What can the endowment do for us? The Berea college example.

UBC Student Senator Alfie Lee posted this New York Times article on facebook a few days ago. I think it's worth thinking pretty hard about. Berea College, which outwardly looks like a typical New England private school, uses it's 1.1 billion dollar endowment for students. From the Berea website:/

Berea continues to build upon a distinctive history of 150 years of learning, labor and service, and find new ways to apply our mission (the Great Commitments) to contemporary times by promoting kinship among all people, serving communities in Appalachia and beyond and living sustainably to conserve limited natural resources....
Berea continues to build upon a distinctive history of 150 years of learning, labor and service, and find new ways to apply our mission (the Great Commitments) to contemporary times by promoting kinship among all people, serving communities in Appalachia and beyond and living sustainably to conserve limited natural resources

Now true, this college is different from UBC in a lot of ways. It's much smaller, not a research institution, has a bigger endowment (UBC's is about 700 million) and only accepts low-income students. Students work 10 hours a week on campus and pay no tuition. Food comes from the on-campus farm, furniture in the workshops, and crafts are produced for sale. Still though, this school is an example of what it looks like to actually live up to the high aspirations of lofty mission statements (like UBC's Trek 2010), and using an endowment fund for this purpose. UBC's endowment fund definitely has potential benefits to students and research. But the debates about how much to use now, how much to save, and to what lengths to go to enrich the endowment (by leasing out our land for development, for instance) are hugely important.

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Welcome to the University club

News and analysis by Tariq Ahmed, UBC law graduate and former Senator.

Depending on how deeply buried in the library you’ve been for the last few weeks, you may have heard about Premier Campbell’s trip around the province waving his magic wand and turning everything short of a high school into a “university”. If you want to play catch-up, check out the premier’s media gallery for confetti-filled photos and cut-and-paste news releases that go beyond the recommendations of Campus 2020 report, which included only three new teaching intensive “regional universities”.

Pretty well any media coverage that’s done more than simply reprint part of the government press release has done a good job of going behind the photo-op to look at what (if anything) these changes mean. Of note are The Vancouver Sun, the always great Vaughn Palmer, the Victoria Times Colonist (bonus points for referencing Spinal Tap), the Georgia Straight, and Macleans On Campus.

I don’t really have much I can add to the pieces, but the idea of studying welding or hair-dressing at a university seems counterintuitive to me. I have a great respect for trades and colleges in general, but don’t know that these are programs reflect the culture of research and inquiry typically associated with universities in this part of the world. I’d be interested to know what kind of support these announcements have from students at these institutions since there seems to have been little mention of that so far. A few quick and cursory Google searches yielded little beside a supportive statement) from the UCFV student union and a letter from a student at Malaspina who is against the new name complaining that “VIU sounds like a serious infection”.

What’s also a little distressing is the degree to which these universities to-be have allowed themselves to become pre-writ publicity for the Premier. The current Emily Carr, Kwantlen College and Capilano College webpages have even more beaming Gordon Campbell that the BC Liberal website. The University College of the Fraser Valley and Malaspina deserve props for doing things in a much more non-partisan manner. Though perhaps the former group is just getting a head start on the buttering-up since they’ve come to realize how desperate they’ll be for more money!

Despite what Facebook says (apparently there’s already a University of the Fraser Valley network – cart, what are you doing there in front of the horse?), these new universities have yet to come into existence. Last week Bill 34, the University Amendment Act, 2008 was introduced in the legislature and is at first reading, release here. There are few things in here that are probably of little interest to anyone but a nerd like me, but I’ll mention them anyway, behind the jump:

• The creation of a new tier for the renamed schools: “special purpose, teaching university” (“SPTU”).


• What’s interesting is that these amendments will give the government the authority to designate other schools as SPTUs by Order in Council, so other such sprees could occur on a whim (hello University of Spuzzum!). This is different from the “Old Four” (UBC, SFU, UVic and UNBC; but not TRU which has its own act) whose existence is specifically enshrined in the University Act (“the Act”), meaning changes are tougher to make.


• Chancellors at all universities (including UBC) will no longer be elected by the convocation (which is mainly made up of alumni), but rather “appointed by the board on nomination by the alumni association and after consultation with the senate or, in the case of the University of British Columbia, after consultation with the council [of senates]”. This may allow for some administrative convenience (UBC has been without a Chancellor for months), but seems to send the message that alumni have little place in guiding their alma matter (well except for phone calls at dinner time asking you to donate money).
  
  [extremely nerdy Peets-esque side note: Section 17 of the current Act says that “[t]he chancellor is to confer all degrees”. Ms. Morgan-Silvester’s term doesn’t start until July. Section 13 sets out that “[t]he president of the university holds the office of vice chancellor”, but doesn’t set out what duties (if any) a vice chancellor is to perform, while explicitly saying what the chancellor is to do. I could see arguments going both ways, but I’m left wondering if the degrees that are to be granted at this Spring’s congregation are even valid by law…]


• Composition of the SPTU senates will be significantly different than at the “Old Four” (though they share the same BoG structure). Among the changes, SPTU senates will have fewer faculty members, far fewer students, far fewer alumni, but the addition of support staff and a non-voting board-appointed member seats. Seems a little surprising that given the mandate of a “teaching university” there’d be a desire for less input from teachers and students in deciding academic matters!


• There are also some differences in the responsibilities given to SPTU senates. I won’t list them all, but the general theme is a shift to less senate power and more board control. I think there’s room for relief that the “traditional” university senates were not reformed in such a way.


• The differences between the intended functions of the “old four” and “special purpose, teaching” universities becomes clear. Traditional universities currently have a wide mandate under the Act to “provide instruction in all branches of knowledge”, to “establish facilities for the pursuit of original research in all branches of knowledge”, to “provide a program of continuing education in all academic and cultural fields throughout British Columbia” and so on. SPTUs, on the other hand, have no such freedom or mandate. They are to teach only what and where the government tells them, and again this can be changed on a whim.


• There are consequential and related changes to other acts, the most noteworthy of which is the renaming of the TRU (which is governed by a separate Thompson Rivers University Act) university council to a senate. Unfortunately for TRU students, the re-christened senate won’t have any expanded student representation. Like the SPTUs its senate will have a limited student voice with four elected students.

It will certainly be interesting to see what these changes will bring in the coming months and years and whether the government will approach the other recommendations in the Campus 2020 report with the same enthusiasm. Achieving parity of Aboriginal post-secondary outcomes by 2020, for example, will require more than a name change and some confetti.

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UBC Farm politics, elaboration of.

If you've voted in the current student referendum, you may have noticed that there is no question about the UBC Farm. Most people of course, wouldn't have expected one, but it is a surprise to some. The Friends of the Farm started a campaign to get a question on the referendum ballot which would see students providing permanent funding for the Farm. A big step for sure. But this, and why it was ultimately abandoned as a funding/advocacy strategy is only one piece in the puzzle of convoluted politics that the UBC Farm is in the middle of.

Brendon wrote a good post about some of this earlier,HERE. I encourage you to read his post. There's more back story, and some more recent developments, however.

The Farm, since its existence in its current form as a multi-use education/academic/community resource has had a tough fight for institutional legitimacy and enough funding. That's not for lack of support from its home faculty, Land and Food Systems, but because first, it's a strange and hard-to-define space, and second, its land is a 250 million dollar cash cow waiting to be sold. These facts produce a climate in which the Farm's very productive, vibrant, ambiguity can be exploited in order to manipulate decisions and planning processes toward institutionally desirable outcomes. This attitude, which seeks to dissect out various "uses" and what fraction of land each occupies so that the rest can be cashed in to real estate development is patently against the desire of most students, faculty, and community members. Let alone against the spirit of UBC's much-vaunted mission statement, Trek 2010.

