By Sally Gunz, FAUW President
It took a mere three weeks to realize it was January. No excuse for such tardiness. Only forgetfulness. For now, let’s assume 2016 started in February.
I began writing this on the way back from the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) meeting for faculty association presidents. FAUW pays a good deal of money to CAUT but I am always impressed when I attend these meetings at how much we get in return (and the same can be said for the provincial organization, OCUFA). This was my first time attending this particular meeting and it was a very useful chance to form connections with counterparts at universities and colleges across Canada and to learn from their experiences.
If I can sum up what I heard briefly it is that there are some very obvious commonalities in terms of what we all face, perhaps not surprisingly since most administrators have their own equivalent organizations. One day a historian could usefully track the trends that sweep across universities, some at the impetus of provincial regulators and others from universities themselves. Fashions come and fashions go in very predictable manners. There are, however, no quick fixes for whatever ails us.
Further, academic institutions really do function best if collegial governance is maintained as the guiding principle and yes, academic freedom has real meaning and must be preserved. Above all, lack of mutual respect in terms of governance will only lead to bad outcomes for all parties.
I will now report on some of the issues that have been recently occupying FAUW.
- Over the last few months, we have been tangling with a number of issues in terms of our role in the governance of the university. This is not the time and place to discuss them – I will come back to the membership as a whole either at our spring meeting or by more direct input if that is required. But for now, we continue to defend the principles we think are important and, to be fair, senior administration does not disagree with these, but our discussions centre more on their application.
- You will no doubt know by now that progress is being made on the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) front. Both faculty and staff were uncomfortable with the initial proposal from the university which did not include a full call for proposals from potential carriers but rather extended the contract with an existing carrier. There is now a full call in progress with an interim solution that, if not perfect, is at least far better than what was (not) in place before. You are all eligible to receive the benefit of counselling through the university Counselling Services department. The weakness of the arrangement is that this will not extend to your families until we have an external carrier. Please contact FAUW (Katie Damphouse in particular) if you are experiencing any difficulty accessing services.
- You will recall that the registrar agreed to work with FAUW on removing “minor irritants” around the exam and grade submission processes. Thank you for your responses. Greta Kroeker (history) and Bill Bishop (electrical & computer engineering) are the two faculty members who are taking your concerns and working with the registrar to address them. We thank them for agreeing to do this.
- We continue to work on our website. Please pass on suggestions for improvement to Laura McDonald. One thing we are noticing is that we get requests to promote things that are already being promoted elsewhere throughout the university. Our tendency is to avoid duplication and instead to focus on our main activities.
- From time to time we hear that, in some faculties, there is pressure to lower the average for service in the annual performance evaluation process. The position we have taken is that there cannot be a change such as this to only one element of our work since that effectively changes weighting across the three elements. The administration now agrees with this position. Please let us know if you have any concerns or if you are still hearing that averages for service have had to be lowered across the Faculty.
- You may be aware of the provincial requirements that the university implement a new sexual violence policy specifically relating to students. Since this may also impact faculty – either as persons against whom violence is inflicted or the opposite – we are ensuring we have an active role through both the FAUW board and SWEC in the development of this policy.
- For those who attend Senate meetings, you will be aware of the update to the course evaluation project. This is immensely complex and there are many people who have been working about two years already on it. From our perspective, our concerns are focused primarily upon two issues: possible bias in the survey instrument itself and the use of potentially biased results in our individual faculty evaluations.
Bias in some form is inevitable. The difficult issues are how to minimize it and to minimize the resulting harm to faculty that can flow from the student evaluation process. We are very grateful to a group of faculty with specific expertise in this field for their assistance. We also understand that the project committee as a whole is receptive to our arguments and is also grappling with how best to proceed. - You will know from past reports that the Lecturers Committee of FAUW has been active and working hard. This committee’s mandate is to seek input from lecturers across campus and advise the FAUW Board on key issues of concern to lecturers. At the same time, the Policy 76 review committee is working on issues of career paths for lecturers. This (Policy 76) committee has two representatives of FAUW on it and it will also seek direct advice from FAUW as well as all other relevant constituencies across campus.
- The committee assessing scheduling (PACT) is another hardworking group inching its way along. FAUW’s current representative is Bryan Tolson (civil & environmental engineering). From time to time, he will conduct a short survey to seek member input. These issues are really, really difficult and not all will be resolved, from FAUW’s perspective, through this committee. Some will require revisions to the Memorandum of Agreement.
- Weather policy: what can I say? You will have seen some changes to the guidelines. The FAUW board and SWEC have further proposals, but realistically these will inform the approach to another winter more than this one. If you have any concerns you want to raise, please pass them on to Bryan Tolson and Kate Rybczynski (economics, SWEC chair).
And on that sunny note, I think I will end this rather long report.