Notes from Senate
Tessa Vanderhart Staff
March certainly came in like a lion, if a flash debate over sessional professors at the monthly meeting of the university’s senate is any indication.
Senate is the representative body entrusted with dictating the university’s policy on a wide range of academic issues, including teaching, academic programming and conferring of degrees, as well as consulting on matters of the university’s finances and vision.
On the first Wednesday of every month, university administrators, including the dean of each faculty and several student representatives, meet to discuss these issues. The meetings are held at 1:30 p.m. in the Senate Chambers, 136 Engineering, and are open to all.
On March 1, senate met to discuss instituting a new interdisciplinary PhD program, among other things.
Szathmáry in India
University president Emöke Szathmáry accompanied Premier Gary Doer on his recent trip to India.
In addition to participating in trade delegations and working to set up partnerships with Indian universities in Bangaloor, India’s technology capital, Szathmáry was able to travel independently of the delegation to meet with sex trade workers.
“India also has a non-fabulous side,” she said. “It was really an eye-opener. You can fall in love with parts of India, but it’s really a love-hate relationship.”
Administration reports
Assistant vice-president (administration) Alan Simms said that the city has announced its intention to pave Chancellor Matheson Blvd. over the summer.
President Szathmary described with optimism her attendance at the meeting of the Council of the Federation, the summit of the premiers and federal government, held Feb. 23-24.
“It did raise the big question,” she noted. “How do we get education to go on the national agenda?”
“You can’t have an economic agenda if you don’t have an educational agenda, but education is not a low ticket item,” Szathmary noted.
Sessional debacle
Senate became unusually heated when a new program proposed by the Planning and Priorities Committee came up: a new PhD in Applied Health Sciences. According to the dean of graduate studies, Jay Doering, the program, “unique to Canada,” will be funded and staffed in collaboration with a number of faculties, making it interdisciplinary.
Science professor Philip Hultin questioned the new program, saying that it is practical only if sessionals take over teaching responsibilities with an already limited budget.
“Our existing programs are starving to death,” said Hultin. “Can we really argue that we are underfunded when we continue to find money for new initiatives?”
Dean of physical education Dennis Hrycaiko said that allowing sessionals to teach undergraduate courses helps to retain the best professors “because the best and brightest really want to work with graduate students.”
Hultin countered that this is an offloading of responsibilities: “I would never ask a sessional to support my teaching.”
Hunter said that the new program will not be instituted without guaranteed funding from all faculties involved.
A motion to approve the new program passed with only one vote in opposition.