So what's going on? There's a few levels of really important people in this political scene. There's the very convincing folks in the UBC treasury office that have converted UBC's brass that a large-endowment strategy is the best direction for the institution. Thank Byron Braley and Terry Sumner for that. They in turn have influence over people like Nancy Knight, UBC's VP Planning, who have alot of power in determining the planning processes and baselines from which consultations are formulated. She in turn informs by the Board of Governors, which, being populated by business-type appointees, is disposed to like alot of money. Then there's president Toope, who seems genuinely well-meaning, but either doesn't know too much about it or doesn't have too much real leadership. On the other hand, there's some folks at Vancouver City Hall and the GVRD who have some ideas about local food systems and see the UBC farm as a boon. In the same type of vein are the residents of the University Neighbourhoods who see the farm as a community amenity and green space. Then there's the academic and student community, whose support will be the most important ultimately.

UBC's desire to sell off the Farm land is no secret. But here's a few incidents to put you on your guard about the manner in which it's trying to manage this:

• Way back in 2005 the VP Academic & Provost and the UBC treasury office paid for a report to be written about how much land would be necessary for the UBC Farm to function. This study, which was thought to be a positive step in solidifying the Farm's uses of the land, has never materialized. It was researched and written long ago by Erik Lees, but since its completion, has been suppressed. Very good sources tell me that this report was revised more than seven times (rewrite #7 was due in July 06, and hasn't been seen since), and looks very different now than it did originally. If I can say "now" at all - it doesn't technically exist. It doesn't take a political scientists to realize that the UBC administration is suppressing this document, even though (or especially because?) they themselves commissioned it, since it does not jive with their vision.
• UBC a few months ago the Campus and Community Planning office released some Requests for Proposals (RFPs). These are basically calls for consultants of various kinds to carry out a technical study. One of the RFPs was to do land-use planning in the "academic precinct" in South Campus, which includes the Botanical Gardens nursery, animal care facility, TRIUMF, BC Research, etc. In the terms of reference for the RFP, the UBC Farm's land was not included in this precinct. While this may seem like a low-level technical item, it's important, and it's nefarious. Technical studies and reports are what decisions are typically based on. When a political decision (like determining that RFP 's peopgraphic scope for the "academic precinct" in Sounth Campus should exclude the farm) is made by some anonymous person in the CC&P office, it's almost impossible to be accountable. In this case, it was too "low level" for the Provost or the Dean of LFS to know anything about, but such a thing could turn out to be tremendously important. Deligitimizing the Farm as an academic learning space is a strategy that is being used here.
• Communication dissonance. Last year, when the results of the Campus Plan's extensive online survey was published, the UBC Farm was the single most mentioned topic. This month, when I attended an all-day campus planning design workshop, one of the instructions in the booklet was to retain a couple acres for a teaching and research farm. The base-line set for these creative workshops will materially guide their results, and the resulting options we're left with. And there's a clear dissonance. While data can be clear from consultation, it is up to Nancy Knight and the C&CP office to summarize and present it. I've heard considerable spin in these summaries before. The level of reasonable baselines can only be really established through popular sentiment, which some of the planners hope to slyly ignore.

As my good friend Rona says, I'll support the endowment next time it lowers someone's tuition. In the meantime, I'd like to see one of the best places at UBC continue to thrive. The next few months of consultation in the Campus Plan process will be critical to send a clear message about this. Please participate with your eyes open. Here's the campus plan website, which will tell you how to do so.

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Budget "cuts" are a pretty good idea.

As Tim mentioned below, the BC government had decided to reshuffle this year's post secondary education money, as reported in the Vancouver Sun. The result is that universities lose out on a percentage or two of funding and smaller colleges and professional schools get a boost. UBC specifically is losing 8.7 million dollars from its general operating budget, and SFU about 4 million. In today's Ubyssey, the AMS VP External Stef Ratjen has a letter condemning this decision (click!). And she makes alot of good points. Thing is, if you step out of the reactionary mindset of a UBC student that's just been shafted, this decision makes a whole lot of sense. To get a few things straight: this isn't a cut to post-secondary education, it's a redistribution from what the schools were told to expect for this year. Since the budgeting work for the coming fiscal year is mostly done on the basis of those expectations, it is a bit of a shock. As it says in the article, UBC (and all schools) are still getting more money than last year, event after the redistribution.

The Campus 2020 vision laid out ambitious goals in terms of accessibility and especially aboriginal participation in PSE. This shift in funds is strategically targeted in a way that makes sense with that. In the Sun article it says that the money is for recruiting aboriginal students and increasing programs that are relevant to the current job market. Colleges and professional schools are better positioned for those purposes than we are, as a big research-based institution. They're not as costly to attend, and the less centralized location and more direct application to the job market makes them more accessible to non-urban communities. Campus 2020 doesn't just talk about UBC and SFU - it's a more holistic document. And to really address accessibility, funding a diversity of more "practical" programs is a good approach. We need to get off of our high horse and realize that UBC isn't the be-all and end-all of higher education. If we don't have infinity resources, others benefiting from funding will sometimes result in UBC losing out a bit. And I can live with that.

The troubling thing is that knowing UBC, the shortfall probably won't come out of things students would care the least about. Expensive institutional constructions projects? check. Good and improving quality of education? Still missing.

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Financial Aid and Tuition

I have been meaning to post about this for quite some time now, being heavily subsidized by a european government to study one of the most expensive programs in a college (medical) for a registration fee (covering a half year buspass as well as heavily discounted warm lunches) of 200 Euros (300 CAD) a semester.

See this NY Times article which reports ivy league colleges (Brown, Harvard) and Stanford following a wider trend of waiving tuition for lower income students.


While relieving some of the financial load of lower income students solves part of the problem, cost of living is an unaccounted factor which seems at times deemphasized when talking about the whole issue surrounding tuition.

In Canada and North America in general, the trend is for lower income students to borrow money from the government or a private source, and pay it back afterwards with interest. The trend is similar here in Germany, but with some key differences.

By German law, parents who make over a certain amount are required to support their children's cost of living (housing, food, school registration fees). Yes, children have the right to sue their parents, and some even do. Tuition has been a non-issue until two years ago, when some regions implemented tuition as high as 400 Euros (600 CAD) per semester.

If the parents' income falls below a certain income bracket, the German Ministry of Education (link in German) chips in, to be paid back post graduation, in chunks determined by how much the graduate makes entering the job market. In instances when the graduate is yet again below a certain income standard, they are waived these repayments and thus have their education paid for fully by the government.

By the way, the Ministry of Advanced Education in British Columbia has been mumbling about similar repayment policies for a while, and this has been regarded as controversial by some.

While Germany's system is by no means perfect, it seems to allow for greater accessibility towards advanced education. I'll follow up with some numbers and stats later, but it creates some interesting social attitudes.

For one, there is a very relaxed attitude about university. Whereas UBC felt like a factory that churned out one graduate at a time, colleges here seem like a stroll through the park, with time to smell the roses so to speak. In classes, there are almost never any assignments - only a final exam. There is much less pressure in general to finish on time. This take it or leave it atmosphere has its pros and cons.

The pro is that it seems like students that are self motivated are allowed to thrive. They are not bogged down by assignments which confine the degree to which they want to steer their learning within a semester. I have met the most brilliant people during my short stay here, who in the truest sense of the word are intellectuals.

Unfortunately, for the less motivated, it has been suggested that it takes them years and years to finish even their undergraduate degree. This was the social argument from the conservatives behind the introduction of tuition fees.

I am no economist, but I expect one to say something about Canada having the advantage of individuals entering the job market at an earlier age and thus spurting the economy.

I would argue that this might be true only because German men are still required by law to either receive military training or finish a year of civil service after high school.

While Germany's education system is by no means perfect, its financial aid network seems to me much more equitable, allowing students to pursue the field of study of their interest, instead of having to worry about whether this degree will lead towards a job which will allow them to pay off their debts. Thus, it seems to me that over here, we enjoy a social safety net which better separates academic interest from the pressures of economy than in Canada.

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UBC Farm: Why they aren't taking a referendum question to students this March

Most students know by now that the future of the UBC Farm is shrouded in uncertainty and controversy. This year strong student supporters of the Farm (particularly Friends of the Farm), wanted to hold a referendum question asking students to increase their student fees to support the farm’s programs and development. The hope was that a passed referendum would show UBC just how much the community supports the farm, and would help secure the farm’s future. But the current political situation within UBC and the region has made some supporters of the referendum question if now is really the right time.

