Notes from the President’s Luncheon on Academic Freedom

—Bryan Tolson, FAUW President

I want to thank everyone who attended the President’s Luncheon on Academic Freedom last week. For those who missed it, there was a summary in the Daily Bulletin last Friday and I’ve highlighted some key takeaways below. It was a compelling discussion with insightful questions from all, so thank you again to all who participated.

It’s clear that academic freedom is important to our members. It’s also clear that it’s a complicated issue, and I look forward to further discussion. Here are a few points from this event that I think are worth highlighting.

Continue reading “Notes from the President’s Luncheon on Academic Freedom” →

FAUW Execs Appeal to MPPs at OCUFA Queen’s Park Lobby Day

FAUW President Bryan Tolson (Civil and Environmental Engineering) and Treasurer Dan Brown (Computer Science) lobbied at Queen’s Park on March 20, advocating for investment in the university sector, renewal of faculty ranks, and better working conditions for short-term and contract faculty.

Tolson and Brown were part of a team of 25 faculty members from across Ontario, brought together by the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA), which represents 17,000 faculty members and academic librarians at 28 universities across Ontario.

Tolson and Brown met with several MPPs from Waterloo Region and neighbouring Wellington County: Hon. Daiene Vernile (Kitchener Centre), Hon. Kathryn McGarry (Cambridge), Michael Harris (Kitchener-Conestoga), and Ted Arnott (Wellington-Halton Hills); they also met with legislative staff for Catherine Fife (Kitchener-Waterloo). Continue reading “FAUW Execs Appeal to MPPs at OCUFA Queen’s Park Lobby Day” →

Bragging Rights: FAUW’s Contributions to UW’s Canada’s Best Diversity Employers Award

We were please by the University’s announcement last week that it was named one of Canada’s Best Diversity Employers for its commitment to gender equity.

We were especially excited to see two initiatives started by FAUW volunteers—Waterloo Women’s Wednesdays and our Equity & Inclusivity Award—specifically mentioned as contributing factors to the University’s selection!

The Equity & Inclusivity Award is a project of our Status of Women & Equity Committee (SWEC). Waterloo Women’s Wednesdays (W3) is run by a committee with representation from faculty, staff (including our own), students, and postdocs. It is funded in part by FAUW and the Staff Association.

FAUW is actively working on equity issues of all kinds across campus at the Board level, through representatives on policy drafting and other committees, and via our own Status of Women and Equity Committee.

SWEC has working groups investigating a number of areas, including accessibility and accommodations, healthy workplaces, hiring, and the needs of racial and cultural minorities. There will be a call for new members in May.

News From Your Board: March 8 Meeting Recap

—Peter Johnson, director for the Faculty of Environment

Collegial, yet occasionally salty, language ensued at our first meeting after reading week.

The Board received an update from Alan Macnaughton on discussions by the Responsible Investing Working Group, specifically on the possibility of divestment from fossil fuels. Alan indicated that conversations focus on integrating environmental, social, and governance factors in investment decisions, and that government regulations pose challenges to the possibility of divestment.

Of great interest was a quick analysis of data on the gender and appointment type of faculty hires from 2012–2017. We’ll be bringing a fuller analysis to Senate this spring, so stay tuned for more details.

The Board continued its discussion of the Policy Review Project, and of how best to ensure that policies that affect members’ conditions of employment are drafted with full FAUW participation.

Upcoming events and initiatives from FAUW include a survey of members about the fall break schedule (look for this later this month), a new faculty event at the Grad House on March 21 (2:30-4:30), and the Spring General Meeting on April 5 (QNC 2502 from 11:30 to 1:30). More events are listed on our website.

Teaching Materials and Your Intellectual Property Rights (Policy 73)

As an academic community, one of our moral obligations is to openly and freely share our ideas in the hopes that they may benefit others. Given the nature of our jobs, this same principle logically applies to the sharing of teaching materials. Policy 73 describes how intellectual property rights pertain to teaching materials as well as the University’s expectations with regards to the sharing of these materials.

Your rights (section 8b, “Principles”):

The creation of materials required for course management and administration, such as course outlines, final exams and laboratory manuals, is considered an assigned task, and copyright for such material is vested in the University. This does not apply to more detailed teaching materials, such as course notes, for which the copyright belongs to the creator.

Your responsibilities (same section):

However, any of the latter material which has been printed and distributed or made publicly available should also be available for royalty-free use for teaching and research by other members of the University.

Sharing teaching materials respectfully

One of the principles on which the policy is based is that “all contributors to scholarly works should receive appropriate recognition for their contributions.” We would like to remind members of the University community who benefit from royalty-free teaching materials that it is incumbent upon you to respect your colleagues’ work by retaining the original creator’s name on the materials and/or otherwise recognizing their authorship.

This has been a message from the FAUW Lecturers Committee.

Teaching materials: your intellectual property rights

 

February 28 is OCUFA’s Bill 148 Social Media Day of Action

Adapted from a message from Ontario College and University Faculty Associations (OCUFA)

February 28 is OCUFA’s annual social media day of action. The day provides an opportunity for faculty, students, staff, and supporters across Ontario to get the issues of precarious work and fairness for contract faculty (sessionals and definite term lecturers, in Waterloo terms) trending on various social media platforms.

