Academic Changes Due to COVID-19

Juries and Recognition Recitals

Very early on, we cancelled juries across the board. For sophomore performance majors needing approval to register for upper-level lessons, and for music studies majors wanting to perform Recognition Recitals in the fall, we are going to leave the decision to each teacher’s discretion. You may:

1. Give approval, based on the student’s previous work
2. Refuse to grant approval, also based on the student’s previous work; or in the trickiest borderline cases,
3. Ask for a recording for your divisional colleagues to evaluate

Degree Recitals

The GAAC approved waiving all DMA Chamber Recitals scheduled in Spring 2020. 

We will share a list of recitals that should be evaluated this semester and a list of recitals that should be rescheduled for the fall semester soon.

Grading

For DMA Lecture recitals, only the co-supervisors will be required to grade them. For all other recitals, only the main faculty member will need to grade the student.

MM and DMA Specialized Comprehensive Exams

In a nutshell, we're asking that the appropriate faculty take care of examining their own students by the last day of classes and reporting the results to the grad office.  We cannot proctor exams for you.

The four options below all require the major professor/or faculty exam administrator to contact the grad office only once – after the exam has taken place, just send Joseph Quintana (jquintana@austin.utexas.edu) an email with the student's EID, indicate Pass/Fail, and include a PDF of the questions and answers in the exam.

If your specialized comps are done by oral exam:  

The major professor should schedule a zoom meeting directly with the student (and committee if that's the way you do it) and let Joseph, our Grad Coordinator (GC), know after the exam has happened, who was there, student's EID, and the results.

If your specialized comps are done as a special project (like the online-Website project used for MM comprehensive exams in BWP): 

Whoever grades these should send results (use EIDs) to Joseph  after the exam has happened.

If your specialized comps are done as a timed-writing: 

You can use the system we just used for common comps, whereas one faculty "administrator" and student(s) sign in to a zoom meeting at a specified time, then the questions are sent via email to everyone, and the zoom meeting ends. The student sends their answers back to the faculty administrator within a given time frame. You can make the exam 'open book' or have them sign an affidavit saying that they didn't use outside sources, your choice. After the exam, the faculty grades and sends the results (with the student's EID and answer in PDF form) to Joseph. 

If your specialized comps are done by committee as a take-home exam:

1. Student's major professor leads the exam team
2. The student identifies three professors from their area to determine the examiners
3. Student and faculty examiners decide upon a format and timeline for the exam (questions can be done one at a time, or all three given separately, whatever you think is fair)
4. Faculty members send question(s) directly to the student in a determined timeline
5. Faculty evaluates the answers and send their P/F results to the major professor
6. Major Professor sends final results to Joseph with student's EID

In all scenarios listed above, Joseph (Graduate Coordinator) will notify the student of results and update the student's file. 

Updated 4/17/20