Find out why behind the jump...


A brief history of the UBC Farm:

When UBC first decided to build market housing on campus, they ran into some concerns and push-back from the community (students, faculty, staff, residents in Vancouver and the UEL). So, the GVRD stepped in and said that there would be some regulations and guidelines for how UBC could develop that market housing community. Those rules were all outlined in the Official Community Plan (OCP). Of course, the Farm sits in the middle of prime land that the University ultimately wants to sell to developers. After public outcry over the farm in the development of the OCP, the farm was slated for “future housing reserves” – meaning that they weren’t going to develop housing there right away, but it would be set aside, and we would come back to it later to make a decision (that date is supposed to be 2012).

Of course, this stamp of “future housing reserves” also gave UBC an excuse to not invest in the Farm, and refuse to help build its research capacity and refuse to see its value as a community amenity. In fact, when some market housing residents worked with the farm to create a community garden, UBC denied the proposal and said it wasn’t allowed! UBC has been actively impeding any development of the farm for many years, so that they can more easily deny the farm’s importance in 2012 when the issue is up for consideration.

The current situation:

To understand the current situation, you have to understand some local politics. UBC would like to make changes to the South Campus Neighbourhood Plan – they would like to densify the neighbourhood (add more units, make more money). This requires a change to the OCP, which requires approval from the GVRD.

However, the community has some allies in the GVRD who have an interest in a) preserving the farm, and b) seeing UBC become part of the City of Vancouver. Both of these fit into policies that the GVRD already has (for the farm, they are worried about food security and how quickly farmland in the region is being depleted, for governance, they GVRD would like all electoral areas to become part of a municipality). Therefore, some elected officials at the GVRD were saying to UBC: “We’ll let you densify the South Campus Neighbourhood, if you promise to deal with the farm issue and do a governance review.”

Well, UBC doesn’t really like the prospect of being told what to do by the GVRD when it comes to the Farm or governance, so at the most recent Board of Governors meeting, UBC decided not to pursue the South Campus Neighbourhood densification – for now…

But to appease the GVRD, UBC also said that they are going to deal with the farm issue and the governance review right now. I told the GVRD at a recent meeting that I didn’t really believe UBC’s commitment to dealing with the governance issue – I genuinely believe they are dragging their feet, they have no interest . And the farm issue is going to be dealt with through the Vancouver Campus Plan…this is where the concerns from Friends of the Farm comes from.

Hidden motives:

Nancy Knight, UBC’s Associate VP Campus & Community Planning, has decided to ‘deal with the farm issue’ through the Vancouver Campus Planning process. That may sound like a good idea at first, but its much more complex than it seems.

The Campus Plan process is an institutional planning process, meaning UBC has complete control over that process, meaning the GVRD has no say in what decisions are made. Thus, when the farm gets addressed through the Campus Plan, we lose some really powerful allies in the GVRD who could put a lot more public pressure on UBC to “do the right thing.” For now, we as students and as members of the University community have to flood the Campus Planning process in order to save the farm. Of course, we all know that UBC isn’t that great at listening to students, and is quite selective about what it hears in consultation processes.

The point is that if the farm review is part of any OCP changes, then the broader community, including the GVRD, and the UNA residents have some sort of say in what happens to the farm. If it’s a Campus Plan process, then UBC gets the ultimate say, and the GVRD really has power to interfere. The Campus Plan is about institutional spaces - aka, learning and research spaces. Taking care of the farm through the campus plan process conveniently means that UBC can look at it primarily for its research value, and thus it’s easier justifying that it move to the bio sciences research area – the same amount of research can occur no matter where its located.

Now add to this the fact that Nancy Knight and the team at Campus & Community Planning have gotten external consultants to come in and review the “potential” of the farm. These consultants were chosen without letting the farm or the faculty of Land and Food Systems know, and it has mostly been all behind closed doors. Nancy Knight wants to have these consultants come back and say: “the Farm is very valuable, but they only need half the land and could probably move to the Bio-Sciences research area and still do the same great work.” Perhaps she sees this as some sort of compromise between the Board’s agenda to maximize the $250 million that can be made off of that area, while still preserving some sense of a farm for the community.

As long as the Farm issue is dealt with through the Campus Plan, the result is going to be cutting the area by at least half, or moving it way down to the bottom of campus in a very remote and inconvenient location, or both.

The other thing to consider, is this process to deal with the farm through the Campus Plan is only looking at the farm from a research-value standpoint, and not from a community amenity standpoint. The Farm is so much more than a research facility, it’s a place that brings students and residents and researchers and learning all together in one place. This is more than just an institutional facility, it’s a community facility, and the community should have a much greater say about its future.

Canceling the Farm Referendum

I told the Friends of the Farm that it was a big mistake to back down from the referendum now. The concern is that the political situation is too tense right now to take the risk. I say that a referendum is always going to be extremely risky. The only reason there are more backroom deals being made about the farm right now is because UBC is facing a lot of pressure from the GVRD, students and the community-at-large to save the farm. As long as UBC is facing pressure on the Farm, they are going to push back, and push back hard. The farm lands are worth over $250 million dollars in Endowment revenue. We’re up against a huge beast, and that is never going to change.

But, if we as students could come to the table and say “students care about the farm so much that we are willing to pay out of our own pockets to develop the farm’s capacity” then we’re in a really strong negotiating position. Don’t forget, it’s UBC who has been financially neglecting and starving the farm for years, and its students who are stepping up and footing the bill.

If the referendum were to fail, then it would be a tragedy. But, as far as I’m concerned, certain people within the University are always going to misconstrue the evidence and use any referendum outcome against us. But there are also a significant number of people in the University who will take a passed referendum seriously, and that will be way more powerful than the few who discredit it.

The Farm needs a student movement behind it right now, and there is nothing better to get a student movement started than through a “Save the Farm referendum campaign.” Getting hundreds of students around campus, handing out pamphlets and saying “UBC is trying to take away our farm, we can’t let that happen” – what better way to start a genuine student-movement. That’s something almost all students can say yes to.

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Sterling example of effective advocacy - Universities Allied for Essential Medicines

Students spend alot of time agonizing over how to be effective advocates for change. Emma Preston, a founding member of UBC UAEM, and this year's BC Rhodes Scholar, tells of how this group made the university fall head over heals for them.

Billions of people, primarily in poor countries, lack access to lifesaving medicines; millions more suffer from diseases for which no adequate treatment exists. Universities can change this. Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) is a hands-on student organization that focuses on changing university policies in order to increase access to essential medicines in developing countries (http://www.essentialmedicine.org/). Our mission is two fold. Firstly, to urge universities to ensure that biomedical end products, such as drugs, developed in campus labs are accessible in developing countries, and secondly, to facilitate and promote research on neglected tropical diseases, or those diseases predominantly affecting people who are too poor to constitute a market attractive to private-sector research and development investment. University scientists are major contributors to the drug development pipeline. At the same time, universities have an avowed commitment to advancing the public good. As members of these universities, our fundamental goal is to hold them to this commitment. With a small but committed group of students, representative of the diverse student body at UBC and with some key supporters in the local and international community, we weren’t afraid to think big.

The UBC chapter of UAEM has been active for over two years and is part of a growing global movement of students dedicated to making research and science more globally responsible (http://ubcuaem.wordpress.com/). This past November, UBC announced it self as the first university in Canada to commit to providing people in poor countries with easier access to its innovations, stating that “ensuring global access to discoveries and technologies developed at UBC is an important element in achieving the TREK vision. UBC technologies have the potential to generate significant societal impacts, and our technologies relating to the advancement of health, the protection of the environment and the promotion of sustainability have the most obvious benefits for a global society.” The press release noted Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) as "catalysts" for the decision (http://www.uilo.ubc.ca/global.asp).

