MPHEC

One of the many delights of being a member of the executive of AUFA is the opportunity to travel. Recently I was able to enjoy this advantage with a one day drive, there and back, to attend a MPHEC symposium on recruitment and retention in Moncton. This was a worthwhile event, some of my experience of which I try to capture below. I should say before I turn to this, however, that I was surprised that there was no other representation from Acadia University. This was probably because either the senior administration doesn’t anticipate any problems at Acadia (we do know what the sand in the Botanical garden is for, don’t we?) or they were short of administrative and support staff to cover such a meeting. My sense is, though, that they did make a clear and well understood statement to the symposium by their absence.

This was a well run symposium. It was set with a solid, brief, and interesting document assessing our current and anticipated situation in this area, copies of which are available in the Vaughn in pdf and hard copy form. Among its more striking projections is that Maritime universities will have to fill 1,809 teaching positions in the next 10 years. With this problem, and some interesting discussions from a plenary panel as backdrop, most of the day was spent in discussion groups. And while I usually find using facilitators a barely concealed way of controlling an agenda, those employed here were collegial, fully open to capturing faithfully the views of the participants.

I will report on the work of the group in which I found myself, at least in the non-existential sense. Our group came up with a number of points that seemed to resonate in the reports of some of the other groups. As best my memory and notes will allow, they were the following:

• that the problem that presents itself is primarily one of insufficient teachers, and that accordingly part of the solution rested in regaining a sense of the importance of teaching to the life of the university, to attract and retain those who have a “teaching” orientation
• that recruitment and retention also requires the support necessary to continue a productive scholarly life, in one’s research, and in other scholarly pursuits. Here, greater collaboration between universities in the region was suggested, as was the need to support student research at the graduate level.
• that recruitment might be served by Provincially supported post-docs with a mind to having young colleagues realize the charm of working in the region in their post-doc experience and accordingly commit more fully to a life here
• that merit pay and other differentials was not the way to go, as they undermine the sense of collegiality that is important to recruitment and retention; rather, the way to fix our relative appeal as Maritime universities is enhanced salary grids, meeting or exceeding national standards for similarly defined institutions. (The Faculty Association at UNB employs an agreed to list of 10 comparative universities in its collective agreement to work with their administration, and this was recommended for broader use.)
• that collegiality does matter, that a sense of welcomed and free faculty engagement in the life of the university, in departments, in Senates and in other decision making bodies, was important in making a university attractive to new faculty. It was contended that a greater sense of self determination, in one’s work and workplace, was one of the ways that we might lure back folks who have Ph.D.s but who were currently working in corporate or governmental spheres.
• There was general agreement on enhancing graduate enrolment at this time, especially in Ph.D. programmes, and a concern expressed about the loss of mentors, as senior faculty retire in significant numbers.
• There was support for the greater recognition of the value of part-time faculty’s work, as it appears likely that universities may become increasingly dependent upon them. Many part time faculty may be required to fill a full time complement and others will be required to meet the bubble of enrolment in the next few years.
• There was general support for the MPHEC to take on a greater role with respect to this problem, especially in providing relevant data to policy makers in provincial cabinets.

This was an interesting and worthwhile day, well prepared and collegially conducted. It was especially nice to hear senior administrators who did not appear to believe that they already have figured out the problems and solutions, and for whom the only challenge was trying to communicate their “insights” to us lesser beings who are mere faculty.

I believe that AUFA ought to become even more involved in the work of MPHEC, as a means of advancing the interests of faculty in the region. As I suggested, a fuller report and, I suspect, further meetings of the MPHEC to forge a sense of common purpose on this front, will be forthcoming.

In the Acadia Spirit

Greg Pyrcz

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