CAUT COUNCIL
The spring 2009 meeting of CAUT Council was held at the Château Laurier in Ottawa from April 23-26.
AWARDS
CAUT Awards for Journalistic Excellence
The award for student journalism was presented to Melissa Tobin for her coverage of hazing incidents at St. FX. Ms. Tobin holds a BA in folklore from Memorial and a Bachelor's degree in Journalism from the University of King's College.
The award for professional journalism was presented to
Douglas Todd for his coverage of Kwantlen Polytechnic University sociologist
Russell Ogden and his controversial research on assisted suicide. Mr. Ogden writes for the Vancouver Sun.
CAUT Distinguished Academic Award
Guy Rocher, Université de Montréal, was presented with the CAUT Distinguished Academic Award by Greg Alain.
CAUT Dedicated Service Awards
The recipients of the CAUT Dedicated Service Awards were recognized, including our own Jim Sacouman.
Donald C. Savage Award
Vic Catano was presented with the Donald C. Savage Award for outstanding achievements in the promotion of collective bargaining at Canadian universities. Vic has a long history of activism at the local, provincial and national levels, and his achievements at the bargaining table at St. Mary's University are well known to us at Acadia and elsewhere in the region. He was hailed by award presenter Doug Lorimer as the most experienced collective bargainer in the country, and commended for tackling the “Maritime discount” and for successfully establishing the first union-run benefits trust in the Canadian academic sector.
ELECTIONS
Vic Catano (St. Mary's) was elected by acclamation as Chair of the Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee. Paddy Musson (Fanshawe College) was elected by acclamation as Chair of the Women's Committee.
Three members-at-large were elected: Cindy Oliver (Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of British Columbia), Anver Saloojee (Ryerson), and newcomer Shelley Reuter (Concordia).
Penni Stewart (York) was re-elected by acclamation as President of CAUT. Wayne Peters (UPEI) was re-elected by acclamation as Vice-President.
New members were elected to the following committees:
● Academic Freedom and Tenure: Jamie Cameron (Osgoode Hall) and Mark Gabbert (Manitoba).
● Collective Bargaining and Economic Benefits: Julia Hughes (UNB) and Bill McConnell (North Island College).
● Elections and Resolutions: Donna Petrie (Thompson Rivers) and Ted Montgomery (OPSEU).
● Librarians: Chris Adams (Saskatchewan).
● Women's: Doreen Fumia (Ryerson), Lisa Sharp (UNB) and Michelle Owen (Winnipeg).
Gordon Shrimpton was re-elected by acclamation as the Speaker of Council, and was the only person during four days of meetings for whom a round of applause was punctuated by whistles and shouts of approval.
CAUT/DECIMA POLL RESULTS
David Robinson, CAUT Associate Executive Director, Research & Advocacy, presented the results of the twice-yearly CAUT/Decima poll “Post-Secondary Education and Canadian Public Opinion.” The spring survey was conducted by telephone with 2,021 adults between April 2-13, 2009.
Some highlights:
University and college teachers and researchers have a great deal of credibility in the eyes of Canadians. Two thirds of respondents agree that we are doing a good job, and most disagree with the notion that we earn too much (23% agree, 18% are neutral, and 48% disagree). 72% trust the opinions of post-secondary educators, and we are regarded as the most trusted source of information on the current debate about government direction of scientific research. David suggested that we capitalize on
this credibility we enjoy with the community. 2/3 of respondents are concerned or very concerned about the cuts to research funding in the last federal budget; 2/3 also believe that governments should not be steering scientific research. Questions on the commercialization of research yield some inconsistencies: 55% think universities and colleges should be working with business when it comes to research, but commercially-influenced research is seen as less “trustworthy” than research that is free from corporate interest.
64% of those surveyed think that it is more difficult to get a university or college education today than it was 10 years ago, primarily because of costs. More than half think tuition should be reduced, and most agree that tuition fees should be eliminated over time.
FEDERAL BUDGET'S IMPACT ON RESEARCH
As this panel discussion was progressing, the President of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, the Presidents of the G13 universities, the Minister of Industry, and the Prime Minister of Canada were assembling to congratulate themselves on the launch of the Canada Excellence Research Chairs program. Sniffer dogs and security guards were on duty in the corridor outside our meeting room, and CAUT delegates (including the Executive Director) were prevented from moving freely about the public areas of the hotel.
Science Funding in Canada: The Case of the Foundations
Richard Peltier
Professor of Physics, University of Toronto; Director of the Centre for Climate Change Science
Dr. Peltier began by acknowledging the scant good news for research in the federal budget: $750 million for the CFI, $2 billion for university infrastructure (although this is a matching fund), $87.5 million over three years for graduate scholarships (although much of that will be directed towards business students), and an increase for the National Research Council's Industrial Research Assistance Program.