The UBC Chapter of UAEM (pronounced “you-aim”) was founded in 2005 by Patricia Kretz, currently a fourth year UBC medical student. Initially, the group consisted of a small number of concerned students meeting at random locations about once a week. A mixed bag of grad students, law students, med students and undergrads, we met everywhere from coffee shops to basements to the west atrium of the Life Sciences Institute. It soon became clear that when it comes to understanding access to essential medicines there are many difficult concepts, jargon and acronyms to familiarize oneself with before anything starts to make sense. There is no doubt that there is a steep learning curve. To address this concern and reach out to the greater student body, UAEM UBC held its first “teach-in” in the fall of 2006 at UBC’s Medical Student Alumni Centre. The aim of this afternoon was to go over the basics of intellectual property, licensing and patent law, the neglected tropical disease research gap, metrics (a.k.a. how a university measures its success), and what university students can do to address these issues.

Another key element in achieving our goals was communicating with UBC faculty and administration. One aspect of this was collecting signatures for the Philadelphia Consensus Statement (PCS), a document that was drafted at the UAEM international meeting at the University of Pennsylvania in the fall of 2006. In a nutshell, the PCS is a document that outlines UAEM’s main goals and ‘signing on’ acts statement of support for these goals. In addition to a number of caring and dedicated faculty, UAEM was fortunate to gain the support of a number of big name global health/humanitarian ‘celebrities’ such as Paul Farmer, Jeffrey Sachs, James Orbinski and, a proud UAEM UBC signature, Stephen Lewis. In this regard it was very helpful to be a chapter of a larger international group and emphasized the benefits of being a multidisciplinary student group in which everyone could use their unique skills and contacts to their full potential.

With a member base and support from the local and international community, we received support from the Alma Mater Society (AMS) and eventually became an AMS club. We also established an advisory board consisting of a diverse array of individuals who had acted as mentors along the way including a journalist, physicians, a number of faculty members and representatives from the University Industry Liaison Office (UILO). With their support and the help of one of our more politically involved members, Gina Eom (of UBC Insider fame), we were able to arrange a series of meetings with President Stephen Toope, VP Research John Hepburn, University Industry Liaison Office (UILO) President Angus Livingstone and Technology Transfer Officer Barbara Campbell.

While we initially met with some valid resistance, the potential of what were proposing and its implications with regards to the Trek 2010 goals of global citizenship were hard to deny. Barbara Campbell emerged as our UILO champion and we were incredibly fortunate to have her dedicated support and commitment. We soon realized that you can’t use a one size fits all global access strategy for all technologies developed at UBC. Developing necessary guidelines and applying global access principles requires a lot of hard work and time on the part of the technology transfer officers at the UILO. As such we were very excited to find that the ideas behind these principles have already influenced the licensing of three new UBC technologies: a peer-to-peer software technology with applications in medical school curriculum delivery, an E. coli vaccine technology, and a new less-toxic formulation of antifungal and anti-Leishmania drug Amphotericin B.

While are starting to see the fruits of our labour in full ripeness, there is still a lot of work to be done. We are working towards developing undergraduate and medical school curriculum on neglected tropical diseases and starting a fund to finance research on these abandoned ailments. We are also in the process of starting chapters at other Canadian universities. As much as ever, we are welcome new members and support within the UBC community with open arms. If you are interested in attending our next meeting or in just finding out more information please don’t hestitate to contact us at: ubc.uaem@gmail.com

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UBC Faculty Association has a bad week: part 2

Israel Boycott debate re-opened

Also in the September's Faculty Focus newsletter (click!), is an article calling on faculty and UBC to open up a debate on an academic boycott of Israeli academia. The article is authored by some familiar faculty members, including the head of the undergraduate biology program, Martin Adamson, and Arts AMS councilor Nathan Crompton. Citing the hardships of Palestinians in having access to higher education, they say that the idea of a boycott cannot be condemned offhand, and must be discussed.

The idea of academic boycotts is not new: they were undertaken against South Africa and Russia by some groups of academics in the 90s. In recent years, academics in Europe and the UK have often attempted to intellectually boycott Israel through their universities and professional unions. These attempts never seem to last very long, since they tend to be ignored, revoked, and renewed with boring regularity. Last May for instance, the UK's largest lecturers' union UCU passed a motion to encourage the discussion of an academic boycott on Israel, urging members to "consider the moral implications of conducting ties with Israeli academic institutions," and calling on the EU to freeze funding of Israeli research. You can find out what I thought of that HERE, and I would have similar feelings about UBC participating in such a boycott. Specific to this article, I thought it was a bit silly that the authors frame the article as a call for "discussion" of a boycott against Israeli academia, instead of actually endorsing such a boycott, since clearly that is their intent.

The reason this particular article in Faculty Focus is interesting is that UBC's president, Stephen Toope has expressed himself in the most strident terms against any such academic boycotts of Israel. In response to the (UCU) motion last May, Toope joined the wave of university presidents across Canada in condemning their action, saying in a statement that "The threatened boycott of Israeli universities by Britain's University and College Union is a dangerous and unsupportable attack on the core values of academic life." I heard president Toope and SFU president Michael Stevenson express themselves similarly in person, when they both spoke as honorary co-chairs of the semi-annual "Stretch Your Mind" conference of Israeli academics at the JCC.

UBC Hillel's director, Eyal Lichtman, has already responded to the article in Faculty Focus, in an email, stating that

any such boycott would be an affront to academic freedom, of course, but when it targets the society with the highest per capita rate of academic publications in the world, the consequences to the advancement of science and other research is incalculable ... The singling out of Israel, where academic and press freedoms are the freest in the Middle East, is a disturbing sign and therefore an indicator that Israel, amongst nations of the world, is being singled out for attention based on premises that must be considered anti-Semitic.

The anti-semetism card is pretty heavy-handed here. The article we're talking about wasn't written in a confrontational or hateful manner by any stretch. But even more annoyingly, Lichtman's response wasn't even shared with Hillel students, but rather sent to outside strategic people (not sure exactly who) - one of whom was so good as to forward it to a buddy of mine. When I asked Hillel staff for further information on this reaction, and why it hadn't been shared with students, I was greeted with stony silence and the statement that "it's out of our hands". I wonder whose hands it is in? or what there is to be in anyone's hands? When I asked further, another staff member said it wasn't a secret, but just not a "public strategy". This is, after all, meant to be open discourse, and this bugs me. This type of overreaction, coupled with annoying non-public strategies does damage to those (and I count myself among them) who want to discredit attempts at intellectual boycotts.

Some background:

• Stephen Toope's statement
• Jerusalem Post article
• National Post article

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UBC Faculty Association has a bad week: part 1

Two items of interest from the UBC Faculty Association this month. See above post. Sources from the Faculty Focus (click!) newsletter.

Teaching evaluation ire

The Association has called upon the university to put an immediate moratorium on the new teacher evaluation system to be implemented this term. The new system would see "modular" forms filled out by students. Some modules would be available only at the professor, department, or faculty level, while one module (the "university module")would be published and available to students university-wide. Instructors would give their consent before the university module for their courses would be posted.

The six University Module questions are HERE. Have a gander and see what you think.

This evaluation system has gone through a lengthy committee process at the university's Senate (a body that makes all academic decisions), and was finally passed last spring. It's generally thought that a greater amount of public accountability for teaching will increase the culture of excellent teaching at UBC. The AMS has been supportive of this evaluation system. Not so the faculty association. In their September issue of the Faculty Focus newsletter, Faculty Association president Brenda Peterson wrote an open letter to UBC president Stephen Toope, calling upon him not to implement the new system. The process and speed of implementation, the online posting mechanism, the questions themselves (which were deemed too focused on the student's "learning comfort"), and the availability of the data were criticized. Essentially, the claims are that any publicly available evaluations would infringe upon their members' privacy, become a popularity contest, and encourage high marks and grade inflation.

Not all teachers think that though. At my lab's Thanksgiving dinner, my supervisor Dr. Curtis Suttle, associate dean of science, said to me that he had no problems with the new system. "I think it's fine. There's no reason why the information shouldn't be out there" he said (in between bastings of the magnificent turkey). "For science, it's not that different from what we already do. It might be a bigger change for others."

