Proposed changes to AASUA Bylaws

A revision to the AASUA Bylaws is being presented to Council for discussion at next Thursday's meeting (see agenda materials on Whitherleaks). Welcome changes (to me) include election by the full membership of the Vice President, Treasurer, and nominee to the Board of Governors.

Less welcome changes (to me) include the elimination of Members-at-Large on Council, restrictions of consecutive terms on Council to two (the latter two changes will see me off Council at the end of my term in 2014, for the first time in 12 years — I'm sure that's not the motivation!), tripling of the quorum for a general meeting (from 50 to 150), doubling of the number of signatures required for a general meeting (from 50 to 100), and closure of Council meetings to the public (except by invitation of the President). To me, all of these changes are restrictive of involvement in AASUA governance, which can never be a good thing.

Note that these proposed changes are for discussion only at this time. Council will get to vote on any actual changes, which would then go to the membership for a ratification vote. So it's early days yet.

Oh, and incidentally you can see from the proposed budget document that we will be paying (from our dues) CAUT $518,158 and CAFA $256,649 next year. I sure hope we get our money's worth, as I think we're going to need it.

Cuts to TA budgets

Faculty in my Department (Earth and Atmospheric Sciences) have been told to expect a significant (but as yet unknown) cut to the Teaching Assistants budget, and have been asked to do three things:

1. Pick up all summer Research Assistant funding (paid to support TAs over the summer). The Department/Faculty used to pay this in full when I first joined the University in 1997, but has been progressively winding it back, now to zero, with the “requirement” that supervisors pick up the difference. The memo notes: “Faculty members who do not have the financial means to provide summer support will not be able to take on graduate students”.
2. Pick up the increasing costs of the foreign student fee differential.
3. Make do with less TA support, with immediate impact upon teaching. We are asked to “begin considering how you might adjust expectations in the lab portions of your courses to reflect the fact that there will be fewer TAs assigned to multi-section courses and more limited TA resources available for single-section courses.”

The Chair’s memo finishes by saying:

Given the severity of the impending budget cuts, we will begin a process to modify course offerings in our entire suite of undergraduate programs so as to reduce our overall teaching commitment and the number of courses that we are required to teach each year.  These modifications will put us in a better position to react swiftly to a changing financial environment.

I hope Thomas Lukaszuk is reading this.

AB students head for SK

According to various media reports, Saskatchewan universities are being flooded with applications from Albertan students:

MSN CA
CBC News

I guess that's one way for the province to save money!

Email now the communication of record at the UofA

In one of those oh-so-"personal" Employee Digest mailouts, received on Wednesday, we're told that the Office of the Vice-Provost and Associate Vice-President (Information Technology) is "pleased to announce that a new Official Email List Procedure has recently been approved and published in UAPPOL under the existing Information Technology Use and Management Policy."

This new policy and procedure includes the following statements:

2. RESPONSIBILITY TO RECEIVE
It is the responsibility of all students, applicants, faculty and staff to ensure that they are able to receive, access, read and act upon all email sent via official email lists in a timely fashion.… 

Electronic communications sent to official email lists will be deemed received on the next University business day after the day the email was sent, regardless of any error, failure notice, internet service provider problem, virus, email filters or auto-reply related to the recipients’ email, unless the error or problem originated with the University of Alberta. Students, applicants, and staff are expected to check their email account frequently in order to stay current with University communications.

These expectations place all the burden on faculty to "receive" e-mails, but it's worth remembering that the University does not provide us with resources to do this (i.e., the University does not provide us with computers or cell phones). This becomes a problem when deadlines are encountered in the Faculty Agreement, such as responding to FEC or Article 16 (Discipline) issues — if you miss a deadline because you didn't receive an email, you're SOL.

Of course, this new procedure has sailed through governance without any discussion that I'm aware of.

UofC's balanced budget

The University of Calgary has presented a balanced budget in its CIP, which is posted on its website (and uploaded to Whitherleaks).

On page 117, the $40.7m needed to plug the revenue gap has been found from:

• $11.7m from contingency funds
• $27.7m in reduced expenses
• $1.1m in increased revenues

Details of the cuts that have been made to cover the $27.7m expense reduction are found in chapter 11, and include:

• People: Loss of ~50 academic positions by attrition and retirement (although 50 new "stimulus hires" will continue), "significant cuts to sessional teaching budgets", and loss of administrative and support staff positions.
• Programs: 20 programs with enrolments below 20 students will be cut immediately, and reductions in course offerings (40–50 fewer courses in Faculty of Arts alone).
• Enrolment: Reduction of 200 places in Faculty of Arts, 15 in Medicine, 30 in Nursing.
• Strategic initiatives will be delayed or halted.

These cuts are severe, but they are designed to get the job done (i.e., achieving a balanced budget). Meanwhile, at the UofA we face similar cuts while carrying a significant deficit (necessitating further cuts) over to the next few years.