Then, of course, the bad news: a $148-million cut to the tri-council granting agencies, and serious cuts to Genome Canada and the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Science (CFCAS). Dr. Peltier hypothesized that the cuts to CFCAS in particular, which will almost certainly spell the end of that research foundation, may have been made at least partially on ideological grounds.
Dr. Peltier argued that the primary and most profound impact of these cuts will be on human
infrastructure. We stand to lose whole research groups that can take a decade to establish, but which can vanish very quickly; many are almost certain to dissolve and reform in more hospitable environments. With our research investment already six times less per capita than in the United States, our competitive position will surely suffer. The decision to cut funding in critical areas such as genomics and climate science is particularly ill-advised, but such unwise decisions are almost inevitable in the current political structure in which science has no place at the table at which decisions are made. Dr. Peltier was referring, of course, to the elimination of the position of Science Advisor, which has cut science's only direct route to government.
Dr. Peltier's predictions are already coming true: the May 4 issue of The Globe & Mail reported on Dr. Rafick-Pierre Sékaly, one of Canada's top AIDS researchers, who cites the federal government's cuts to science funding as one of the reasons he is leaving for the United States, taking a team of 25 researchers with him.
The Enemy is Within the Gates
Ryan McKay
Scientific Director, NANUC (National High Field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Centre), University of Alberta
Dr. McKay addressed the effects of the budget on large-scale national facilities such as NANUC. He described the widespread problem of getting infrastructure funding without operating funding as "the one-night stand of government/university relationships”: it's great in the beginning, but there is often disagreement between the parties about the length of the commitment, and both parties can be left with something they were not expecting! For his own research organization, the funding prospects are “brutal” and getting worse: there are simply no more grants to apply for, and NANUC has had to resort to staff lay-offs and user fees that perpetuate the problem by passing on costs to equally cash-strapped researchers. He criticized this kind of infrastructure-only funding as wasteful, citing the case of the Institute for Biomedical Design, where millions of dollars' worth of equipment sat wrapped in plastic for a year because of a lack of operating funds.
Dr. McKay was also critical of indirect funding costs because they do not trickle down to individual researchers, of the push towards directed research, and of the misguided view that if only we ran research like a business, there would be no waste.
Not surprisingly given the title of Dr. McKay's talk, he does not lay the blame for the current bleak situation solely on the government. Academics saw the push towards directed research and hoped it would go away. Administrators did not stand up and did not show leadership. Dr. McKay cannot say if our university presidents are on board ideologically with directed research or if they realized that it was inevitable and they had better get out of its way or go along with it.
Dr. McKay agreed with the previous panelist that it is extremely important to have a scientific advisor to the Prime Minister. He also urged us to re-assert the importance of basic research as the foundation of discovery so that we can be “honest” in our grant applications.
SSHRC: Academia's Poor Cousin
Marjorie Griffin Cohen
Professor of Political Science, Simon Fraser University
Dr. Cohen, one of the eight academics who initiated the human rights complaint against the CRC program, delivered a critique of the inequities of the tri-council granting agencies. Faculty members in the social sciences, arts and humanities make up 54% of the professoriate, and 56% of graduate students are in these disciplines, yet SSHRC receives only about 14% of the total federal funding to the councils. It is massively underfunded in relationship to the number of professors and graduate students who need research funding. This egregious underfunding has gender implications that reinforce already troubling inequities: 71% of female faculty members are in the SSHRC disciplines, as well as the majority of the female graduate students.
Dr. Cohen also criticized the increasing marketization of research, which she says forces academics into narrow ways of thinking just to get funding and has a negative effect on progressive and critical research. She views the marginalization of basic research and potentially controversial research and the threat to our autonomy in what we research and who researches as extremely dangerous.
WOMEN IN SCIENCES & ENGINEER-ING: CHALLENGES &
ADVANCES
Angelica Stacy
Associate Vice-Provost for Faculty Equity, University of California, Berkeley
In an extremely engaging talk, Dr. Stacy, the second female faculty member ever hired in Chemistry at UC-B, drew our attention to what she called the “leaks” in the academic pipeline where we lose female faculty members, and cited successful strategies for sealing those leaks.
Dr. Stacy focused most on the first leak in the pipeline, which occurs at the job application stage. The percentage of female PhD graduates is much higher than the percentage of female applicants for faculty positions. Simply put, women are not as likely as men to apply for faculty positions in the sciences.
Key to addressing this early source of inequity are proactive search procedures: women need not only to be encouraged but also actually invited to apply. According to the data at UC-B, departments with good track records in hiring women used specific strategies such as ensuring diversity on selection committees, including graduate student input in the search process, circulating job advertisements to women's networks, and establishing contact with women's organizations.
Dr. Stacy emphasized that support from senior administration is important in making advances for women in the sciences, but active leadership that goes beyond merely supporting the efforts of others is the key to real change. She had much praise for UC-B's new chancellor, former University of Toronto President Robert Birgenau, and gave him much of the credit for the positive changes at UC-B.
She also cited his influence at MIT, which hired a significant number of female faculty members in the sciences and then immediately stopped when Birgenau departed for Canada.