Personally, I think that the faculty association underestimates students. We aren't vindictive. We aren't brats. The teacher-student relationship is a relationship like any other: it demands respect and fairness from both sides. Students are perfectly willing to give good teaching scores to the instructors of challenging courses if those instructors were clear, organized, engaging, and willing to help - yes, even if they only scraped a C.

Lots more background on this:

• Student Senator Aidha Sheikh's summary of the May 16th Senate meeting where the policy was passed
• The Senate policy itself
• Ubyssey news piece on faculty association reaction

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Deans whip off the gloves in AMS-sponsored Dean's debate

Yesterday the Deans of Sauder, Arts, and Pharmacy faced off in an informal debate during the noon hour at the Norm theatre. All three deans launched with gusto into the topic of debate: "whose degree is better?". Dean of Arts Nancy Gallini seamed to triumph decisively in the tongue-in-cheek verbal sparring, while Dean of Sauder, Dan Muzyka struggled to keep the competition close. Dean of Pharmacy Robert Sindelar took the highroad strategy, sweetly abstaining from too much saucy stereotype-slinging and focusing on his faculty's strengths.

The AMS-sponsored event was moderated by David Farrar, UBC's still-new-smelling VP academic and provost. This position on the UBC executive is responsible for academic matters including teaching, and the 11 faculty deans report to this position. Farrar comes from U of T, where he was the VP students and vice-provost. He's generally thought to be student-minded and committed to teaching, though with only a month in, time will tell. Anyway, Farrar expressed his thanks to the AMS and complimented our beautiful SUB and specifically, the Norm theatre, (since it was his first time in it).

The discussion got serious in the question period, however. The deans of Sauder and Pharmacy fielded some questions about ethics in their respective professional fields. AMS president Jeff Friedrich asked all the deans about UBC's recent poor ranking in surveys comparing UBC's student experience to those of university "peers" (google "NSSE UBC"). While the Deans seemed sweetly personable, idealistic, and earnest up until this point, they fell down hard on this question. Dean Gallini and Dean Dan instantaneously cried poor. They have experienced cuts every year since they arrived at UBC. They are still living the legacy of the starved 90's (ie. the tuition freeze 90's). UBC is a commuter campus, and students don't have time to be engaged meaningfully in their academics. They challenge us, the AMS, to reach out. All these platitudes are familiar, and even legitimate. Yes, we cannot expect gold-standard student services and academic attention if there's no money to enrich and diversify programs. Yes, many student commute to UBC and work long hours. But in face of recent events, I found it insane to listen to Dean Dan cry poor for core academic funding, and have Nancy Gallini wholeheartedly agree with him. To catch everyone up, this is the same Dean Dan that just asked the UBC Board of Governors for 30 million of those core General Purpose Operating Fund (GPOF) dollars so that he can have a fancy new building instead of Angus.

He actually had the audacity to flippantly comment that our taps aren't platinum-plated, but that we muddle through. Well Mr. Muzyka, it seems like you would borrow against UBC's GPOF to the hilt, or squeeze for student fees in order to platinum-plate your very toilet paper if you could get away with it. The moral of this story is that priorities seem to be all wrong: the deans justifiably lament their program cuts and slim resources, but have no compunctions asking taxpayers (or students for that matter, whatever!) for slick and unnecessary buildings.

This debate was informative: not only do Dean Dan's priorities suck, so does his comedic timing.

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Gender gaps (in both directions) still exist

Yesterday I was in for a bit of a shock. While poking around the UBC Planning and Institutional Research (PAIR) website (ie. ubc statistics), I noticed a startling statistic. In the faculty of science there are 11 full women professors, compared 146 full male professors. That's right. 1/15th of the full professors in the faculty of science are women - that's less than 8 percent. When you look at assistant and associate professors, there are about one third as many women as men. Instructors and Lecturers approach an even ratio - still with more men.

The statistics in other faculties, though not as extreme, are similar: full professorships belong in colossal majorities to men, with an increasing but still significantly lower proportion of women as you go down the academic ranks to Associate and Assistant professorships. Interestingly, Applied Science fares better compared to Sauder and Science with respect to ratios in the lower ranks. Even Arts, a supposedly female-slanted discipline, only a quarter of full professors are female, and 3/7ths of assistant and associate professors. Education is the one exception that has more women in the associate and assistant professor categories.

Yeah, we know. It takes a long time to get a full professorship. The huge cohorts of women academics that graduated in the 80s and 90s are not yet in tenured positions. Still though. And why is there still a gender gap in the recent hirings? I found it pretty stark and depresing. 11/146!?!? Dear Lord.

To follow up on these revelations, today I open up the Ubyssey. What do I see but an (excellent)article by Freeman Poritz about another gaping gaping gender inequality. Women are collecting over 60% of undergraduate degrees in Canada. They are graduating high school with better marks than men, and outnumbering them in 8/11 faculties, including Science and Atrs, UBC's two largest. This isn't particularly new news - it's a trend across Canada that young women are opting for more post-secondary education than their male counterparts. What is happening to our young men? How is our school system failing them?

I find both these sets of statistics disturbing. Women are still not able to make it to the higher ranks of the professional world in numbers that reflect their stakes. Young men aren't making it to university. What is going on? I don't know, but clearly the struggle for fairness in the balance of power between genders in our society (even in the microcosm of academics) is far from over. We barely understand (far from actually addressing) the crucial dynamics at play - and they are complicated.

Feminism is all about gender equality - that includes men's equality too. And feminism's work is not yet done.

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The Coalition for Student Loan Fairness hits the lobbying sweet spot

There's been a few new posts recently. Don't forget to scroll down.

What makes for great lobbying? What gets you in the news? Why do student governments agonize and student lobbies button up, while a comparatively small group rockets into national media coverage and affects actual national party policy?

The lively example of the nascent Coalition for Student Loan Fairness (CSLF) brought these questions to my mind. The coalition was formed in April by Julian Benedict and Mark O'Meara, to give a political voice to a group of 990 000 graduates that still owe student loans. The SFU and UBC graduates (respectively), neither of whom had ever had anything to do with campus politics or goverance, got together and decided to do something about the disturbing prospect of paying their loans back to a broken system. Since its formation in April, I've heard about the CSLF on the CBC multiple times, and seen more than a few stories in mainstream newsprint and new sires (example: today's MacLean's Magazine article) . At first I was puzzled and a little miffed that it wasn't CASA or CFS, (the two federal Canadian student lobbies) that were constantly in the news about such a crucial topic. How is it possible that the large umbrella orginizations, and even our own student societies have been either ineffectual or silent where a small group of graduates completely unconnected to student government of any sort were making waves?

I called up Julian Benedict, the coalition's communications manager and co-founder to find out just exactly who the coalition was, and how they had made their quick ascent to political currency and newsworthiness. "I truly believe that if you have a good story, it will get out there," said Benedict. Benedict is an SFU history honours graduate. After he graduated, he and CSLF co-founder Mark O'Meara (a UBC student) realized that there are 990 000 thousand borrowers in a gray area with no political representation. These borrowers are a little stranded - they are no longer represented by student government, but are dealing with the fallout of funding their post-secondary education in a student aid system that's often dysfunctional, confused, and abusive.

Through discussion on O'Meara's CanadaStudentDebt.ca website, Benedict began to feel the magnitude of the issue. "In the begining, I spent a lot of time asking myself if this was a real issue," he recounted. The more he spoke to other borrowers, the more he was convinced that it was. Benedict soon started filling access to information requests, talking to administrators, and synthesizing statistics. The information and knowledge amassed in this research process, and the collection of stories from borrowers form the base for the coalition's report, containing an 8-point plan, which provides "solutions to improve public confidence and operational effectiveness" of the Canada Student Loans program. The plan asks for a reduction in interest rates for student loans . It asks for a student loan Ombudsperson office to investigate and redress mistakes and abuses in the system. Other points include providing borrowers with up to date and accurate statements (which, astonishingly, are very difficult to get now), consolidating all loan repayments into one account, enforcing directives to abusive collection agencies, and providing access to grants and debt reduction.

For a novelty song, and tips on media-whoring, check out the rest behind the jump.

