Graduate Faculty Information
Apply for Graduate or Doctoral Faculty
After you complete the form, please email a copy of your current CV to Vicki Bryan.
Vicki will send you a verification email after she gets it submitted to the graduate school. It typically takes the graduate school 7-10 business days to process and review the application after it is received and then they will email a renewal notice.
Graduate Faculty: Needed to chair and/or serve in MSc committees. There are three types (A,B,C); A is for “active DPST faculty” and does not need to be renewed. B is mostly for faculty from other institutions. Does not need renewal either. C, is for either retired faculty or outside people without PhD degrees (e.g. someone from industry) and is only valid for two years.
Doctoral Faculty: You need to be part of the Graduate Faculty to apply for Doctoral Faculty and you can only chair PhD committees if you have Doctoral Faculty status (need to be renewed every five years). Also, two members of the PhD committee need to have Doctoral Faculty status and be DPST faculty, while the rest need Graduate Faculty status. Remember that PhD committees need at least four members, and one of them needs to be an external member.
Graduate Faculty Membership Types
Those with Status A must be full-time faculty members at the University of Missouri as defined by the faculty bylaws. Status A is what might be considered the “traditional” type of graduate membership. Both full-time tenure track and non-tenure track faculty could qualify for Status A.
Status A does not expire.
Status B is an offshoot of Status A. In terms of rights, the only difference between Statuses A and B is the faculty member’s ability to vote on campus issues. If the academic program is giving someone B status, the program is wanting that person to play an integral role in their graduate program and giving that person a permanent membership to their graduate faculty for the time that person is a faculty member at another university. To that end, Status B should be bestowed upon someone who emulates the experiences and qualifications of a Status A faculty member; however, the Status B faculty member is not a full-time faculty member at the University of Missouri, but is one at a different university. Many programs would likely not use Status B unless there is some type of formalized agreement with a faculty member or program at a different university (e.g., faculty member from another university with a courtesy appointment working with a multi-institution degree program).
Retired faculty members can retain graduate membership with the recommendation of the department or program. Faculty members who retire will be moved from Status A to Status B for five years from the date of their retirement so they can finish any commitments to students’ committees they were chairing while still on the MU faculty. Those faculty members also qualify for doctoral faculty status during that time. Once the five years are complete or upon degree completion of all student committees, retired faculty should use Status C. Programs can petition to the Dean of the Graduate School for an extension (one-year extension at a time) for the purpose of finishing commitments to chair a student’s committee. In all cases, the retired faculty member must have been the student’s committee chair prior to retirement.
Status B is valid for 5 years. Doctoral status is valid for 5 years.
Status C is what was formerly the “affiliate” status and it can be used in vastly different cases or ways. Again, if someone is a graduate student currently, they may not have any type of graduate faculty status.
Status C is appropriate for retired faculty because engagement with the department is in a temporary or limited nature (understanding that for some faculty, “temporary” could mean several years). As noted above, Status B is granted to retired faculty for five years past retirement to complete any chairing commitments to current student. Status C limits the sole chairing of committees, but Status C faculty can co-chair with a faculty member having the appropriate status (A, B, doctoral).
Unless a program requests a faculty member from another university within the UM System to hold Status B, those faculty are automatically granted Status C upon request of a MU graduate program or department. A CV is not required for consideration. Those faculty would be considered internal committee members of the department requesting Status C.
Status C could also be used to give someone without a terminal degree (yet has relevant knowledge and experiences that could be important to a graduate course or student’s committee) a way to engage in graduate education in a limited fashion (e.g., teach a specific class or to serve as a member of one or more graduate students’ committee).
Finally, Status C gives someone with a terminal degree, but does not meet the definition of MU faculty (postdoctoral fellow, part-time adjuncts) the opportunity to engage in graduate education, but in a limited fashion. Again, Status A and B comes with some permanence to their status.
Status C is valid 2 years.