Board meeting report: March 2, 2023

Here’s what we talked about at the last meeting of the FAUW Board of Directors:

New Equity Committee Terms of Reference were adopted. Changes include more detail about voting/decision making procedures, a new section on removal of committee members, the new role of equity advocate and facilitator, more detail regarding election of the chair, and further constraints around committee recruitment and selection to prioritize equity in selection.

Online Course Outline Repository. The Board discussed benefits and concerns about online course outline repositories. Look for a message from us about this soon, including examples of what actually needs to be submitted and examples from each faculty.

Vacation poll results. It became clear from the poll results that many faculty members are struggling to take the vacation time to which we are entitled (particularly faculty teaching in all three terms). We will be raising this at FRC, asking what they are doing to ensure our right to take our allocated vacation time, especially as a signatory to the Okanagan Charter.

Equity Data Advisory Group. This group has stopped meeting, yet work on the Equity Survey is incomplete and it is unclear what is happening with the data, when and how it will be shared with the University community, and how often the survey will re-open. Initial data collection was summer-fall 2021, with a brief re-opening in WorkDay in May 2022 to reach the 2/3 faculty response rate but nothing has come of the survey yet and the information online about results is out of date. The Board passed a motion to propose to the FRC that the Equity Data Advisory Group be restarted.

Governance review. The Board reviewed a project outline from CAUT and discussed the composition of the steering committee for the review. CAUT representatives will be invited to a future Board meeting to discuss further.

Graduate TA/RA certification. OrganizeUW, the grassroots campaign to form a union among TAs and RAs, is hoping to address graduate classes. In order to facilitate this, TAs and RAs will be contacting faculty members who teach grad classes with a request to address each class for 3-4 minutes. This is not a request for individual endorsements of OrganizeUW but simply a request to speak with grad students and we encourage you to consider the request.

Reopening the 2021 salary settlement. The administration has agreed to review our last 2021 salary settlement in light of Bill 124 being defeated in court (Bill 124 was the one that limited compensation increases to 1% annually across the Ontario public sector). A recent arbitration decision made it clear that organizations should not wait for the outcome of an appeal before re-opening the negotiations that were constrained by Bill 124.

Policy 33 – Ethical Behaviour. There has been no movement on this very important policy since August 2021. A joint meeting of the Faculty Relations Committee and the Staff Relations Committee was held recently to discuss the 2021 draft, to consider outstanding issues, and to press for implementation of the revised policy as soon as possible.

Policy 12 – Compassionate Care & Bereavement Leave. The Faculty Relations Committee discussed a draft version of this new policy. We want to ensure that (a) there are no unnecessarily burdensome documentation requirements, (b) the definitions of family include all those that we might consider close family, even if the connections may not be conventional, and (c) applications to extend a period of compassionate leave beyond the minimum are consistently and fairly resolved. The Staff Relations Committee is also discussing this draft, and we believe we are close to agreement on all sides.

Policy 57 – Employee Accommodations. The key features of this new policy that we are advocating for are (a) the establishment of a Central Office for processing accommodation requests, and (b) the costs of accommodations should be met from central funding, not from department or faculty budgets. We think it’s essential that the central office, not the individual’s dean, determines the appropriate accommodations for each individual, and works with the individual’s department to avoid any negative impact on their colleagues.

Governance review. The Board reviewed a project proposal from CAUT and will be issuing a call for members for an ad hoc committee soon.

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Board meeting report: February 16, 2023

Here’s what we talked about at the last meeting of the FAUW Board of Directors:

Governance review. The Board reviewed a project proposal from CAUT and will be issuing a call for members for an ad hoc committee soon.

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Board meeting report: February 2, 2023

This was a packed meeting! Here’s what we covered:

Black and Indigenous faculty mentorship. The Equity Committee is creating an informal mentorship program to support faculty hired through the Black and Indigenous Excellence initiatives. FAUW is funding one-on-one meetings to support this.

Policy development. FRC has received new drafts of two policies: Compassionate Care & Bereavement Leave (12) and Employee Accommodations (57). The Board reviewed Policy 12 at this meeting and will discuss 57 at the next. What we negotiated for compassionate care and bereavement leave is documented in our last settlement, and Policy 12 will cover at least those provisions—which are already in place! You can find out what leaves and benefits you have in our Faculty Guide.

One open question is whether requests for extension might be handled by a central office (as is proposed for accommodations under the new Policy 57), rather than by deans or other supervisors/managers (as they currently are). FAUW’s position is that this central, arms-length office is absolutely necessary for fair, equitable, and compassionate treatment of employees. Another question is whether the policy will apply to post-doctoral fellows and research faculty (which we hope it will).

Compensation negotiations. We are starting to look for compensation negotiating team members. A detailed call for members is available on our website; please get in touch with Mary Hardy if you are interested or would like to recommend someone.