The basic premise of the lobby group is fairness. "Our name was deliberately chosen" said Benedict. "Fairness is something all Canadians feel strongly on." The CSLF believes that government shouldn't be making money off student loans; that it's a social service like any other. That isn't happening now. Government charges borrowers rates from 8 to 11 % while it only pays 4 to 5 % interest itself. The margin is far more than what it takes to run the program. In fact, the government made 315 million dollars in 05/06 from loan interest, and is projected to make over half a billion in the year 09/10. According to Benedict, data shows that interest rates themselves are the reason many students default on their debts. Further, there are serious economic repercussions for us as a society when so many educated young people are significantly burdened with debt, or having their credit ruined due to defaults.

Using the often disturbing stories from borrowers of abusive collection agencies, lack of transparency, and severe financial hardship as hooks, the coalition launched their website and started sending out news releases with Canadian News Wire. This can get pricey - getting your story sent out nationally with a news release agency costs at least $130 a pop. Other than investing some money, the key to lobbying success, said Benedict, is knowing a lot, being focused, and remaining so. A tactic he mentioned that appealed to me was turning something into a news story as opposed to an educational piece. "Targeted, relevant, accurate" he chanted over the phone, as I scribbled.

Benedict works full time, but he and 10 other full-time volunteers pour many hours into research and media relations. Their efforts seem to have payed off. Since April, they've had half a million hits on the CSLF website, and countless media exposures. They've received endorsements form several MP's and scores of student organizations including the SFSS, CFS, and CASA (the AMS is notably absent). Most importantly, no federal political party had a policy on student loan interest rates before April. Due to the CSLF's approaches and advocacy, several now do. I asked Bendict why he thought his group has made a significant impact in a short time, while the student movement had not. He essentially reiterated that effective advocacy can only take place when you collect an immense amount o f detailed meachnistic knowledge, and have a narrow focus which you don't waver from. Large organizations in the student movement, he obseved, are run by alot of well meaning people with a finite amount of time to devote to any one thing.

Check out the CSLF's website for Access to Information documents, polling results, news story links, and the coalition's 8-point plan in detail at http://www.studentloanfairness.ca/while you rock out to Mark O'Meara's student debt song at here .

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Student Aid report from administrators

Student loan administrators have turned into activists! This article from this morning's Globe and Mail.

More need-based student aid urged
Universal programs outpacing funding for those who need help, says a study by financial aid administrators

ELIZABETH CHURCH
From Monday's Globe and Mail
August 27, 2007 at 4:37 AM EDT

An increasing proportion of financial aid for postsecondary education is going to all students, rather than to those who need it most, says a new study from university and college administrators that calls for a reversal of the trend.

Over the past decade, federal and provincial governments of all political stripes have spent more on student support overall. But the report finds that most of that new spending has been for measures such as tax credits and tuition freezes that benefit everyone, and are not targeted at those who face financial obstacles in postsecondary education.

Universal aid programs now get about three dollars for every dollar spent on needs-based grants and loans, says the report, to be released today.

"Governments get captured by the ability to score political points by adjusting tuition levels or raising tax credits," said Sean Junor, one of the authors of the report. "Student aid has never been a big vote getter."

If the aim of financial aid programs is to encourage more students to go to college and university, then the current trend must be corrected, he said. Programs must be directed to qualified students who would otherwise be deterred because of costs, which was the original intention of student-aid programs when they were established 40 years ago, Mr. Junor said.

The report finds that beginning in the late 1990s, the steady expansion of measures such as monthly education tax credits "fundamentally altered the nature of student aid in Canada."

The study, entitled The End of Need-Based Student Aid in Canada?, was commissioned by the Canadian Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. Its argument - especially its opposition to blanket tuition freezes - is likely to meet with stiff opposition from student groups, who continue to pressure governments to hold the line on fees or reduce them. The study's call for more targeted funding relief is one that is frequently made by university and college leaders frustrated by government limits on their ability to raise funds through tuition.

Mr. Junor, who is with the Educational Policy Institute, an independent research group based in Toronto, said the study documents how the financial aid system has strayed from its original intentions during the past 10 years.

It examines spending at all levels of government on student aid and the recipients of those funds, and finds that most new spending has not been based on need.

In the past four years, all levels of government and the federally supported Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation have increased aid spending by more than $1.4-billion. About 60 per cent of that went to non-need based expenditures, the study found.

The one exception at the provincial level is Ontario which, following a report by former premier Bob Rae, has targeted the majority of its aid to need-based programs, as has the millennium scholarship foundation. The foundation provides more than one-third of all grants to students, but its funding is set to run out in less than two years.

The student aid programs certainly need reform. It's absurd that people use the cash from student loans to buy cars, and don't work in the summer, while others can't even qualify because their parents have a certain income, even if the parents are not supporting their son/daughter through university. In a way, the issue comes down across a fairly clear line: should there be more needs-based student aid to help those people that otherwise wouldn't attend, or should we as a society simply spend much more on education to make it universally more accessible?

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Does UBC need a VP Students?

Disclaimer: I have some privileged information on subjects related to this one. But any information contained herein comes from some other source; nothing in here is confidential in any way.

Brian Sullivan has served as UBC's Vice-President, Students (VPS) since 1999. His portfolio includes the registrar's office, alumni, recruitment, student development, housing, athletics, student services, and managing the relationship between the University and its students.
But consider the following:

1. The VP Students office has been completely re-organized. Specifically, the newly created position of Associate VP, Student Development has taken responsibility for many of the services and student development programs. There's no new direct report to the VPS.
2. UBC is the only Canadian university to have this position. Most Universities have a Vice-Provost, students, who reports to the VP Academic.
3. The newly-hired Provost is the former Vice-Provost at the UofT, with responsibility to students there.
4. Prof. Toope is creating a new VP position, to encompass development and alumni. This removes yet another portfolio item from the VPS portfolio.

Within a year, most of the existing VPS portfolio will be out of the office. It's reasonable to assume that Professor Toope doesn't see a VP Students as a necessary, important, or beneficial part of a University.

Is it? I'm of two minds. On one hand, it's good to have a central place for students to go. And when there's one person whose sole job is to ask "how will this affect students?" without having to worry about, say, the faculty association or any other stakeholder, then it can help create a student-centred environment. Finally, there's increased communication and teamwork when all these disparate services are united under the common umbrella of "students."

But at the same time, it's symptomatic of a University in which "students" (by which I primarily mean undergraduates) are marginalized, to say the least. There's something about the VPS portfolio that speaks to a ghettoization of the student interest. And it would be great if this University didn't need one.

My guess? It's safe to assume that, at this time next year, UBC won't have a Vice-President, Students. Is that a good thing? I have no idea.

(Photo Credit Martha Piper. Seriously. And stolen from Peets.)

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UBC Senate Meeting, May 16th

Aidha Shaikh - GSS councilor, AMS councilor, and Senator - gives us an account of yesterday's senate meeting. Aidha can be contacted at aidhashaikh[at]gmail[dot]com. Agenda and materials are available HERE.

1: Proposal to extend Mid-Term Break in Term 2 2010 at UBC Vancouver (motion passed)
The proposal made was to allow for midterm break to extend for 2 weeks (February 15th -26th) to accommodate the 2010 Olympics for two reasons:

1. transit services could be freed up for the Olympics (and reduce traffic) and
2. students can participate in and go to watch the Olympics
   The major consequence of this motion is the exam end date of May 1st 2010 as a number of students living off campus may have rental agreements/leases ending at the end of April.

For reference the comparison of the current calendar entry for the term and the proposed (and now accepted) Olympic term can be downloaded here. [Sorry about the tacky website - but blogger doesn't support charts - ed]

Senate passed the motion to adopt Scenario B: to allow for accommodation of the Olympics. The issue of hardship for students who have to move as of the end of April due to rental agreements was brought up. The option of granting these students "exam hardship" was not feasible since exams have gone into the month of May in the past and thus changing an academic policy on these grounds would likely not happen. However the committee will look carefully into this issue of housing and what accommodations (no pun intended sorry :P ) could be made. For example, students living in residence will be accommodated.

Student senate caucus discussed various ways to mitigate the inconvenience. Any suggestions? Feel free to pass them on.

