Hot topics from the May 20 FAUW Board of Directors meeting

Pandemic issues

The FAUW Board has issued a statement on fall 2021 decision making relating to teaching and faculty working conditions.

We briefly discussed some potential approaches to 2021 performance reviews, including re-weighting (e.g., to reduce the impact of your research score). We know there is also a continued need for pandemic considerations for tenure and promotion and will be returning to that topic with the administration soon.

Faculty members who need accommodations for fall (or any) teaching should contact our Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee for advice and referrals.

One small change for P76, one giant leap for lecturer benefits

From Dan Brown’s president’s report: This month at Senate we approved the first small step in the Policy 76/77 revisions, a surgical change to the mandate of the University Appointments Review Committee (UARC), so that it will now no longer be required to consider appointments of exactly two years (it will now review appointments longer than two years). This seemingly tiny change will matter, as it will remove the primary argument for deans to make two-years-minus-one-day appointments, which unfortunately come with fewer benefits than appointments just one day longer. [Editor’s note: This change was approved by the Board of Governors on June 1, making it official. We are asking deans to consider extending relevant appointments by one day.] The P76/77 Policy Drafting Committee will continue their work through the end of the summer, aiming for the August 31 deadline approved by Senate in March.

New travel and expenses policy

From Dan’s president’s report: The university’s president approved a substantial rewrite of Policy 31, the Travel policy, which has been renamed to University Expenses; this results in substantial improvements to reimbursement rates and also (hopefully!) a reduction in documentation required of travellers. It also details how research expenses like working lunches and hospitality will work. UW Finance consulted with FAUW (via Faculty Relations Committee) as part of their discussions of this policy.

Indigenous student scholarships

We have been looking into establishing a scholarship for students from Six Nations of the Grand River, on whose land the Waterloo, Kitchener, and Cambridge campuses are situated. At this meeting, we got into some details about what the award(s) could look like in practice to inform conversations with the Grand River Post Secondary Education Office and the university’s Student Awards & Financial Aid office.

Benefits eligibility grievance outcomes

Adapted from Ken Vetzal’s Pension & Benefits report: In response to grievances filed by FAUW, a subcommittee of the Pension and Benefits Committee (including the P&B liaison to the FAUW Board, Ken Vetzal) was formed last fall with a mandate to provide precise definitions of “continuous University of Waterloo service” (Policy 23 – Eligibility for Pension and Insured Benefits) and “uninterrupted regular full-time service” (Policy 59 – Reduced Workload to Retirement).

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FAUW statement on decision making about fall 2021 teaching

We recognize that decisions about fall teaching are being made in an environment of uncertainty. We also recognize the need to balance instructor preferences with student experience. It is our understanding that decisions about fall instruction have largely been made at the faculty level, using a variety of decision-making models. While FAUW supports a de-centralized approach given the varying needs across campus, we ask for earlier and more effective communication and consultation with fall term instructors—and with FAUW—as decisions affecting faculty working conditions are made, to respect the collegial governance model of the university.

We appreciate that most* FAUW members have been given a fair degree of choice as to how they deliver their courses this fall, but faculty were asked to make these decisions without access to essential information, including:

Anticipated safety protocols (e.g., information on ventilation, social distancing, how classroom changes are handled in buildings with constrained hallways, the availability of asymptomatic rapid testing responsibility for disinfection, and responsibility for compliance enforcement).
Expected decision rules which will trigger a shift from in-person to online (e.g., infection and vaccination rates, whether classes might shift from in person to online and back to in person).
Anticipated support for various models (e.g., the availability of classroom technology to enable streaming, registrar and AccessAbility support for testing and exams, the availability of technical support for hybrid models).
Consideration of faculty workload for hybrid models which will accommodate both remote and in-person students simultaneously, in the same section (e.g., extra teaching credit, overload pay, or temporary reweighting to accommodate extra work).

We heard updates on some of these items at the virtual town hall on May 11, but course delivery decisions were due on May 7, and many aspects of our fall working conditions are still unclear.

FAUW asks for transparent communication and updates on Waterloo’s position regarding access to vaccinations for faculty, staff, teaching assistants, and students, as well as availability and protocols surrounding regular asymptomatic rapid testing. While we recognize that best practices continue to evolve and may change over time, we are aware of multiple initiatives at other institutions regarding testing and vaccine protocols, and infrastructure and teaching support, and ask to be kept informed of Waterloo’s evolving stance on these items.

We suggest that one way of achieving meaningful communication is by giving a member of the FAUW Executive Committee membership in key decision-making groups such as the newly announced Workforce Planning Task Force. We look forward to being more involved and better able to support and inform our members as we prepare to have more activity on campus.