She also pointed to some articles that give persuasive (albeit slightly dated) illustrations of gender discrimination in hiring. She cited a July 13, 1997 Washington Post article reporting that blind auditions can explain 30-55% of the increase in women winning orchestral jobs. In a 1999 study published in Sex Roles, Steinpreis, Anders & Ritzke found that university psychology professors prefer 2:1 to hire “Brian Miller” over “Karen Miller” even when the application packages are otherwise identical. Finally, Wennerås and Wold published a study in Nature in 1997 concluding that women applying for a Swedish Medical Research Council postdoctoral fellowship had to be 2.2 times more productive to receive the same competence score as the average male applicant.
ADMINISTRATIVE RESPONSES TO THE ECONOMIC CRISIS
Many speakers and delegates expressed extreme skepticism about the reality of the alleged economic crisis at universities and colleges. Council members shared a strong suspicion that in many cases, the economic downturn is being viewed by post-secondary administrators as an opportunity for reconfiguring academic workplaces, cutting staff, assaulting organized labour and undermining collective bargaining regardless of the actual economic situation at their particular institution. Can't waste a good crisis!
Executive Director Jim Turk surveyed presidents of all CAUT locals to find out what administrations are telling faculty about the economic situation and what actions are being taken. He urged faculty associations to examine administrative responses critically, and to ask the following questions: Is there really an economic crisis at our institution? If so, what is the evidence of this crisis, and what are the causes? If solutions are being proposed, are they appropriate?
There is no doubt that some institutions are indeed in real crisis, but it is also true that in most cases the local problems (including declining enrolments) predate the global situation, and that the fix that administrations find themselves in is at least partly, if not largely, of their own making. Many institutions are facing pension crises because they took contribution holidays during good times and made risky investments. Many others are suffering the effects of university presidents' penchants for building big buildings and incurring enormous capital expenses and ongoing operating expenses.
Across the country, universities and colleges are seeing wage freezes, hiring freezes, program cuts, staff cuts, mandatory unpaid holidays, reductions in teaching assistantships, cuts to student aid, and strongly encouraged early retirements. Institutions are offloading or considering offloading more costs to students through increased tuition and additional fees for services that used to be “free” such as career counselling.
When faculty associations are faced with demands for salary rollbacks or teaching load increases, we must resist them. When administrators attribute that resistance to greed and to lack of concern for the well-being of students and of the institution, we must remind everyone that our working conditions are our students' learning conditions, and that their degradation has long-term consequences for the quality of education and research. Such assaults on labour and collective bargaining are also assaults on the integrity of our academic institutions.
REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
When in the midst of a difficult situation of our own, it is easy to forget that there are at least a dozen other cases of equal difficulty and gravity underway around the country and that CAUT is working on our collective behalf on many fronts at once. There are currently three independent committees of inquiry underway and five ad hoc investigatory committees investigating alleged violations of academic freedom. CAUT is providing legal support to individuals in eight separate matters, and intervening in five legal proceedings and is prepared to intervene in a sixth if the Wightman case here at Acadia is not resolved soon.
CAUT BENEFITS TRUST
The CAUT Benefits Trust was formally ushered into existence at this Council meeting with a unanimous vote of approval. Neil Tudiver reminded delegates that the Trust is not exclusively for unionized faculty members: any group of employees—unionized or non-unionized, faculty or staff or administration—can join the Trust and design their own benefit plan.
CAUT will be providing detailed information and assistance for faculty associations that are interested in joining the Trust.
CONSIDERATION OF CENSURE AT ACADIA UNIVERSITY
Jim Turk and Penni Stewart brought Council delegates up to date on developments in the Wightman case since the fall Council meeting. They briefly described the three meetings they have had with members of the senior administration (Neil Carruthers, John MacFarlane and Akivah Starkman) and a “very long” meeting with Ray Ivany. These meetings involved “full and frank” discussions during which the parties agreed to a mediated process that, in CAUT's view, is very likely to result in a satisfactory resolution of the matter. Based on this progress, Jim and Penni brought forward a motion to defer the vote on the imposition of censure until the November Council meeting. I seconded the motion, and spoke briefly in support of it.
I noted that some AUFA members, no doubt like some Council delegates, were skeptical about the administration's motivation in these discussions and were suspicious that what Jim and Penni described as meaningful progress was in fact more of the delaying tactics with which we are so very familiar.
Given the past conduct of the administration and of its lawyer Eric Durnford, that suspicion is certainly warranted. But I believe that some trust in Jim and Penni's assessment of the situation is also warranted. I also believe that we have, if not yet trust, at least some real hope in the new President's intention and ability to resolve this matter, and that this hope in the new President does not spring solely from our relief that he is not the old President (been there, done that)! I concluded by stating my support for the motion to defer, and more importantly, the membership's support for that motion as indicated at the April AGM.
The motion carried unanimously.
Erin Patterson