• Site Map
• Search
• Contact Us
• Français
• Privacy Statement

 

• Home
• News
• About CAUT
• CAUT Past Presidents
• CAUT Privacy Statement
• Council delegates vote to amend governance structure of CAUT
• CAUT Member Associations
• Executive Committee
• CAUT Committees
• CAUT By-Law
• Contact Us
• Issues & Campaigns
• Publications & Research
• Services
• Membership
• CAUT Policies
• Meetings & Events
• Bulletin
• Awards and Scholarships
• Members Only
• Links

Search the website
 

Career Search
 

About CAUT
Council delegates vote to amend governance structure of CAUT

At the last meeting of CAUT Council, delegates voted by a 91% majority to amend the CAUT By-law to ensure better representation of marginalized groups in its governance structure.

“This vote marks a significant day in CAUT history — a day when CAUT defined itself more clearly than ever as an organization dedicated to achieving equity for all its members”, said CAUT President Penni Stewart.

The idea for the new structure came out of discussions during CAUT’s first Equity Forum held in Toronto in February 2009 and was brought to the Executive by the Equity Committee for discussion.  Anver Saloojee, CAUT member-at-large and chair of the Equity Committee noted, “the Executive has been diligent in ensuring that discussions about equity and the role of CAUT in achieving equity for its members remained on the table at every meeting of the Executive until we could come up with a proposal that we could take to Council for a vote.”

In her president’s address to the November 2009 CAUT Council and at the Women’s Caucus at the same Council, Stewart described the general direction of the proposal.

At their meetings in March, both the Equity Committee and the Women's Committee voted to support the proposed changes.

The changes are:

• The creation of two member-at-large Executive Committee positions — one for Aboriginal Academic Staff and the other for Francophone Academic Staff. (No changes were made to either the Francophone Committee or the Aboriginal Academic Staff Working Group.)

• The Contract Academic Staff Committee becomes a Standing Committee of Council. Like all Standing Committees of CAUT, the Chair will be elected by Council and will be a member of the CAUT Executive Committee.

• Three new working groups will be created – the Racialized Academic Staff Working Group, the Academic Staff with Disabilities Working Group and the LGBTQ Working Group. Together with the Women’s Committee, which now becomes the Women’s Working Group, each group will take the lead in developing proposals for CAUT’s equity work in relation to its community and will share ideas and information in a new CAUT standing committee, called the Diversity Council, which replaces the former Equity Committee of the Executive.  Each of the four working groups will choose two members to sit on the Diversity Council which will also have two Co-Chairs, one of which must be a woman. Both Chairs are to be elected by CAUT Council and will become members of the CAUT Executive Committee. Members serving on the Working Groups will be selected following the same process and criteria as all committees of CAUT which take into consideration not only field of expertise but size of institution, geography, linguistics, disciplinary lines and gender.

• Two member-at-large positions remain on the Executive Committee (previously three) and are designated as "general" and elected by Council.