*We have heard reports of some members, particularly lecturers, being pressured or forced to commit to in-person instruction for fall against their wishes, which is very concerning.

Help Dr. X take their vacation!

Dr. X is a Lecturer at the University of Waterloo who teaches three terms a year. They are finding it difficult to take their four weeks of annual vacation entitlement, to be scheduled in blocks at least one week long.

The challenge

Can you help Dr. X find four one-week blocks of vacation time in the 2021-22 academic year? Share your results in the comments below.

The 2021-22 academic calendar, with academic dates from the Registrar’s important dates tool and paid holidays from the Human Resources website.

Considerations and constraints

Dr. X has an exam scheduled on April 23; marking the exam and submitting final grades will take approximately four days.
Dr. X would like to attend their sister’s wedding in BC on July 3.
Dr. X’s family has been offered a cottage rental from August 8–21; Dr. X would like to join their family.
Dr. X has been assigned a new course in fall 2022 and needs time to prepare it.
Statutory holidays don’t count toward vacation time.
Dr. X’s chair needs to agree on the timing of each block of vacation ahead of time.

Reflections

Does Dr. X still have adequate time for marking and course prep, without doing any work during their vacation?
Would Dr. X be able to take two weeks off at a time?
What would make it easier for Dr. X to take their full vacation entitlement?

Share your results and reflections in the comments!

Bonus round

For bonus points, help Dr. Y take their five weeks of vacation entitlement. Dr. Y is entitled to five weeks since they have been at Waterloo for more than 10 years.
Extra bonus points: Help Dr. Z take seven weeks of vacation—their five-week entitlement, plus the two weeks they carried forward from the previous year.

What this is about

Workload for teaching faculty is one of the issues that the FAUW team hopes to discuss in the revision process for Policy 76 – Faculty Appointments and Policy 77 – Promotion and Tenure.

Workload is a complex issue. For Lecturers, it intersects with vacation access because—as you saw with Dr. X—teaching three terms a year leaves very little time for meaningful vacation.

It is true that Waterloo is a three-term university, unlike many of our comparator institutions. It is also true that UW has enjoyed the flexibility of assigning work to Lecturers in all three terms. But what if flexibility means a lack of access to vacations? Can teaching workload be assigned more fairly?

What is clear is that teaching-stream faculty members deserve to take the annual vacations that allow us all a chance to rest and relax, to connect with family and friends, and to come back to work refreshed. Work-life balance is something we hear a lot about these days. Teaching faculty at UW deserve this balance as well.

Meet the lecturers: Clive Forrester

As we work on securing improvements to the working conditions of teaching-focused faculty at the University of Waterloo, FAUW is interviewing lecturers across campus to find out more about their experiences at Waterloo—and how potential policy changes might affect their work.

Clive Forrester has been a lecturer in the Department of English Language and Literature since 2016.

Clive Forrester from the Department of English Language and Literature

The work of lecturers varies across campus. What does it include for you?

I was hired as a lecturer in the Math Initiative, which is an agreement between the Faculty of Math and the Department of English to offer dedicated sections of ENGL109 – Intro to Academic Writing just for math and computer science students. In addition to ENGL109, I teach a variety of courses dealing with either linguistics or technical writing.

My research is primarily in a branch of linguistics called “forensic linguistics” which investigates the interaction between language and law. I’m particularly interested in courtroom discourse, and a few years ago I served as an expert linguist in a Toronto murder trial.

I’ve had different service roles over the years in the department, including coordinating the awards ceremony, coordinating the department research series, and running teaching squares for faculty in the department. I also have a YouTube channel where I upload videos related to linguistics and writing.

What parts of your work are you most passionate about?

Teaching linguistics is certainly one area that I’m passionate about. Recently, I got the opportunity to develop a new course, “Language, Life, and Literature in the Caribbean,” to be taught as part of the Black Studies Diploma. Though a few years away, I’m looking forward to teaching that course and developing similar ones in the future.

What was the experience of becoming a continuing lecturer like for you?

Now that I’ve been appointed as a continuing lecturer, I can say the road to continuing lecturer status has been dotted with uncertainty. In the absence of a clear formal policy that outlines the progression from the initial appointment as a definite-term to a continuing appointment some five or six years later, everything happens on an ad hoc basis. So, there are no defined milestones to hit, no mid-progression check-in, and no specified date by which an applicant to continuing status needs to be notified. Aside from the undue anxiety this could cause a lecturer, it’s not hard to imagine that a lecturer in such a position might decide to simply take a new appointment somewhere else. In either situation, the department stands to suffer—lecturers anxious because of job security or lecturers leaving for the same reason.

