Thursday, January 18, 2024

Take part in supporting Mirrorless Monday

A message from Campus Wellness, Health Promotion.

The 5^th annual "Mirrorless Monday" campaign  is happening in washrooms across the University campus on February 5, 2024.  

Mirrorless  Monday is a movement to encourage body acceptance through various messages on mirrors and a campaign that  seeks to remind everyone that their self-worth is not tied to a reflection in a mirror. 

“Mirrorless Monday is about self-acceptance, challenging societal norms, embracing our unique selves, and celebrating the fact that we are strong, valuable, and enough just as we are”, says Sandra Gibson, Manager, Health Education, Campus Wellness. 

The essence of the campaign encourages people to take a break from the mirror, to offer yourself acceptance and compassion, and enjoy being uniquely you.

During the one-day campaign,  select washroom mirrors across campus will be partly covered  with supportive messages and resources including Campus Wellness, Counselling Services, MATES, Good2Talk, and NEDIC. The messages will be placed on the mirrors at the beginning of the day and removed by 10:00 a.m. the following day. 

Want to spread acceptance? The Mirrorless Monday messages will be shared on the @uwaterloolife Instagram account. Please like, share, or comment on the campaign.

If you are interested in partnering on Mirrorless Monday, and open to displaying body acceptance messages in a washroom near you, reach out to Sandra Gibson by January 25, 2024 request the Mirrorless Monday partner package.  

This campaign is a result of a special partnership between Campus Wellness and Plant Operations. 

CUPE to represent teaching assistants, research assistants

Before the winter closure, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) applied to the Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB) to become the sole representative of teaching and research assistants (TAs/RAs) at the University of Waterloo. 

A vote was held between the 20^th and 22^nd of December, which resulted in the majority of TAs/RAs who voted, voting in favour of unionization. 

The final bargaining unit that will be represented by CUPE is yet to be determined.  

The University looks forward to continuing to interact positively with its TAs and RAs as they advance the University’s teaching and research missions, and to support our graduate students as they pursue their academics.  

If you have questions about how this change will impact your studies, you can contact GSPA at gspa-AVP@uwaterloo.ca. 

For our academic units, more information on how this will impact TAs and RAs will be forthcoming as the conversations progress. 

The talk of the faculty town hall

More than 30 attendees braved the bitterly cold temperatures on Monday afternoon to hear Dr. Peter Wood, head of the faculty association's Lecturer’s Committee and Dr. David DeVidi, Associate Vice-President, Academic give an update on changes to Policy 76 and 77 at a faculty town hall, with more than 200 people tuning in online.

Dr. Wood and Dr. DeVidi briefly summarized the key facts of the process that led to the agreement and the next steps for the approval and implementation of the agreement, which Dr. DeVidi referred to as "a very complicated agreement with a lot of moving parts."

The two policies under discussion are Policy 76 – Faculty Appointments and Policy 77 – Tenure and Promotion of Faculty.

Discussions around many facets of Policy 76 and 77 go back several years, and the latest round of talks focused on teaching stream appointments, with the creation of a new Policy Development Committee, which delivered a report to the Faculty Relations Committee in 2021. In the Fall of 2022, the FRC agreed to seek approval for changes to a number of memoranda of agreements, and President Goel agreed to take the agreement to the Senate and Board of Governors for review. Following a recent period of mediation, the University and FAUW reached agreement on policy changes and other matters related to the creation of new teaching stream ranks. The goal of formalizing a teaching stream at Waterloo is longstanding, and has been the focus of previous policy development committees and many discussions at the FRC. 

The agreement will now proceed through approval and governance processes according to the process jointly established by the University and FAUW at Faculty Relations Committee, with a Senate vote, a vote by FAUW membership and final approval at the Board of Governors.

The current landscape for teaching appointments at Waterloo involves the classification of Lecturer, which is set to change with the adoption of the new agreement. "Those come in two flavours," says DeVidi. "There are definite term lecturers...and continuing lecturers." What is changing is that now there will be three teaching stream ranks, Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, (either definite term or probationary), Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, and Professor, Teaching Stream. The Lecturer rank will go away over time as no new lecturer appointments are set to be made.

"Now the teaching stream will be a cohort of dedicated teachers who raise the quality of teaching and learning wholesale for the campus," Dr. DeVidi said.

"We wanted to parallel that for the current professorial faculty as much as possible," said Dr. Wood. "You obtain what we're calling permanence, which is equivalent to tenure regarding job security and academic freedom...There have been questions about governance and the ability of lectures to participate in university governance and there is now language saying that all teaching stream faculty have the same rights to participate in university governance and with some limited exceptions to hold leadership and service roles."

A lively question and answer period followed the opening presentation, with Dr. Wood and Dr. DeVidi fielding questions from the floor, from the live Zoom chat, and from a list of questions submitted in advance. Questions dealt with issues like the process for a continuing lecturer to move to the new teaching stream, the effects of this agreement on sessional instructors (the short answer: none), the regulation of teaching stream instructor workloads, and what qualifications would be needed to advance within the teaching stream ranks.

The video recording of the faculty town hall is available on the Provost's website, and answers to questions are being added to the site.

Remembering Lorraine Nesbitt

In early December, family, colleagues, and friends gathered to celebrate the life of Lorraine Nesbitt. Lorraine joined the University of Waterloo in 1984, retiring in 2010 after 26 years of service, as the administrator for counselling services. She passed away on November 22, 2023, at age 77. 

“Lorraine was a light and source of comfort for literally, thousands of students, staff and faculty at UW, providing warmth and reassurance during difficult times,” writes Dave Logan, Counsellor and Success Coach at UW Counselling Services in a post on her tribute wall on the Erb & Good website. “At her retirement party, it was described how she had been the first point of contact for over 40,000 people at UW Counselling Services and her legacy is a part of the fabric and people of this institution.” 

The Lorraine Nesbitt Memorial Fund at the University has been established in her honour of her life of service. Contributions are welcome.

Thursday's notes

WUSA Welcome Week continues today with Clubs & Societies Days, happening Thursday and Friday in the Student Life Centre Great Hall from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., where students can browse more than 250 student clubs and get a rundown of what the various faculty and department student societies are all about.

Get your popcorn ready for movie night tonight as the Faculty of Mathematics' Queer Film Series presents The Celluloid Closet from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., and the University of Waterloo's Menstrual Equity Project presents an interactive screening of the movie Carrie at 6:00 p.m. at the Princess Twin Cinema, Waterloo. Buy your tickets online or at the door for $11.