Faculty Meeting Friday, November 21, 2008

 THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2008

 

 

A meeting of the Faculty Council was held on Thursday, October 16, 2008 at 12 noon in the ATAC Board Room 5035.

 

V. Smith welcomed Orillia colleagues and called the meeting to order.

 

 

It was moved by M. Beaulieu and seconded by P. Jasen that the revised agenda be approved.

 

                                                                             Carried.

  

 

It was moved by J. Leggatt and seconded by M. Beaulieu that the minutes October 16^th be approved.

 

                                                                             Carried.

 

 

There was none.

 

 

M. Nisenholt introduced Dr. Kristy Holmes, a new faculty member in the Department of Visual Arts.

 

 

A. den Otter presented the following proposed calendar changes:

 

Rationale:  At present the HBASc program at Orillia enables students to take two areas of specialization (5 FCEs each) in addition to 2 FCEs of Inquiry courses plus other electives.  At least 3 FCEs must be from SES and 3 FCEs from SSH.  While this is an excellent interdisciplinary degree, leading to various job prospects or to an interdisciplinary graduate degree, students seeking graduate school in particular disciplines have been requesting disciplinary majors as well.  Indeed, several are taking sufficient courses to qualify for major status and would like to be acknowledged as having attained that level.  The following change makes the major option possible without interfering with the interdisciplinary of the degree.

Program Regulations

1.            Students in the HBASc: Multidisciplinary Studies are required to satisfactorily complete a minimum of two disciplinary specializations (a specialization comprises a set of 5 FCE in a discipline), and these specializations must be identified by the student.

Program Regulations

1.            Students in the HBASc: Multidisciplinary Studies are required to satisfactorily complete a minimum of two disciplinary specializations (a specialization comprises a set of 5 FCE in a discipline), and these specializations must be identified by the student.   If desired, a student may take an additional 5 FCEs at the third or fourth year level in one of the selected disciplinary specializations (total 10 FCEs) and declare a major in that field. 

 

Budgetary Implications:  None since rotation of courses enables students to take a sufficient number of courses without increasing offerings beyond our budget.

 

After some discussion, it decided to table this motion pending consultation with Department heads.

 

It was moved by A. Den Otter and seconded by H. Smith that the proposed calendar change be tabled.

 

                                                                         Carried.

 

A. Foshay was not able to attend the meeting.  An information email was circulated. 

 

 

1.    The University Fair was, as far as one can measure such things, very successful, with the highest number of students yet.  Students were very attracted by our t-shirts, and were willing to stand in line to get one.  All students who did that also provided us with fairly detailed contact information, which will aid in recruitment.

 

2.    Budget.  $6.1 million deficit projected for this year, and $9 million the year after that.  Consequently, there will be no hiring until further notice.   We have been asked to ask Chairs what courses they need to offer next year, and whether they have the resources to offer them.  Also, 50% of all carry-forwards were clawed back.

 

3.    Calendar changes.  This year, all calendar changes that are for the 2009/10 academic year must be approved by Senate by the January meeting.  All changes that come forward after that will go in the 2010/11 calendar.

 

4.    Braun Building.  A consulting firm, the Courtyard Group, has been hired by the Ministry to review needs for capital expenditures at Ontario universities and colleges, and to make recommendations to the Ministry.  Lakehead was the first site they visited; they reviewed the entire site, but with particular attention to the Braun Building.  We have been told that it will cost approximately $6.9 million to repair it and $7.6 million to replace that part of the building. 

 

5.    Strategic Research Plan.  As you know, the Deans were asked to identify research strengths in their Faculty.  Thank you to those who responded to that.   For those who did not, it is not too late, and I would encourage you to get something to me as soon as possible.  We had a very productive discussion at Deans' Council yesterday about the issue of research clusters.  Laurie was out of town, and had asked Moira McPherson to facilitate the discussion of research clusters as identified by the Deans.  After much discussion, we decided that the word cluster refers to something quite specific, and was too limiting a word and concept for the intended purpose of gathering information about research at the university.  We will now be talking about research strengths, and these can be identified in several ways. 

 

a.    Collaborative research currently ongoing on campus.

b.    Collaborative research between faculty here and at other universities

c.    Collaborative research that includes partnerships with the private sector and/or government--these are clusters.

d.    Collaborative research currently going on that can be identified with the Priority research themes listed in the Strategic Research Plan.

e.    Independent research that can be identified with the Priority research themes identified in the Strategic Research Plan.

f.     An individual's faculty research profile that constitutes expertise in a particular area.

g.    Research centres on campus.

 

For Deans' Council yesterday, I prepared a very preliminary list of areas of research strength.  After looking at what everyone sent me, and from what I gleaned from the annual reports, I decided to organize the inventory of our research according to the Strategic Research Priorities in the Strategic Research Plan, for two reasons.  1) there is a substantial amount of research going on in a number of those Priorities, not just in Culture and Society.  2)  if allocation of resources is, as the plan suggests, going to be aligned with those priority areas, it will be a good idea to frame our research that way.  However, we are also now going to be including independent researchers who have produced a body of work in a particular area; all the Deans agreed to that, and it means that significance of independent research won't entirely be left out of this conversation.  There was also a lot of talk among the deans yesterday about the disconnect at the university between the move to increase research productivity, as outlined in the plan, and the contraints we all face in terms of resources (and heavy teaching loads) and the lack of stability in budget allocations that makes planning very difficult.  Moira is going to summarize what was said at this meeting and submit it to the VP.   The Deans have been asked to submit their summaries of research areas to Moira, so that we can all see an inventory of all the research going on on campus, and I would like ours to be as complete as possible, so do please send me information if you have not already.

 

 

i)

 

It was moved by J. Leggatt and seconded by H. Smith that the proposed undergraduate calendar change as it relates to English/Indigenous Learning be approved.

 

                                                                         Carried.

 

 iii)

 

It was moved by H. Smith and seconded by P. Jasen that the proposed calendar change be approved.

 

                                                                         Carried.

 

None.

 

 

The meeting adjourned at 2:00 p.m.

 

 ATTENDANCE

 

M. Beaulieu 

R. Berg

A. Carastathis

G. Colton

K. Holmes

P. Jason

D. Jobin-Bevans

J. Leggatt

M. MacLean

D. McPherson

A. Puddephatt

M. Nisenholt

Dr. V. Schonberger

G. Siddall

H. Smith

V. Smith

S.D. Stone

 

A. den Otter

L. Clement

K. Willison

 

 

A. Clarke

B. Cuthbertson

S. Islam

A. Foshay

R. Holmes

D. Ivison