Research professors. The Board got caught up on the pre-pandemic progress on representing research professors. To recap: There are significant gaps in the working conditions of research professors compared to faculty and staff groups who have formal representation, and the FAUW membership voted at its 2019 fall general meeting to move forward with representing research professors. We were very close to formal agreement at Faculty Relations Committee about the next steps by March 2020, but discussions were disrupted by the pandemic, and then by work on policies 76 and 77. The Board has agreed to resume work on this now to support this particularly precarious group of faculty.

Pay frequency survey. The Board reviewed the results from our recent poll about bimonthly vs monthly pay frequency. As with the Staff Association’s similar results, this is likely not a strong enough argument to convince the administration to change the pay schedule, but we will keep a watching brief, alongside the Staff Association.

Sessional unionization. A member raised concerns about changes that could come about as a result of the unionization of sessional instructors. We will keep a watchful eye on this issue.

Bookkeeping. The Board endorsed a plan to hire professional bookkeepers, which will come with the ability to do electronic funds transfers and save on some other costs including the cost of our audit.

Board meeting report: January 19, 2023

Here’s what the Board talked about at its last meeting:

The Policy 76/77 update and panel discussion, and the policy drafting committee’s process so far. You can watch the P76/77 panel on Microsoft Stream here (UW login required) and read the PDC members’ report on this blog.
The CAUT Equity Conference is coming up on February 10. Two or three members of the Equity Committee will be attending, and registration is still open.
Policy 3 (Sabbatical and other leaves). The Board agreed to proposed changes to Policy 3 that would allow faculty to transition between sabbatical and sick leave in the event of extended illness. This should be approved at Faculty Relations Committee soon and then sent to the Board of Governors. These changes were prompted by recommendations based on past Academic Freedom & Tenure Committee cases.
FAUW leadership transition. As we announced earlier this month, Lori Curtis has stepped down and vice president Mary Hardy has now assumed the role of president. The Board voted to have president-elect David Porreca begin his term in May this year, instead of July, and to have David join the board in a non-voting capacity until his term as president begins, to facilitate a smoother transition. David is a past president of FAUW (2012–2015) and will bring experience and institutional memory that will be very useful at this time.
Salary Anomaly Working Group. The Board appointed Rashmee Singh, Kate Rybczynski, and Michael Wallace as the FAUW representatives on the working group.
The salary negotiation team. Salary negotiations begin late this year, and will be issuing a call for interested team members in the coming weeks. Please send us any recommendations you have! We need a strong leader for the team, and at least one accountant.
The University’s mask policy. We’ve heard from several members who do not feel safe in small, crowded classrooms without asking students to mask. FAUW is considering asking for the data on which the University is basing its masking decisions.
CUPE sessional unionization. President Mary Hardy met with CUPE representatives and expressed support for their organizing efforts. She notes that there’s no disagreement about who represents whom.
Mary also met with the Staff Association to discuss common issues, including snow days and pension & benefits.

Bleak, but… (GM and board meeting reports: December 2022)

The highlight of the fall general meeting on December 7 was definitely Jay Dolmage’s audio glitching and getting stuck in a loop of him saying “bleak, but” as he tried to provide an update on the employee accommodations policy. (Jay later summarized in the chat: “PDC 57 has some reason to be optimistic that we can move this along in the new year.”)

“Bleak, but…” turns out to be a good summary of how members seem to be feeling about the role of faculty in governance at Waterloo. Policy development keeps stalling, faculty feel like senate meetings are rubber stamping sessions, and we don’t really get a say in a lot of university guidelines and academic processes that affect our work.

But there’s cause for hope. The administration agrees that the policy development process isn’t working, and we’ll be talking about how to fix that as soon as we see how the new Policy 76 process works out. There’s some real desire and momentum right now among members to find better ways of doing things, whether that’s a revised Policy 1 (the policy on policies), moving more items into the Memorandum of Agreement, or considering certification. And, most importantly, a whole lot of faculty members are interested and engaged with these issues and offering some great suggestions. Now we just need to make them happen. Some ideas we’ve heard recently—at this meeting or otherwise—include:

Regular open discussions about hot issues
Mobilizing faculty senators—maybe meeting in advance of senate meetings
Better tracking of member suggestions and Board follow up
Negotiating a workload policy
Solidarity with other employee and student groups at UW
Improving APRs (the process for these is governed by the MoA, but standards are currently set by each Faculty and department)
A member engagement committee to build networks and identify opportunities for members to work on issues
And, of course, the internal governance review that will be starting soon

What do you want to make happen, and how? Let us know in the comments, or contact Mary Hardy, acting president, or David Porreca, president-elect.

