Highlights from the November 22 Board Meeting

This meeting was a bit of a preview of issues likely to come up at our Fall General Meeting on Tuesday, December 4. What’s a general meeting? Well, to start, it’s a great opportunity for you to speak with the FAUW board about issues that concern you, and for the board to report back to you what we’ve been doing this term. General meetings are also where we vote on association matters like financial statements, budgets, and constitution changes. We hope you’ll be able to join us on Tuesday.

In the meantime, here’s what we discussed at the November 22 meeting, including the lecturer salary working group, holistic benefits review, and breakfast!

1. The report from the working group investigating lecturer salary equity is overdue. We now expect it by December 14.
2. At the Fall General Meeting we’ll be voting on a service agreement with the Renison Association of Academic Staff, hearing your feedback on the University’s new G-class policy on free speech, and getting a brief update from the University strategic plan consultations. The focus, though, is to hear as much from members as possible, so please come with your questions and concerns!
3. We’ve already sent you the draft free speech policy and are looking forward to your feedback. On a related note, we’re asking the administration to explore creating supports to help faculty navigate this new environment of “freedom of speech” on campuses. Let us know if you have thoughts on what those could look like.
4. Shannon Dea will be the FAUW appointee on the task force on graduate student supervision that we mentioned last time. This group will establish best practices for supervision across campus.
5. FAUW is continuing (and increasing) its sponsorship of the breakfast at the Centre for Teaching Excellence’s annual teaching and learning conference, which is increasingly popular and well-attended by many of our members.
6. Two meetings ago, we reported that policy 42 (sexual violence) drafting committee members voted not to include employees in the policy. We’ve since gotten confirmation from the Secretariat that “the committee made a recommendation to the President that the policy not apply to employees. He has agreed with the recommendation, and the terms of reference have been revised to remove employee representation in light of that.” We are working on ensuring that any gaps created by this change are covered in other policies.
7. Bryan Tolson (FAUW president) and the provost are providing high-level feedback on policy 76 (faculty appointments) right now. The committee will review those comments and start the next steps in January. Don’t worry; you’ll see a draft soon!
8. We are starting to prepare for the next salary anomaly review. Don’t know what that’s about? Read the “Joint Provostial/FAUW Memorandum of Agreement on Faculty Salary Anomaly Reviews” on the reports page of our website.
9. Now that the benefits increase is settled, the Pension & Benefits Committee (P&B) is getting back to its holistic benefits review. David Saunders will be the FAUW representative (he’s also a P&B member) on this. Want more about that? There is information about the review in the October 2017 P&B agenda package (PDF), and a little bit in P&B’s 2017 Report to the Community (PDF).

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