Faculty Meeting Thursday, October 21, 2010

FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES COUNCIL
 April 26, 2010


APPROVED
 
A meeting of the Faculty Council was held on April 26, 2010 at 10:00 am in the ATAC Board Room 5035.

1.
Approval of Agenda
 
It was moved by H. Smith and seconded by J. Leggatt that the revised agenda be approved.
 
                                                                             Carried.
 
2.
Approval of the Minutes
 
It was moved by P. Jasen and seconded by A. den Otter that the minutes of January 7, 2010, be approved.
 
                                                                             Carried.

3.
Business Arising from Minutes

i) Hiring Possibilities
A discussion was held with regard to hiring for our Faculty.  It was stated that in order to gain approval to hire tenure track appointments, we will need to provide evidence that we actually need them.  It would be helpful to have the number of students that were turned away, and to have wait lists for all courses.  It was noted that two term appointments were renewed.  A suggestion was made to gather information about our graduates with regard to careers so we can show people, (students, parents), what kind of jobs they are qualified for.  Also, the Ontario government has placed a cap on the number of teachers graduating this year which has an effect on our enrolment.  It was also noted that we are now able count Concurrent Education students as our majors.  D. McPherson made mention that  our Faculty needs to be involved in policy development as it relates to the "Ring of Fire" project.  There was also mention of more collaboration between colleges and universities in the coming years.  


ii) Orillia Hiring

See Orillia Report.


4.
Registrar's Report

B. Winter was not able to attend the meeting.  S. Viitala will send out an email from B. Winter to all Chairs/Director.


Announcement:

R. Robson announced that there will be a conference in Winnipeg and all are welcome to attend.  (See poster of June 17, 2010)

 5.
Dean's Report for Faculty Council

April 26, 2010 -  ATAC 5035
1.    Budget:  As you know, I was asked to make a 3% cut this year.  I was able to do that without cutting any departmental budgets or my own sessional budget.  We did not, however, receive any tenure-track appointments for this year on this campus, and we are down 10 positions over the last two years.  Clearly we are not going to be able to get those positions back quickly.  So we need to do three things: continue to make the case to upper administration for our need to replace the positions we have lost; be strategic about how we can manage with the loss of so many positions in the meantime; ramp up our recruiting and retention efforts.

2.    Major change to staffing OUF this year.  For every person a Dean funds to go there,
Recruitment will send an additional person.  That means if I can fund 3, we can send 6.  I think we should do that.

3.    I attended a meeting of Canadian Deans of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences this weekend, and most of the speakers who had been invited spoke in fairly grim terms about the future of the social sciences and especially the humanities in the next 10-50 years.  They cited a major change in demographics--aging baby boomers needing support and not enough of a workforce to provide that support.  More pressure on young people to enter the workforce and pay taxes; more pressure on universities to explicitly prepare students to enter the workforce.    I suspect there is some truth to that, and so what we need to do is increase the volume and regularity with which we make the case for the value of our degrees, both in terms of career-preparation and boosting the economy and in terms of educating citizens who will enter the workforce--or other activities--with critical thinking skills and knowledge about history, language, art, social systems, ideology, political systems, cultures that equip them to be aware of and engaged in issues around social justice and the environment--things we claim we already do at Lakehead.  And that needs to become part of our recruitment and retention strategy.  We also have colleges in Ontario making a very well organized bid to expand degree opportunities, so that they can offer baccalaureate degrees like ours.  The executive heads are working on this--they see it as a serious threat to our own sustainability.  

4.    I have a meeting this week with the new VP Advancement, Lee Gould.  I am looking forward to talking to him about the challenges for fundraising for our faculty, but also the opportunities.  I will keep you posted.

 
5.    I also attended the annual meeting of the Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences last month.  One of the key issues there was proposed new program architecture for SSHRC.   Monica Flegel was soliciting responses from us all on that, but if you didn't respond to Monica, you can still send your thoughts to SSHRC.  The official deadline for doing so has passed, but they have said they still welcome input, and will be touring universities fairly soon to get more feedback.  If you haven't checked out the proposal, I urge you to do so--you can access it on the SSHRC website.   Another issue that came up had to do with health research and to which council grants dealing with health research should go.  The president of CIHR was there, and he said that it should come to CIHR if it had a direct application to improving the health of Canadians.  When pushed on whether an analysis of representations of disease in Shakespeare's plays would be seen as having a direct application, he hesitated, but the thinking seemed to be that such research would be funded by SSHRC not CIHR, and that SSHRC is indeed still funding health research, but only certain kinds.  They admitted that they are still figuring this out, and recommended contacting them for assistance with the best place to submit a proposal.

6.    Strategic planning--the meeting had to be postponed.  We will be meeting soon, and will have a report to make at the next council meeting.

Respectfully submitted by Dr. Gillian Siddall, Dean, Social Sciences and Humanities.

6. Departmental/School Reports

i) Northern Studies - Calendar Changes

It was moved by H. Smith and seconded by S.D. Stone that the Undergraduate calendar change be approved.
                                                                            Carried.


8.
Orillia Report

A. den Otter thanked everyone involved in the hiring process which is currently in various stages.  The files are now in Thunder Bay, and most will be short-listed by May 7.  They will post for contract lecturers by May 31.  A. den Otter clarified that C. Rimke, Orillia Campus, will be organizing the interviews.


9.
Other Business
i) Academic Dishonesty

G. Siddall stated that the policy is posted on the web.  Discussion followed about the process and it was stated that we must be consistent in the process and how we handle it.  It was also stated that faculty member should not be imposing "zeros" themselves.  Departments/Schools should keep a list of those students accused of academic dishonesty.  Each name should be submitted to the Dean as well.  It was decided that everyone should think about this, and remember to be consistent in the treatment of this issue and to be respectful of students.

ii) External Adjuncts - Orillia Campus

There was discussion about whether faculty on term appointments can be made adjunct professors so that they are eligible to apply for tri-council funding  It was decided that P. Jasen would seek a statement from administration to define the guidelines.

10.
Adjournment
 
The meeting adjourned at 11.45 am.


 ATTENDANCE
 
Thunder Bay Campus
S.D. Stone
H. Smith
M.N Rinne
P. Jasen
D. Jobin-Bevans
R. Berg
J.M. Richardson
D. McPherson
M. MacLean
V. Schonberger
S.S. Islam
J. Leggatt
G. Siddall
V. Smith
D. Hannah


Orillia Campus
A. den Otter
J. Aniuk
K. Willison


REGRETS
B. Cuthbertson
M. Beaulieu
G. Colton
A. Carastathis
B. Winter