RAAS Report
RAAS REPORT
Friday, September 25, 2020
PRESIDENT’S UPDATE
We hope everyone has had as smooth a transition into the fall term as possible during this difficult time.
We will be holding our next membership meeting on Wednesday, September 30th from 1-3pm via Zoom. You should have received an Outlook invitation and an email with the agenda. A Zoom link will be sent the day before the meeting. Please remember that if you have not completed a RAAS-FAUW membership form (attached), you will not be able to vote in the meeting. Of course, all Members are welcome and encouraged to attend. We will be providing important updates during the meeting and discussing compensation and our grievance policies and procedures.
Our RAAS meeting is on Orange Shirt Day. This day is intended to recognize and raise awareness about the residential school system in Canada and honour the experiences of Indigenous Peoples. For more information, please visit https://www.orangeshirtday.org/about-us.html and/or https://woodlandculturalcentre.ca/orange-shirt-day-september-30th-schools-invited/. We encourage members to attend the meeting wearing an orange shirt.
Some of you may already know that UW and FAUW have agreed to a revised performance review procedure this year in recognition of the exceptional circumstances related to COVID. In brief, faculty may choose either to be assessed through the regular process or as spelled out in Policy 13.5.4 (b) [https://uwaterloo.ca/secretariat/documents-potential-interest/memorandum-agreement-uw-fauw#facultysalaries].
Policy 13.5.4 of UW's MoA stipulates that a faculty member may use an average of the previous three years assessment or, in the absence, may be assessed by the average of the department.
There is precedent at Renison for using Policy 13.5.4 (b) for parental leave. RAAS has made a request that the Administration accept the same principle of procedures for faculty this year. We have not received a response from the Administration as of yet. We anticipate additional details will be discussed regarding averaging and if any documents are submitted with the alternate process. A committee at UW is determining some of these additional details and we should know more from them by early October to guide our discussions.
We will be discussing additional information about working conditions at the RAAS membership meeting, so please make every effort to attend.
Kristina Llewellyn
RAAS President
NEGOTIATIONS UPDATE
Negotiations are progressing. All draft articles of our Collective Agreement are now on the table, including a proposal on Compensation from the Employer.
Only seven articles remain to be settled: Management Rights, Financial Exigency, Program Redundancy, Lay-offs, Non-Disciplinary Terminations, Professional Expense Reimbursement, and Compensation. Our next negotiation session is scheduled for Friday, October 2.
Please join the RAAS membership meeting on Wednesday, September 30 for more details and some discussion on the remaining articles, including Compensation.
Rob Case
RAAS Lead Negotiator
BOARD UPDATE
The next Board meeting is Wednesday, September 30. The Board will be approving Renison's year-end financial reports and considering other matters in preparation for its Annual General Meeting in October.
Nominations are open (and needed) for a faculty board representative. The 3-year term will begin in January, 2021, but the new rep should be affirmed at the AGM in October. Inquiries about the nomination and election of a faculty representative should be made to Academic Council.
I would invite anyone wanting to learn more about the faculty board rep position to get in touch with me.
Rob Case
Faculty Board Representative
SATIRE
Queen’s students argue their outbreak will be way better than Western’s
The Beaverton (September 18, 2020)
A group of Queen’s University students are setting the record straight declaring that their campus-wide outbreak of COVID-19 will be way better than Western’s outbreak. The coronavirus, which has sickened 30 million worldwide and killed thousands of Canadians thus far, has not yielded the university’s hypercompetitive spirit to beat Western at everything from academics and reputation to football and competitive pandemics.
NOT SATIRE
Andie Burazin et al., CBC News (September 22, 2020)
There is no doubt that many students cheat on their assessments, such as homework and exams (an assessment is any piece of work in a course which bears credit toward the final course grade). It's not a new phenomenon — in a paper published in 2006 in The Canadian Journal of Higher Education, University of Guelph Professor Julia Christensen Hughes reported that more than 50 per cent of Canadian undergraduates admitted to some form of cheating.
CAUT NEWS
RAAS is a member of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), a nation-wide association of our peers.
CAUT HIGHLIGHTS ROLE FOR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
CAUT News (September 21, 2020)
The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) has written to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to urge development of a national pandemic recovery plan that includes strategic investment in Canada’s post-secondary education (PSE) sector.
OCUFA NEWS
RAAS is a member of the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA), a province-wide association of our peers.
Legal opinion: Laurentian admin did not have authority to suspend admissions to 17 programs
Heidi Ulrichsen, Sudbury.com (September 15, 2020)
[T]he Laurentian University Faculty Association (LUFA) says only the Senate has the power to make decisions as to whether or not an academic program, or admissions to an academic program, can be suspended.