From Global Top 20 to Flagship (maybe) in Alberta

At the public session of the Board of Governors meeting yesterday, there was debate as to whether the word "flagship" should be dropped from the revised Comprehensive Institutional Plan*, because of fear that the Minister of Enterprise and Advanced Education, Thomas Lukaszuk, might not like it.

Fortunately the Board saw sense and retained the term, at the strong urging of Board Chair Doug Goss, and President Samarasekera. Goss was quite aggressive about retaining the term, and suggested that it was Lukaszuk's problem if he didn't like it. Samarasekera agreed, and said that the Board should write to the Minister to ask specifically if this term was a problem.

To quote Doug Goss: "I don't even know why we're talking about this!"  Hear, hear — the discussion took up a significant part of the public session of the meeting, and achieved little except to reveal how frightened some of the Board members are of upsetting Lukaszuk. We're worried about upsetting him?!

Oh yes, and then there was the budget to discuss — oh sorry, we're out of time.

*"A flagship institution with a national and international reputation for excellence has also proven to be a major benefit to Campus Alberta." (CIP p. ii)

Board approves revised CIP

The Board of Governors this morning voted unanimously to approve the revised Comprehensive Institutional Plan and its included budget. Some points to note:

• The University actually made a small surplus of about $27m in 2012-2013 (against an expected deficit of $17m).
• The University is carrying a "structural deficit" of $67m for 2013, made up of loss of the expected 2% budget increase ($12m), the 7.2% budget cut ($43m), and a gap between revenues and expenditures of $12m.
• The University expects the deficit to be $44.7m for 2013-2014, $34.6m for 2014-2015, and $10.0m for 2015-2016. For the same periods, the deficit in "unrestricted net assets" will be $130.0m, $152.7m, and $143.6m.
• These deficits do not yet have Ministerial approval.
• The deficits will be financed through access to available short- and medium-term cash — Administration does not anticipate a cash flow crisis.

The CIP was approved unanimously with one abstention.

David Byrne on the Arts

David Byrne's excellent and eclectic book "How Music Works" includes the following observations on the value of arts to ... business!

Funding future creativity is a worthy investment.... Creativity is a renewable resource that businesses can and do tap into. By this I don't mean that businesses are looking for painters and composers, but that the habit of creative problem-solving translates to any activity we find ourselves engaged in. If the talent and skills are not there, if they're not nurtured, then businesses will be forced to look elsewhere. The arts are good for the economy, and their presence makes for more interesting living as well. Cutting those school arts budgets makes economic recovery harder, not easier. It will leave us with a generation that isn't as used to thinking creatively or in collaboration with others. [David Byrne, How Music Works, McSweeney's, San Fancisco, p. 298]

Cuts at the U of C

The President and Provost of the U of C announced to a meeting of staff and students on May 15 the following proposed cuts for the 2013-2014 academic year (quoted from the U of C website):

• The loss of 50 faculty positions through attrition and retirement. The university continues to recruit the 50 assistant professor positions announced in October 2012, which helps create a measure of academic renewal.
• Cuts to sessional teaching budgets.
• Administrative staff reductions through unfilled vacancies, restructuring and elimination of some positions.
• Elimination of approximately 20 programs that have not enrolled students in recent years. Decisions to eliminate programs will include plans to ensure current students still have good choices and flexible options to finish their degrees.
• A decrease in annual enrolment in the Faculty of Arts of 200 first-year undergraduate positions to ensure a sustainable funding model.
• Delaying or cancelling some strategic initiatives.
• Cuts to equipment and campus infrastructure budgets: less money available to replace aging equipment or to renovate.
• The first ramp of hiring for 50 postdoctoral scholars has been successful; however, the second ramp of hiring an additional 50 - 60 postdoctoral scholars will be more difficult to accomplish.
• Unrelated to the provincial budget cuts, a reduction of 30 first-year nursing seats and 15 first-year medical seats. This is a return to previous levels of enrolment before both programs received one-time funding to temporarily ramp up enrolments.

According to Provost and VP (Academic) Dru Marshall (remember her? She was deputy Provost here until a couple of years ago), the U of C will present a balanced budget for 2013-2014, but the “real pain” will come in the 2014-2015 budget year. An earlier report on a March 21 meeting noted that the U of C has sufficient reserves in contingency funds and savings (?! — now there's a bright idea!), plus other revenue generation and savings plans, to balance the budget for the coming year (i.e., absorbing the full 7.2% cut), and will only start to see the effects of ongoing 0% budget increases in 2014-2015.

Wow! Absorbing the whole 7.2% budget cut with only the damage noted above is impressive. Maybe Dru Marshall was a keeper?

U of C votes in favour of UAPP changes

Results from the University of Calgary Faculty Association (TUCFA) vote on the proposed changes to UAPP are 85% in favour and 15% against, with a turnout of 26% of eligible members voting.

If U of A also votes in favour (when will we hear? — the vote closed some time ago) then the changes will almost certainly pass, but if AASUA members vote against it, because of our voting weight, it will fail.