This year’s day of action will be use the momentum generated by Bill 148 to build more support for contract faculty in the lead-up to the provincial election in June.

The goal of the day will be to get as many people as possible to tweet and post Facebook messages to their provincial election candidates. The messages will highlight priorities for contract faculty at our institutions, the need to close gaps in Bill 148, how precarity for contract faculty can affect the quality of education, and where we go from here. Continue reading “February 28 is OCUFA’s Bill 148 Social Media Day of Action” →

News From Your Board: February 15 Meeting Recap

—Sally Gunz, past president

There were two key items on the agenda at our February 15 meeting.

First, the Status of Women and Equity Committee (SWEC), a committee of FAUW, presented a recommendation to change its name to the Equity Committee. The Board supported this recommendation and the change will be put to our Spring General Meeting for approval as it involves a change to our constitution.

Second, the Board was advised that, on February 12, Renison University College faculty members voted to create a new faculty association and constitution, the Renison Association of Academic Staff. This is the first new faculty association in Canada in many years and we passed a unanimous motion congratulating our Renison colleagues. More details of how the relationship between the two associations will play out will be available in due course.

Members of the brand-new Renison Association of Academic Staff

The balance of the meeting was spent addressing more routine matters, reviewing recent events, and planning future ones. The Board congratulated the Hagey Lectures Committee for a very successful event. We are planning a follow-up to the recent Council of Representatives meeting designed to hear more about matters of concern to members. Stay tuned for more on that soon. Finally, we continued a discussion on how we can enhance our role in advising potential faculty members in their decision to join the University.

Diversifying the FAUW Board in the Next Election

—Bryan Tolson, FAUW President

Hi everyone,

It is almost election time for FAUW and we are looking for six good people to join the FAUW Board of Directors! (See our website for a description of the open positions and deadlines.) My term as FAUW president runs to June 2019, so we will get to work together for one year!

While I am very fond of all the current Board members and will be saddened to see any of them leave, contested elections are healthy for an organization and we hope to see multiple candidates for all open positions.

In particular, we are seeking a diverse set of candidates including good representation from women and both visible and invisible minorities. Having a variety of perspectives around the table when we debate issues is key to our success. While the current gender balance on our Board is good, we do need better representation of other minority groups, and we need your help in assembling a slate of candidates that moves us in this direction.

Continue reading “Diversifying the FAUW Board in the Next Election” →

Territorial Acknowledgements and Indigenization: A Primer

Shannon Dea, Philosophy; FAUW vice president

Territorial acknowledgements

If you have received an email from me in the past year, you will have seen this statement in the footer: “I acknowledge that I live and work on the traditional territory of the Neutral, Anishnaabe, and Haudenosaunee peoples. The University of Waterloo is situated on the Haldimand Tract, land promised to Six Nations, which includes six miles on each side of the Grand River.” You have likely heard a similar acknowledgement at campus events in the past year or two. The statement is a territorial acknowledgement.

While reasons for using territorial acknowledgements vary from person to person and from group to group, I now use a territorial acknowledgement in my email, on my course syllabi, at the beginning of research talks, and even in the footnotes of my articles for two main reasons: out of respect for the past and out of commitment to the future.

Respecting the past

I am showing respect for the past in two ways when I use a territorial acknowledgement. First, I connect myself with a centuries-old tradition practiced by First Nations, Inuit, and Métis (FNIM) people. Second, I show my respect for the people who preceded settlers (i.e., non-FNIM folks) on this land. Continue reading “Territorial Acknowledgements and Indigenization: A Primer” →

News From Your Board: February 1 Meeting Recap

—Peter Johnson, director for the Faculty of Environment

This mid-winter Board meeting kicked off with a discussion with the negotiating team about the details of the memorandum of salary settlement. As you have no doubt seen, this settlement shows evidence of the strong productive and collegial relationship between FAUW and the administration, and sets a positive foundation for future salary settlements. A well-deserved note of appreciation to the entire negotiating team for their tireless work on our collective behalf.

In addition to concluding salary negotiations, we are now entering a busy FAUW events season, with many exciting workshops, panels, and meetings over the remainder of the winter term. Of particular note are the upcoming Hagey Lecture, workshops on Navigating University Governance and Writing University Policy, the President’s Luncheon on Academic Freedom, and, looking further ahead, the Spring General Meeting and Tenure & Promotion workshops in April.

Ongoing topics included exam scheduling, specifically discussions with the Registrar’s Office to better understand the current timing of the release of the exam schedule, and the possibility of moving it earlier in the term. We feel that early release of this schedule will be a positive support for both student and instructor mental health.

The recently revealed ‘bug’ in Evaluate, the online course evaluation software used by the University to collect student course perceptions (which are in turn used to evaluate faculty for merit pay), caused much discussion. Though we applaud how the discovery of the bug was handled, there is much work to be done to develop a system of governance to guide the Evaluate project. We look forward to discussing how Evaluate will be used and its governance structure with the University and IST in the future.