A message from Thomas Duever, Interim Vice-President, Academic and Provost.
Over the last year, a thorough review of the Associate Vice-President, Academic (AVPA) portfolio has been conducted to assess the functions, structure, effectiveness, efficiency, alignment, and coordination with other relevant portfolios and functions that intersect with the AVPA portfolio. The results of this review and the corresponding recommendations have been delivered to me for consideration and for support in the development of an implementation plan.
One of the key recommendations of the review was to create a more streamlined and efficient structure of functions to enhance the effectiveness of the portfolio and achieve cost savings through improved coordination. As a result, the Centre for Teaching Excellence (CTE), the Centre for Extended Learning (CEL), and the Teaching Innovation Incubator (TII) will be brought together as a single, integrated business unit. Integration will make it easier for the campus community to navigate the University’s various teaching and learning supports, reduce duplication and clarify mandates, and enhance the alignment of efforts in the unit to University priorities and thereby increase the institution’s capacity to respond to a changing teaching and learning landscape.
To this end, a number of more specific changes will also be implemented:
- To enhance the responsiveness of this new integrated business unit to institutional priorities, a single annual plan for the unit will be formulated as part of the institutional integrated planning and budgeting process.
- To address the increasing role of and demand for online instruction, the unit will focus more on agile development of online courses and materials, and less on full-service course development.
- To ensure maximum impact of the unit’s efforts in a time of constrained resources, the unit will increase its pedagogical support for program development, streamlining, and coordination, and less on individual instructor supports.
- To improve coordination and connection between the unit and the faculties, the AVPA, in consultation with the Provost, will explore alternative models to the current liaison model employed by CTE.
- The AVPA will investigate new models for better integration of efforts with other support units where mandates overlap, including the Office of Indigenous Relations; the Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Racism; and the Associate Provost, Campus Support and Accessibility. This may possibly include new “dotted line” reporting relationships or an advisory group on inclusive teaching.
Stakeholders who participated in the AVPA portfolio review also indicated the need for a more specific role guiding new program ideas through the development and approval process, and suggested that the Academic Quality Enhancement Office (AQuE) should take on this role. While I agree that there is a need for such a role, I think its implementation should be developed with due consideration of the recommendations likely to arise from the Academic Innovation Working Group in the coming months, and that the role needs to be concerned not only with guiding program ideas through the process, but also with: coordinating the supports provided by various units involved in development of program ideas (e.g., the faculties and departments, AQuE, IAP, the teaching unit); coordinating the entire suite of programs under development; and facilitating a multi-year institutional priority-setting process for new programs (involving the faculties as part of the integrated planning and budgeting process). The shepherding role will report directly to the AVPA so that the AVPA will be in a position to anticipate, receive, and report on the status of program development in a comprehensive way during formal approval processes, and in both executive and governance contexts.
In addition, the recommendation was made to align and share services that support similar objectives to enhance effectiveness and increase efficiency. This will be accomplished as follows:
- Most of the units with the AVPA portfolio support the student experience by enhancing the quality of teaching and academic programs, while the Writing and Communication Centre is primarily involved in providing support directly to students. I am therefore directing the AVPA to work with the Associate Provost, Students, to develop a plan to transition the WCC from the AVPA portfolio to the AP, Students portfolio, where its impact can be amplified through the other student support services of that portfolio. These efforts should take due account of the results of the portfolio review of the AVP, GSPA when they are announced.
- Supports for academic integrity are dispersed across campus, and the HESA review revealed that there is room to enhance the alignment between the efforts of the current Office of Academic Integrity and what faculties feel they need. I am therefore directing the AVPA to consult relevant stakeholders and address these alignment issues.
Finally, the AVPA Office itself will be redesigned to centralize, where appropriate, services that are now dispersed across the portfolio. The most visible impact for the campus will be centralization of communications and stakeholder engagement efforts for the entire portfolio in the AVPA Office to ensure targeted, consistent messaging while reducing email fatigue. Other services to be centralized include finance, IT, support for institutional teaching awards, and responsibility for gathering evidence for assessment of the effectiveness of the efforts of all of the AVPA units. The recommendations of the Functional Review Implementation Teams will clearly be relevant to how this redesign is implemented.
Implementation of the recommendations have begun under the direction of the AVPA and will be completed by the end of 2025.