2023 negotiation priorities

We asked for ideas for goals in our next round of negotiations, which start in late 2023. Here are the most common suggestions:

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Board meeting report: November 2022

Here’s what the Board of Directors has discussed at recent meetings:

The 2022 Hagey Lecture. The recording of this year’s lecture, delivered by the Stratford Festival’s Antoni Cimolino, is now available.

Council of Representatives: The Board discussed (and supported) suggestions from Council members for FAUW to conduct more surveys and discussions with members. Be sure to ask your representative for more information from the latest Council meeting and FAUW’s new mask posters. We are still looking for representatives from the School of Architecture and the Stratford School.

Meeting tips: FAUW Parliamentarian Katy Fulfer shared a Robert’s Rules tip that unanimous or general consent can be a quick way to dispense of “routine business” or “questions of little importance.” The chair would say something along the lines of “If there is no objection, can be minutes be approved by unanimous consent?” If so, great! No need to deal with Teams lag when looking for virtual hands in getting a seconder. If anyone objects, then the usual process ensues.

Our 2021-22 audit. Our auditor presented the results of the audit for fiscal year 2021-22. The audited financial statements will be presented at the fall general meeting on December 7.

MoA changes. The Board approved minor changes to our Memorandum of Agreement with the University that were necessitated by Tri-Agency funding requirements. The changes still need to be approved by the University President and will be sent to faculty once they’re finalized.

The FAUW governance review. The Board voted to proceed with having Canadian Association of University Teachers lead the governance review. We still need to sort out the details and structure of the review but expect it to get underway soon, so get your input and ideas ready!

Policies 76 and 77. The path forward for resolving these policies was endorsed by lecturers and approved at Senate. We have now exchanged policy drafts with the administration and are determining which items we agree on, and which items the policy drafting committee will work on.

Compensation negotiations. We will soon need to put together a three-person negotiating team to start preparing for our 2023-24 negotiations. We’re also interested in hearing suggestions for negotiating priorities from members—drop them in the comments!

Committee and other appointments. Zelalem Negeri from Statistics and Actuarial Science has joined the FAUW Equity Committee, and Kaishu Wu is now our representative on the OCUFA Contract Faculty Committee, to keep us up-to-date with what’s happening with contract faculty across the province.

Board meeting report (and other updates): September 29, 2022

Here’s what we talked about at the September 29 meeting—plus a couple other updates:

Adjourning meetings. You might find our parliamentarian’s ‘fun fact’ from this meeting useful for your own regular meetings. Because board meetings have a set end time, and a regular schedule, a motion to adjourn is not needed if the meeting has reached its scheduled end time. If there is pending business, it gets carried over automatically to the next scheduled meeting.

New Faculty Dinner. Lori Curtis (FAUW president) noted the success of this year’s New Faculty Dinner, which is co-sponsored by FAUW and the University. We also help coordinate New Faculty Orientation. It’s been great meeting new faculty members in person this year, and we look forward to continue seeing you all at FAUW events!

OCUFA Advocacy Day. The Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations holds an annual “advocacy day,” when representatives from faculty associations meet with members of the provincial parliament to raise awareness about key issues in the postsecondary sector. This year’s Advocacy Day will be an important opportunity to raise faculty concerns with the newly elected members of the provincial parliament and make the case for meaningful investment in public university funding, supporting university research, addressing fairness for contract faculty, and protecting our public universities. This year’s Advocacy Day is November 15, and FAUW plans to send at least one member of the Board.

Six Nations scholarship funding. The second round of scholarship funding has been issued to the Grand River Post Secondary Education Office to support Waterloo students from the Six Nations of the Grand River.

UW’s draft Electronic Monitoring Guideline. The administration shared a draft of this new guideline with FAUW, asking for feedback from FAUW. This is not the first time that FAUW has pointed out that, had employee groups been involved earlier in the process, we could have raised concerns earlier so they could be addressed more easily. This is also not the first time we’ve pointed out that a guideline should probably be an FS-class policy because it very directly concerns our terms of employment. You can expect to see this guideline in place by the provincial deadline of October 11, 2022.

A note on masks: Research shows that providing free masks and giving reminders are effective ways of getting people to wear masks. If you want, you could have your department order free surgical masks, N95s, or cloth masks and filters from Central Stores, and then place a box at the front of your classroom.

Board meeting report: September 15, 2022

The FAUW Board of Directors met for the first time in the 2022–23 academic year on September 15. For those new to the blog, we (try to) provide updates after (most) board meetings, to keep members up to date on what we’re working on.

At this meeting:

The board welcomed new directors and FAUW’s new executive manager, Matthew Root. If you missed it in our latest newsletter, Matt’s background is in labour relations, specifically in the broader public sector and post-secondary education fields, and he started in August. New directors this year are Nancy Worth (Geography), Shannon Majowicz (School of Public Health Sciences), and Paul Wehr (Psychology). See the full list of directors here.