2: Proposed Policy on Student Evaluation of Teaching (motion passed)

As students we understand the importance of having a high quality of education at UBC. The policy document outlines the guiding principles for student evaluation of teaching. These principles include incentives that should be developed to encourage participation, the idea that evaluations should be student-centered, that these evaluations be administered in ever section of every course, a rating system of 1-5, encouragement of formative feedback, carefully planned dissemination/feedback/response strategies, and that different constituencies get access to different information.

The design is essentially modular: the University module will be available to all groups from the instructor, department head, dean, university designate and student. Questions in the faculty and departmental modules will be available to the instructor, department head and dean whereas the specific confidential teacher module will only be accessible by the teacher. This is because there will be some questions that are designed to help the faculty/department or instructor to gain specific feedback and see what changes can be made based on those. The university module will be broad enough to encompass the general areas of teaching / learning that students will be concerned with.

This motion takes care of the privacy issue raised by some faculty. Only instructors who give permission for their results to be released will. In addition this puts pressure on the university to release the results it gets to students to help ensure a higher quality of education and put pressure on instructors and professors to meet a higher standard of teaching. The policy does not outline what methods would be implemented to release the information to students but encourages a web-based system.

This is definitely a step forward and it was very encouraging to see President Toope enthusiastically supporting the motion.

In the meanwhile, the AMS would like to bring back the yardstick either as a means of discussing educational issues or have feedback from student evaluations placed on the site (only for professors who allow the information to be released, where those who don’t will have the notation that they did not allow the information to be released beside their name unless they wished to provide a reason which would be listed as well).

It’s very refreshing to see these steps forward in matters surrounding the academic quality at UBC

more senate business behind the jump

Other items relevant to students (positive motions passed):

• A whole set of scholarships to be released to students (I'd list them but it’s a lot - they can be found in the supporting materials on the senate website)
• New programs: MSc and PhD in cell and developmental biology, Masters of Nursing, and the transfer of the nurse practitioner specialization into the Masters of Nursing
• More good news: The Drug Research Institute was approved: The DRI is an inter-faculty initiative of pharmaceutical sciences, medicine, science, applied science, dentistry and the Sauder School of business, lead by the faculty of Pharm Sci. This will be the core academic research facility for the Centre for Drug Research and Development which is a joint initiative of UBC, SFU, BC cancer agency, UVic, UNBC, Providence Healthcare, Vancouver Coastal Health, and the Provincial Health Services in partnership with the government and industry.
• Two ad-hoc committees were approved: 1) Writing and communication skills and 2) academic advising issues relating to a culturally diverse student body. Since there are a higher number of appeals relating to academic discipline from international students, immigrant students and others, this committee seeks to find ways of ensuring these students get resources to help them to avoid these situations.
• There were some revisions in the admissions for the BEd relating to the recommendation for students to take a course on aboriginal peoples before entering the program. There was also a wording change for applicants from a college or university from "recognized college or university" to "recognized degree program" since the former was undefined.
• The graduate students of 2007 were approved! :)

One thing that was not discussed at today's senate but was at the student senate meeting was the closure of MacMillan library. This is posted on the library's home page but is not brought to the awareness of students very well. Also the library committee never met to discuss this. Its disturbing how such major decisions can be passed without the senate library committee discussing these things.

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AMS Academic Quality committee update and beer with BoG rep Darren Peets

Since these two events happened in the same day, and they're not too lengthy, posts have been consolidated.

The newest AMS committee, struck at the April 4th meeting had its first meeting yesterday. It has fairly broad aims: basically to prepare a framework for future AMS policy on matters of academic quality. That means setting priorities, deciding on the issues that matter the most to students regarding academics, and finding solutions to suggest. This aim is taking shape in a few ways:

1. Creating a document that will be the AMS's official response to UBC's middling to poor performance on the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). Responding to the results specifically with student's perspectives.
2. Re-launching and transforming the old AMS Yardstick publication. Yardstick was a magazine the AMS used to publish containing numerical data from teacher evaluations. This evaluation data was voluntarily given by the departments. Since the University is overhauling the teacher evaluation process into a "modular" system, where certain questions are published, the Yardstick was deemed redundant and stopped some years ago. The modular system (more details about this in a subsequent post) is only now being passed at the senate, and will still only contain limited information. VP academic Brendon Goodmurphy, who chairs the committee, wants to revive the publication and transform it into both a more useful resource to students trying to choose courses, and a lobbying tool. By the first he means publishing types of information that are more useful than just numbers, possibly including comments about teachers and courses, and in depth articles about teaching methods and other academic topics. Using the publication as a political tool basically means being forthright and aggressive with concerns and demands. For example, publishing a list of all the professors that refused to have their evaluations published. the idea is to create a culture among professors and administrators where teaching is highly valued, and publicly evaluated. The yardstick publication is a project that AVP Blake Frederick will be taking on - but the committee has agreed to also play a part in its production.

Some ideas to create ammunition for the above two projects are focus groups or events regarding academics. The main goal though, is to both gather and synthesize information and 'common' student knowledge into a coherent set of priorities, with rational categories of problems, and solutions.

Moving along, yesterday was my inaugural Koerner's pub experience. Luckily, I had GSS veteran and student BoG rep Darren Peets to guide me through it. While a pitcher was slowly depleted, a number of topics came up. Did you know that

• AMS councilors are sometimes allowed into Pit night en masse by a choice of secret back ways after council meeting on Wednesdays?
• Martha Piper raised tuition because she erroneously assumed UBC would receive all the funding applied for, and when it (predictably) didn't, she realized the money had already been spent and had to make up for it?
• The air in Darren's building is completely switched over every seven minutes?
• The SUB south lounge used to be on the outside, populated by bike racks, not couches?
• There exists a faculty club at UBC, which was kicked out of their building due to financial problems, and is now embittered and tiny?

learning is fun!

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Engineering Physics and its women

You've heard the stereotypes, and dismissed them as unfair, wrong, and outdated: engineers are chauvinistic egoists with iron rings on their pinkies; they're an old-boys club and Mensa wrapped up into one; they look down upon women. I dismiss these stereotypes also. I know plenty of engineers that are charming, decent, gentle, open individuals. But something lingers in this faculty that continues to create discomfort for some women students - this "something" has mostly to do with being outnumbered and isolated in certain programs. But it also has to do with an unwillingness (of both men and women) to acknowledge or participate in issues specific to women.

It isn't that there is systematic discrimination - there isn't. Moreover, certain engineering departments like CHBE (chemical, environmental, and biological engineering) and Civil, have a large proportion of female students. Engineering Physics though has barely 8-10 percent female participation most years. That's only about 4 to 5 women a cycle. According to Nancy Lui and Anja Lanz, two Engineering Physics students, it was feelings of isolation that made them want some sort of resource for women. Being constantly surrounded by men in extreme long hours of school and lab can be overwhelming and taxing, they said.

Anja felt it was important to have a formal women's representative, or point-person, to both share information relevant to women in engineering and be an interface with departments, student societies, and outside organizations on behalf of women in Engineering Physics (and other disciplines where courses overlap). Some activities relevant to women in engineering do exist: NEW @UBC (Networking Engineering Women at UBC), a faculty-wide organization of faculty, graduate students, and undergrads, has regular speaker series and other events pertaining to supporting and creating networks between women in engineering. But within the program, there was no way to communicate these events to the women. The need exists, says Anja: in information-sharing, taking sensitive complaints, and creating a supportive social network.

To this end, Anja initiated a meeting with the women of engineering physics and their program director, Dr. Andre Marziali. The meeting was to discuss the feelings of the students and the possible creation of a women's group or representative. It was agreed to create an official Female Student Liaison to the department. The goals were threefold: outreach to the community to encourage female enrollment, liaising with the department in cases of concerns or complaints, and communicating with the women in the program about relevant information like scholarships, events, speakers, and so on. "Dr. Marziali has been very supportive," says Anja. With the creation of the Female Student Liaison position to the department, there has been funding as well. Anja and Dr. Marziali applied for a grant from the Jade Project and got it both this year and last year. The Jade Project is a government-funded agency that allocates grants to innovative projects that "break stereotypes, and increase the number of girls and women who can change the future through their participation as scientists and engineers." Interestingly, due to some concerns expressed to the apointee who will be taking over the position in September, there is now discussion of changing the name of the position (though not its functions) to something that does not explicitly mention women or "female".

