Senate meeting notes

JENELLE PETRINCHUK STAFF

President Szathmáry comments on “Maclean’s saga”

At the Sept. 6 U of M senate meeting, U of M President Emöke Szathmáry spent some time talking about objections universities have with the system Maclean’s magazine uses to rank Canadian universities annually. Not everyone has been agreeing with the methodology that is used to compile the rankings.

Recently, 11 Canadian universities decided not to provide Maclean’s with the requested data to be part of the survey.

Szathmáry brought up the fact that the U of M pulled out of the survey 10 years ago. However, she said not participating at that time affected the number of international students attending school here.

Canada does not have a federal department for information on postsecondary education and Szathmáry said university staff at the time felt that the Maclean’s survey was an important informative tool for international students, so the U of M continued with the survey until this year.

Some of the factors that were preventing the U of M from receiving a high position in the rankings were also discussed by Szathmáry. U of M’s low entrance requirements are one factor that played a part in its low rank. Szathmáry pointed out that these entrance requirements are necessary as U of M is the only medical-doctorial university in Manitoba — the Maclean’s rankings put Canadian universities into one of three categories, the other two being undergraduate and comprehensive — and therefore, if students aren’t trained here, they will have to leave the province to find education elsewhere.

It was mentioned that participating in the survey also consumed university resources. “A lot of money is actually spent in compiling this information for Maclean’s,” stated Szathmary. She noted that it takes one person approximately six months to gather it all.

Maclean’s will still be including the U of M in their rankings, using public information. The U of M is now working to ensure that the information available online will correctly reflect the student body.

17 new awards reviewed

The Senate Committee on Awards (SCOA) met on Aug. 3 to review the awards available to U of M students. They presented to the senate a report that included 17 new award offers.

Some examples of the new awards are as follows:

Janice Anderson Memorial Award: An endowment fund of $10,000 has been established to provide bursary support to students in the faculty of social work. This award is available to students who, among other things, demonstrate involvement or volunteerism with the Métis community.

George W. Leroux Memorial Award: An endowment fund of $419,595 has been established to honour George W. Leroux. The interest generated will be used to provide scholarships to students who show a promise in the field of surgery in the faculty of medicine.

Starbucks Scholarship for the Most Promising New Jazz Student: Starbucks locations in Winnipeg are offering $1,000 scholarships to high school students looking to study jazz at the U of M. (Starbucks is also providing this amount to the most accomplished continuing jazz student at the U of M.)

Elizabeth R. (Betty) Fletcher Bursary in Human Ecology: Three bursaries of $1,500 will be offered annually by Gerald L. Fletcher in memory of his late wife.

There were also 16 amendments made to various awards and five awards were cancelled.

Student Advocacy presents report

The Student Advocacy Annual Report for 2004-05 was presented to members of senate at the meeting. The report is very similar to past years and was written by Brandy Usick, director of Student Advocacy and Resource Services and Heather Morris, student advocate.

The Student Advocacy office is in place to ensure students are treated fairly when dealing with the university and to educate people on student rights and responsibilities.

The report states that the office handled 1,705 cases and contacts between Sept 1, 2004 and Aug 31, 2005, which is comparable to the 2003-04 term.

Sixty-eight per cent of issues that students were assisted with were academic issues. These include special requests, complaints, academic deficiency and professional conduct. Other issues involved administrative issues, discipline issues and equity issues.

The report is available to the public on the office’s website.