Parliamentarian Katy Fulfer gave a refresher on what a parliamentarian is:

A parliamentarian is an advisor to an organization, including but not limited to the president, a meeting chair, officers, committees, and members, on rules of order (47:46). Their advice is non-binding. The president or (in a meeting) the meeting chair gets to make the final decision about procedure.

I imagine the parliamentarian like an angel on your shoulder, whispering advice. In the lingo of the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons, this angel is lawful neutral. The lawful part is probably obvious. The neutrality speaks to the parliamentarian’s role as a consultant. They do not participate in debate, and Robert’s Rules of Order goes as far to say they should abstain from voting unless ballots are used, where their vote will not be seen by members (47.55).

Policy updates

FAUW President Lori Curtis expanded on some updates delivered at the August general meeting about the status of some policy issues. While we hear a lot about Policy 76/77, Policy 57 (Accommodations), Policy 12 (Compassionate Care Leave), and Policy 33 (Ethical behaviour) also remain incomplete. Our FAUW reps are pushing for movement on P57 and P12 at their PDCs. It is our understanding that Policy 33 is with the Secretariat. Lori also noted that FAUW brought up the Salary Anomaly Review again at the last Faculty Relations Committee meeting. While administration states they are fully supportive of the process beginning, we will keep pushing for this to actually move it forward. We also reminded the administration about the letters from the Equity and Lecturers committees with recommendations for improving the review process.

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Board meeting report: February 17 & March 3, 2022

Here’s the non-confidential stuff from the last couple of Board meetings:

Appointments

The Board formally signed off on a new Equity Committee member. Committee appointments are typically approved all at once in the spring, at the recommendation of the committees, but Clive Forrester joined the committee recently to fill a gap.

The Board also appointed its first Parliamentarian (Katy Fulfer), a chair for the 2022 Spring General Meeting (Moira Glerum), three new members of the Nominating and Elections Committee (Mary Hardy, Narveen Jandu, and Dorothy Hadfield), and Ada Hurst as this year’s FAUW rep on the Online Teaching Awards Evaluation Committee. We received a lot of interest in that last one in particular and it’s very exciting to see so many people eager to offer their expertise in service of FAUW members.

Resources for instructors

WUSA wants to know what investments/resources would be necessary for instructors to be positioned to better accommodate students and disincentivize those who are sick from attending in-person classes, both in the current situation and in the future. If you have any suggestions, please comment below or send them to fauw@uwaterloo.ca.

Policy 76/77

FRC is not making as much progress as we expected this term and we will have a more fulsome update about that (hopefully very) soon.

Election procedures

The Board approved updated election procedures, which you can find on the FAUW website. There were only minor changes this year to clarify a few things and better account for submitting nominations online. The Board voted to prioritize Black faculty, Indigenous faculty, and faculty with disabilities in the tie-breaking procedure until such time as it is appropriate to revisit those priorities.

Board meeting report: February 3, 2022

Here’s some of what we talked about at the last FAUW Board of Directors meeting:

Teaching assessment. The new student course perception (SCP) survey tool is launching this term, and FAUW (still) has concerns about implementing the new survey tool. In particular, we’re concerned that it’s being rolled out without training on how results will affect APR scores and before complementary teaching assessment methods are in place.

There is a large body of research that demonstrates unavoidable bias in SCPs and consequently argues they should never be used for summative assessment. The Renison Association of Academic Staff has reached agreement in its Collective Agreement that course evaluations will not be a required part of annual reviews nor tenure and promotion processes. In 2018, the arbitrator in a case at Ryerson ruled that student evaluations of teaching can’t be used to measure teaching effectiveness for promotion or tenure, based on expert opinions that student evaluations cannot be used to assess teaching effectiveness.

Return to campus. The Board discussed the administration’s response to our list of demands for a safe return and better consultation with employees, and debriefed the January 31 FAUW town hall meeting, which more than 320 faculty members attended. You can find answers to many questions on our updated COVID-19 page, along with new questions we’ve posed to the administration following the town hall. We also noted OCUFA’s recent news release, “Faculty and academic librarian voices ignored as universities rush return to in-person learning.”

FAUW staff. Katie Damphouse is back from leave and is once again your go-to person for help with navigating workplace policies and procedures! Hiring for the Executive Manager position is under way. We ask for your continued patience as Katie ramps up to full time and we complete the hiring process for the Executive Manager.

Council of Representatives. We set the agenda for the February 14 Council of Reps meeting, focusing on the return to campus, the state of collegial governance at UW, and the vacancies our Nominating and Elections Committee is currently working to fill. Talk to your Council member for more details!