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Professors of Teaching at UBC

We’ve told you about teaching stream professors at the University of Toronto and McMaster University. This week, we head west, to the University of British Columbia. UBC appoints tenure-track and tenured professors of teaching.

UBC’s model of teaching faculty, along with Toronto’s and McMaster’s, is being considered by the policy drafting committee that is updating Policy 76 Faculty Appointments and Policy 77 Tenure and Promotion.

Here are some details from the 2020 UBC Collective Agreement.

There are three ranks: Assistant Professor of Teaching, Associate Professor of Teaching, and Professor of Teaching.
Tenure-track Assistant Professors of Teaching are normally evaluated for tenure and promotion to Associate Professor of Teaching in the fifth year of their appointment.
Associate Professors of Teaching and Professors of Teaching have the same rights to “study leave” as other professorial faculty. Study leaves allow faculty “to pursue study or research, of benefit to the individual and the University.”
Tenure and promotion to Associate Professor of Teaching “requires evidence of excellence in teaching, demonstrated educational leadership, involvement in curriculum development and innovation, and other teaching and learning initiatives. It is expected that Associate Professors of Teaching will keep abreast of current developments in their respective disciplines, and in the field of teaching and learning.”
Promotion to Professor of Teaching requires “evidence of outstanding achievement in teaching and educational leadership, distinction in the field of teaching and learning, sustained and innovative contributions to curriculum development, course design and other initiatives that advance the University’s ability to excel in its teaching and learning mandate. … Promotion to this rank is neither automatic nor based on years of service and it is expected that some persons will not attain this rank.”
“Educational leadership,” a key category for teaching faculty at UBC, includes many activities, such as the scholarship of teaching and learning; curriculum development and renewal, new assessment models, pedagogical innovation; teaching, mentorship and inspiration of colleagues; formal leadership responsibilities in a department, program, or faculty; and other activities that support evidence-based educational excellence, leadership and impact within and beyond the University.

As you can see, UBC has created a distinct career path for teaching faculty that runs in parallel to that of existing professorial stream faculty.

The FAUW representatives on the P76/77 Policy Drafting Committee are working to ensure that teaching faculty members at the University of Waterloo are fairly and rigorously evaluated and their contributions recognised and rewarded. Head to the FAUW website to learn about the committee’s work to recommend new terms and conditions of employment for UW’s teaching faculty members.

Meet the lecturers: Elena Neiterman

First in our series is Elena Neiterman, a continuing lecturer in the Faculty of Health, at the School of Public Health and Health Systems (SHPPS). She came to Waterloo in 2015 from a contract teaching position at McMaster University. Let’s meet Elena!

Elena Neiterman from the School of Public Health and Health Systems

The work of lecturers varies across campus. What does it include for you?

I normally teach six courses per year, including undergraduate courses in Health Promotion, Public Health Ethics, Canadian Health Systems, and Sociology of Aging, and graduate courses in Qualitative Research Methods. I also supervise undergraduate and MSc students.

I do a lot of service activities. I serve on the SPHHS Undergraduate Studies Committee, Recruitment Taskforce, and Annual Performance Review Committee. I also supervise Online Learning Assistants. At the Faculty level, I represent our School as a Teaching Fellow, serve on the Online Teaching Taskforce, and am part of the working group for the Faculty of Health Strategic Plan. At the University level, I am on the CTAPT committee, which aims to provide recommendations on how the university should assess teaching effectiveness in a way that truly captures the amazing work many of our UW instructors do in classrooms and beyond.

Since COVID, I am also casually working as a tech assistant at home, trying to fix the internet and solve Zoom problems. I have five children, and, as any other parent in Ontario, I am navigating my online work and children learning from home.

While my work assignment does not include research, I do quite a lot of it because I find it engaging and fascinating. Currently, I am involved in two big pan-Canadian projects. One examines work experiences of Canadian midwives to identify factors that improve their workplace retention. The other explores mental health-related leaves of absence and subsequent return to work among knowledge workers (academics, accountants, dentists, midwives, nurses, physicians, and teachers).

I also have long-standing interest in women’s reproductive health and work on a number of pedagogy-related smaller research projects, including a textbook on health promotion.

What parts of your work are you most passionate about?

Teaching is my passion. I like being in a classroom and interacting with students. Since COVID, this has become more challenging – I mostly spend my teaching time staring at a camera and I miss seeing my students, but I make do.

Since I teach some required courses in our program, I usually know most of our students. It is really exciting to see “my” first-year students graduating!

Being hired permanently meant that I could finally sleep at night – it is nerve-racking not knowing if you have a job next term.

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