A University had a great coronavirus plan, but students partied on
Kenneth Chang, New York Times (September 10, 2020) [may require subscription]
At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, more than 40,000 students take tests twice a week for the coronavirus. They cannot enter campus buildings unless an app vouches that their test has come back negative. Everyone has to wear masks. University scientists developed a quick, inexpensive saliva test. Other researchers put together a detailed computer model that suggested these measures would work, and that in-person instruction could go forward this fall. But the predictive model included an oversight: It assumed that all of the students would do all of the things that they were told to.
Dalhousie Faculty Association seeks conciliation in contract talks
Chronicle Herald (September 22, 2020)
Dalhousie University's faculty association has filed for a conciliator to help in contract talks with the school's board of governors. Since July, the sides have met seven times but have not yet been able to reach a deal.
DFA president David Westwood said the two sides are far apart, primarily on economic and monetary issues. “The wage offer that's been made calls for three years of zero per cent increases, so no inflation adjustments, and they're demanding changes to our pension plan, reducing benefits, saving money on their part,” Westwood said on Tuesday. “And these are long-standing issues that they know that DFA cannot recommend to our members to accept.”
Post-secondary students paying for inaccessible services as they study online
Maan Alhmidi, CTV News (September 17, 2020)
Brandon Rheal Amyot is taking on debt to pay about $3,000 in tuition this semester, including fees for services and facilities that cannot be used. With classes having moved online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many students aren't on campuses to visit libraries and athletic centres, if they're even open.
The neoliberal non-performance of consultation
Asmita Bhutani et al., Academic Matters (August 26, 2020)
The University of Toronto has long been criticized for its general conservatism and lack of transparency; this story is almost as old as the university itself. Today, U of T’s top-down, corporate approach is playing out in the midst of a global pandemic and uprisings in response to systemic anti-Black racism and police violence, at a time when deep structural changes that actually address violence, oppression, and inequality are needed. … [W]e are experiencing a disturbing disconnect between the training we receive and the top-down policies being deployed by the university’s senior administrators.
Information about Ontario university reopening plans for fall 2020
OCUFA (September 16, 2020)
OCUFA is collecting data and information about Ontario university and university-college reopening plans for the fall 2020 term. We have compiled a database of reopening plans, including mode of delivery and faculty choice over delivery mode, research recovery plans, access to research buildings and offices, library services, and COVID-19 related letters of understanding.
FAUW NEWS
RAAS has a service agreement with the Faculty Association of the University of Waterloo (FAUW), a campus-wide association of our peers.
FAUW Blog (September 1, 2020)
FAUW is pleased to welcome Dan Brown as our new association President. Bryan Tolson will transition to the role ofPast President for one year, and also lead negotiator.
FAUW Lecturers Committee Report
Aga Wolczuk, RAAS Report (September 21, 2020)
Here is a brief report on LC activities from April to September, 2020
1. Mentorship opportunities for UW Lecturers
Lecturers Committee (LC) has been informally involved in collecting information about how newly hired lecturers can be guided in terms of their career development in UW. Informal conversations with a representative from the CTE, Sue Fraser from the Centre for Career Action, and Allana Robinson from OHD have started.
2. Analysis of 2019 merit scores histograms
As a step in determining whether the merit system at UW is equitable, LC collected and analysed the 2019 merit histograms of professors of all ranks as well as lecturers in all the six UW faculties. The medians of the overall assessment and the means of assessment of teaching, service, and research were considered for the four ranks of the faculty. Overall, it seemed that lecturers’ merit scores last year were on par with those of associate professors or sometimes even higher. The main exceptions were lecturers’ merit scores for research and in two faculties, for service. Some possible reasons for these discrepancies were discussed.
3. Recruitment of new LC members
In June, all the applications to LC were considered. The committee agreed to recruit two additional lecturers, both from the Faculty of Mathematics. This choice was related to the recent increase in the number of lecturers in this faculty and was also an attempt to diversify the committee’s membership: one lecturer with a research component of the workload and one with the 70% service component became members of LC. The committee’s male membership increased at the same time.
4. Remote orientation session
On September 4, LC conducted a remote orientation session for recently hired lecturers. The session was part of the New Faculty Orientation hosted by the New Faculty Planning Committee. The session run by LC was well attended and appreciated. The committee is considering running such sessions in the future.
5. Policy 76 (Faculty Appointment) revisions
The revisions of Policy 76 have been hindered by the COVID-19 pandemic. LC was promised access to a short summary of the revisions from the Faculty Relations Committee. Despite of the indication that such a summary would be ready for feedback from LC in August, it was not available at that time.