By contrast, the idea of a women's representative was not so well received when Lanz proposed the idea to the EngPhys council last year. The description she presented, similarly to the one agreed to by Dr. Marziali, included outreach activities aimed at highschool students. Moreover, she proposed another goal for the position: to organize social events for women in EngPhys program. Neither of these goals sat well with the council. The former was was deemed beyond the jurisdiction and purpose of the society, which is to serve current students. The council was also uncomfortable with the latter, preferring that women's social events be "spontaneous" rather than deliberately organized by a councilor. However, they did agree to accept the position for a trial period, without the outreach or social event clauses, and without voting power. In the second term, the outreach goal was restored. However, this year, when the trial period ended, they decided not to renew the position.

Anja, ever persistent, in January 2006, presented to the EUS with another student on the topic of creating women's representative on that council. The position, to be named the "women in engineering representative" was similar to the former suggestions. The goals were to -
1.Contact person for women engineering students
2.Liaison between the EUS and groups concerned to women in engineering
3.Advocate issues on behalf of women engineering students
The EUS has issues with the name, preferring something along the lines of "gender equality" rather than "women in engineering". This sensitivity aside, support was not particulary strong. When council went out on their retreat and matters were delayed, the proposal got buried without a vote. "I think it has a place there [in the EUS]" says Lanz, " and there is interest out there, with the women. But somebody needs to take it on, and I just don't have time."

While some women are supportive of the the ideas that were proposed (and eventually accepted by the Eng Phys department), and would like to see social events for women as well, others have a different perspective. Women students in Eng Phys have expressed apprehension about being "singled out," "treated specially," or "percieved as weak", and thus been ambivalent, unsupportive, and most importantly, uninterested in participating. "I understand them," says Anja Lanz, "but I still think it's a good thing."

We like to think that our university is open, ungrudging, and progressive. But the responses of the engphys council and EUS have uncovered a confusion on the topic of minority support. This seems to arise from insecurity, lack of leadership, and plain disinterest more than malice, perhaps. Still though, in the university's most male-dominated faculty, even many of the enrolled women have managed to convince themselves that the only way to exist is to blend in. Instead of reconstituting, women are accepting. Instead of creating, women are conforming. Going bowling with the girls, or organizing a talk with a successful woman graduate are not activities that anyone should be ashamed, or afraid of.

Lets remember: many graduates of UBC engineering can look forward to jobs in hydro, technology, and construction companies. In world where an industry leader like Power Tech (a subsidiary of BC Hydro) has no women employed in entire departments except for clerical staff, holds its annual general meetings in a strip club, and undertakes a popular vote on the basis of looks to hire its female secretaries, there is much to be desired in the realm of a dignified work environment for women. I am not joking about the above example. UBC in fact places co-op students at this particular workplace habitually - one such lucky young man gleefully recounted these tales of medieval antics to a trusted friend. The fact that industry is male-dominated and chauvinistic sets a depressing example for young interns. It creates a tone that transcends specific companies and filters throughout the industry and into the training grounds - our university. So here at UBC, the place that should be the safest and most supportive, women engineering students end up feeling isolated, scrutinized, and constantly apprehensive of any sort of "singling out".

In the end, it is up to them.

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Grad School

Sigh.. since I'm graduating and looking at 10 more years of school (I wish I was kidding) here are a few links for your amusement:


On being a graduate student (Simpson Style)


Take 2




www.toothpastefordinner.com

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Dr. Carl Wieman Speaks!

On Friday I sat down with Nobel-laureate in physics, Dr. Carl Wieman to ask about the 12 million dollar science education initiative he's heading up at UBC to improve undergraduate courses for the science masses. I wrote a post about the basics of the initiative earlier, so I won't repeat them now. You can find that post, and some relevant links here (click!).

Listen to the interview here (click!)

The main thing to notice is this: The funding and implementation is through the departments. This means that departments have the key power to organize and prioritize the money as they wish, with guidance from Dr. Weiman and education experts they may decide to hire, which he would train and reference with. Neither Wieman, nor individual instructors are the heroes of this initiative, but the departments themselves (or whatever their consensus or leadership decides) will be determining the direction of the spending.

I had some thoughts about Dr. Wieman and the initiative after our interview, which I'd like to put out there:

The man is assiduously, zealously, diplomatic. You may notice in the interview that Dr. Wieman doesn't give a straight answer to whether there's an education quality problem at UBC. He often defers to the Departments, instead of asserting his experiences or ideas. He answered several of my questions with vague observations like, "we must first ask what we want and then...". These responses are quite practical, when you get down to it: he shouldn't tax the sensetivities of the VP academic, he cannot force the hand of departments, and yes, setting goals and research questions is crucial. Indeed, Dr. Wieman knows that he must work within the department structure of the University, and he's embracing that. Fashioning himself as a revolutionary with all the answers will not help his vision come about, and he knows it. But don't be fooled. For all the hedging, Dr. Wieman has a vision - it's just tempered by familiarity of university realpolitik. This vision stems from the realization that the democratization of higher education, and the reality of larger classes and reduced teacher-student interaction implicit in it, create unique challenges. Dr. Wieman's thesis is that with this reality, the only realistic way to cultivate the meaningful interactions and problem-solving challenges which are tied to "expert-like" learning results is through the adoption of researched, proven information technology.

I simply hope, that when the department implementation process gets to the nitty-gritty, that Dr. Weiman will be there. His austere replies in the interview may almost have convinced you that he actually doesn't have specific ideas, or any over-arching vision. He does. I'm confident that he has the political gumption to bust these out when it matters the most, in each departmental decision-making conversation.

All that said, personally, I'm not sold on the technology fetish. Yes, Dr. Wieman is highly conservative, and very careful about his uses of these technologies. He stresses that they should only be used if they've been tested to work, in the correct context in the courses. Still, I keep going back to the OWL example: OWL is an interactive program used in Chem 233 that has animation-based organic chemistry teaching modules, problem sets, and quizzes that allow you to manipulate chemical compounds using shockwave software. OWL is meant to be a significant part of this course, and is even worth a toothsome morsel of the course grade. Nonetheless, the division is clear: some people loved OWL (either because it's easy marks, or because they actually got something out of it) and some people (me) hated it, and preferred loosing marks than wasting their time doing detestable tasks that didn't help them learn at all. The thing is, there will always be that issue. There will always be students that don't get along with staring at a screen to learn, preferring to hit the books, and there will be those that will. That's why I'm just not sure that out-of-classroom software is the be-all end-all of making students learn better.

I'd like more of of a focus on improving the quality of lectures themselves. Lectures are still important, and they CAN be done well. The lecture has taken a lot of flak as an inherently awful format, but this really needn't be the case. A well-structured lecture can be very effective in ordering, prioritizing, and explaining material, even if it's not the best at imparting problem-solving ability or deep conceptual understanding.

For an interesting read, check out Dr. Wieman's report on "The Optimized University" that he prepared for the BC government's Campus 2020 post-secondary education review here (click!).

This is the picture I took on my walk home the moment after I realized that I'd forgotten to take a picture of my handsome interviewee. Vancouver city-hall for you, therefore.

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Executive Interview Series, Part I: Jeff Friedrich, AMS President

Yesterday, Wednesday the 11th, I had the pleasure of invading the presidential office to talk to our own Jeff Friedrich. The interview is 51 minutes long, but well worth it - Jeff talks about all the big issues in impressive depth. So click the link, and let Jeff's dulcet American accent soothe you while you nurse that ACF hangover.

Click here to listen.

Highlights include posssible creation of an AMS communication budget, rumniations on the future of AMS buisnesses, the Friedrich take on the farm, compliments to UBC-i, and excessive alcohol at prestigious events.

Much thanks to David Brandman for hosting a rather large audio file.

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