CAUT Policy Statement

1
Trusteeship means the imposition on an academic unit¹ of a chair or head, the imposition on a faculty or school of a dean or director, or the imposition on a library of a director or head librarian, without engaging in the normal consultative or elective procedures that have been established for staffing such offices. Trusteeship excludes the routine appointments of acting chairs, deans, or chief librarians in the event of the temporary absence of the usual incumbent.

2
Trusteeship should be imposed by the President or delegate only when there is clear, persuasive and openly available public evidence that an academic unit cannot carry out its major academic or financial business according to normal academic or financial practice.

3
The procedures for imposing the duration of, and terminating, the trusteeship should be specified in the academic staff Collective Agreement.

4
The trustee(s) should be academics of recognized standing. They should be independent and should not be linked to members or groups of members in the academic unit affected.

5
Trusteeship includes the provision of powers to such trustees that are necessary to administer the department/faculty/library in question; a trustee should hold all the powers given to a regular appointment to the office and be empowered to administer the academic unit according to the procedures and administrative norms of the academic unit.

6
During the course of the Trusteeship, all terms and conditions of the Collective Agreement remain in force.

Approved by Council, November 1994; revised, November 2002;
editorial revisions, June 2010.

Endnote
¹ "Academic Unit" includes departments, faculties, schools, institutes and libraries.