News

We are pleased to announce the results of the referendum on changes to the Memorandum of Agreement regarding biennial performance reviews for tenured/continuing faculty members. 

The changes have been approved by a significant majority of voters and will now go to the University Board of Governors on October 25 for final approval.

Voter turnout was 54% and 88% of members who voted were in favour of the changes.

Updated: The changes have been endorsed by FAUW members and approved by the University Board of Governors.

FAUW and UW administrators at the Faculty Relations Committee have negotiated a set of very positive but substantive changes to Article 13 (Faculty Salaries, Annual Selective Increases and Member Evaluation Procedures) of the Memorandum of Agreement (MoA). The changes will:

One of FAUW's major initiatives is our Status of Women and Equity Committee (SWEC), which engages in educational and advocacy activities related to the status of women and with broader equity issues such as those arising from gender, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, disability, religion, age, or gender identity.

SWEC recently launched the UWaterloo Equity Update, a biweekly newsletter that brings together a range of events and opportunities across campus and in the community related to the committee's mandate.

Happy September!

We at FAUW hope you had a fantastic summer, and to help you kick off the new school year, we have a few tips on how to get the most out of your Faculty Association.

Get the full list in our latest blog post or read on for the super short version.

Researchers at OISE have prepared a report on sessional faculty for the Ontario Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development. Sessional faculty are defined in this report as faculty members who are either hired course by course or on short-term contracts. The report studies sessional faculty at 12 Ontario universities.

The report is available on the Centre for the Study of Canadian and International Higher Education (CIHE) blog.

By now you will have received notification of the Salary Anomaly Working Group final report. FAUW has posted highlights from the report and a Frequently Asked Questions page on our website, which we will be adding to as more questions come in.

FAUW would like to draw your attention to a call for nominations for the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) Distinguished Academic Award.  

Welcome to the June update. Those of you who teach over the summer know that this continues to be a busy place. FAUW continues to have plenty of work.

Here's an update on the issues covered in my last report, plus a few new ones. I'll try to summarize key events below but please contact me or anyone else at FAUW if you would like more information.

The Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA) announced last week that our own Kate Lawson is a recipient of this year's OCUFA Service Award. You may know Kate as Chair of the English Language & Literature department – or as the very capable chair of FAUW’s general meetings.

From: Ian Orchard, Vice-President Academic and Provost; Sally Gunz, President, Faculty Association

We would like to clarify the official university position on faculty leaves from the University of Waterloo. These are leaves which faculty members may avail themselves of, and to which they are entitled. We are distributing this document because from time to time we hear that faculty members are reluctant to ask for leaves out of concern for the burden that might fall on others in their department. These leaves have all been created in order to ensure you have a successful academic career. While respect for others is important, you are not expected to give up these leaves. Balancing the needs of all faculty members in a department is the responsibility of the department chair. Cost, both in financial and organizational terms, is something for the university to absorb and not you.