their own department.
2. Represent the Graduate Faculty on a thesis or dissertation committee as the "non-departmental" or "outside" Graduate School Representative. (At least one committee member must be a member of Baylor’s Graduate Faculty whose primary appointment is from a program other than the one conferring the degree. This non-departmental member helps to ensure a consistent level of quality, rigor, and fairness across all graduate programs at Baylor University.)
3. Serve on standing committees of the Graduate School.

Procedures for Graduate Faculty Membership

1. Each graduate program has in place a set of guidelines that allows the department to determine graduate faculty status. The criteria and processes address both addition and removal of Graduate Faculty for professional reasons, reasons of retirement, or death. The graduate program director will submit names of new graduate faculty to the Graduate School, based on departmental vote and using the unique criteria established by each department. The Graduate School maintains a current list of graduate faculty on its website and the graduate program director will notify the Graduate School when or if anyone's name should be deleted from the list for any reason (including performance reasons such as failure to meet department's criteria, or practical reasons such as leaving the university, retirement, or death). Please note: The University does not require membership on the graduate faculty to teach graduate courses, though the department may choose to require it.
2. The departments establish their own schedule for determining its new members: Once new members have been determined, the Graduate Program Director will send names, CVs and a brief statement for the appointment of new members to Sheila Dooley in the Graduate School. New members may be added at any time during the year.
3. Upon receipt of the list of new members, Dean Lyon will email each new member welcoming them to the Graduate Faculty.
4. Any faculty member in a department with no graduate program may apply to an appropriate department to join its graduate faculty. The department will decide whether or not to extend membership to the faculty member.
5. If a department wishes to remove a Graduate Faculty member, the Graduate Program Director may notify Sheila Dooley by email.