Senate Highlights – May 8, 2017

Following each meeting of the Dalhousie University Senate, Dal News highlights some of the presentations and decisions made.

Senate is the university’s senior academic governing body, with membership consisting of elected representatives from Dal’s Faculties and the University Libraries, elected student representatives, a representative from the University of King’s College and Dal’s senior academic administrators. Senate is responsible for approving new programs; granting degrees/diplomas; managing the reviews of Faculties, centres and institutes; and setting academic regulations and the academic calendar.

Senate meets on the second and fourth Mondays of the month, from September through June. Learn more about Senate and its business at the Senate website.

Senate votes on new name for Faculty of Health Professions

The Faculty of Health Professions is poised to take on a new name. At Monday’s meeting, Senate voted to approve a name change to the Faculty of Health.

Created in 1961 when the College of Pharmacy and the School of Nursing joined Dalhousie, the Faculty has grown over the years to include nine Schools/Colleges. Alongside, its mission has expanded beyond the preparation of health professionals to include a strong emphasis on research excellence. The name change not only better reflects the Faculty’s mission as it is today, but aligns it with others Dal Faculties like Medicine and Law, which are named for their fields rather than their practitioners.   

Both the Faculty’s Management Advisory Committee and Faculty Council have endorsed the name change, as has the university’s Deans’ Council. The change has received enthusiastic support from the fellow health-related Faculties (Medicine and Dentistry), as well as the CEOs of the IWK Health Centre and Nova Scotia Health Authority.

The name change is effective July 1, 2017, pending approval by the Board of Governors at its June 27 meeting.

Presentation on Senate review of the Faculty of Engineering

Dean of Engineering Josh Leon and Vivian Howard (Chair, Senate Review Committee, Faculty of Engineering) presented the findings of the Senate Review of the Faculty of Engineering, conducted in 2014.

Identifying Engineering as a lively, growing and complex Faculty, the report found the Faculty is doing well considering its challenges, particularly related to space (some of which will be addressed by the forthcoming IDEA project). Dr. Leon discussed the Faculty’s response to selected recommendations, including those about internal communications and strategic planning.

Presentation on scholarly communication in Canada

Donna Bourne-Tyson, university librarian, presented on challenges related to journal access and affordability and its impact on scholarly communication across the country.

Bourne-Tyson discussed the “Big Deal”: the model in which publishers sell access to digital journals in bundles, and Canadian universities purchase them as a consortium to get access to a wide range of content across both large and small schools. That deal is “broken,” she explained, because publisher consolidation has led to subscription rates rising well above the rate of inflation, while library acquisition budgets have stayed largely flat.

“We can’t buy our way out of this problem” said Bourne-Tyson, paraphrasing her colleague Tom Hickerson, vice-provost and university librarian at the University of Calgary,

She discussed some of the strategies that universities across Canada are working on to try and improve the situation: collaborating through organizations like the Canadian Research Knowledge Network, the Canadian Association of Research Libraries and the Council of Atlantic University Libraries on license negotiations; supporting alternative publishing models (open access, institutional repositories like DalSpace); and working to reduce costs through evaluating database/journal overlap, enhanced use of document delivery and other measures.

Presentation on the President’s Advisory Council on Sustainability

Senate received a presentation from representatives of the President’s Advisory Council on Sustainability: Christine Macy (dean, Faculty of Architecture & Planning and council co-chair); Jeff Lamb (assistant vice-president, Facilities Management and council co-chair) Steve Mannell (director, College of Sustainability), and Rochelle Owen (executive director, Office of Sustainability).

The President’s Advisory Council on Sustainability is a group that meets quarterly and provides advice to university leadership and a forum for discussion and joint presentation on sustainability-related topics. Started in 2008, its membership includes deans, the assistant vice-president of Facilities Management, the directors of the College of Sustainability, Office of Sustainability and DSU Sustainability Ofice, and balanced representation from students, department administrators, faculty and alumni. It’s an approach the council says is unique among Canadian universities.

Among the sustainability accomplishments highlighted were:

• The university achieving a “Gold” rating from STARS, the preeminent international sustainability ranking system for universities and colleges.
• Nearly 3,000 Dal students thus far having taken classes in Dal’s Environment, Sustainability & Society program (with 425 ESS graduates)
• Over 140 professors conducting sustainability research, across every Dal faculty
• Over $90M invested by Dalhousie and its partners in sustainability projects on campus since 2009.
  

Owen also discussed aspects of the university’s Climate Change Plan, regarding which the university is on-pace to meet its targets. The university has achieved an over 20% intensity emission reduction over its baseline year (2009), and is targeting a 50% reduction by 2020 with a long-term objective of carbon neutrality.

Discussion on Senate Faculty review policy and procedures

The Senate reviewed and discussed proposed updates to its policy and procedures for Senate Faculty reviews, a document first adopted by Senate in 2014. Faculty reviews are a significant Senate responsibility, and take place typically on a seven-year cycle as approved by the Senate Planning and Governance Committee.

The changes to the policy and procedures would add equity, diversity and inclusion as areas of assessment in the review process, as well as evidence that has been provided by the Faculty as it relates to tenure/promotion standards. The changes also outline the procedures by which Senate Review Committee reports are to be shared. The document will be voted on by Senate at a later date, pending further revisions.

Diversity and Canada Research Chairs

Kevin Hewitt stepped briefly out of his role as chair to encourage members of the university community to laud the recent statement by Minister of Science Kirsty Duncan about the Canada Research Chairs program, in which she said “universities must offer up more diverse candidates for the honour or they will lose their funds.”  

Dr. Hewitt also suggested a more aggressive approach, similar to the accountability called for by Minister Duncan on CRCs, be applied to the Federal Contractors Program (FCP), under which the university must meet equity targets for women, Aboriginal individuals, persons with disabilities and visible minorities. And he highlighted the expression of this support among the group of university colleagues invited to comment on diversity in research as supported by the federal ecosystem — one of the roundtables convened by David Naylor’s panel reviewing fundamental science in Canada.  

A plea was made for Senators to contact the minister responsible for the FCP, the Honorable Patricia Hadju, Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour, to express support for this more aggressive approach, which is in line with recommendation 5.5 of the Naylor report: that federal ministers should apply hard equity targets and quotas where persistent and unacceptable disparities exist, and agencies and institutions are not meeting reasonable expectations.

James R. Johnston Chair

In her report to Senate, Provost Carolyn Watters commented on the search for the next James Robinson Johnson chair slated to be hosted by the Faculty of Medicine. She indicated that unforeseen delays hampered the job advertisement and it is her hope that the position be filled by the fall 2017.

Steps to make diversity and inclusion a reality

Quenta Adams, director of student academic success with Student Affairs, discussed the university’s work with students requiring academic accommodations. Over the past academic year, approximately 1,000 Dal students received some sort of accommodation support.

She encouraged faculty members to adopt Universal Design for Learning (UDL), a set of principles for curriculum that give all individuals equal opportunities to learn. Some of the low cost/effort examples of UDL include robust use of learning management systems (Brightspace), building make-up test dates into the syllabus, alternate forms of evaluation and others.

“We have students with different ethnicities, learning backgrounds, learning abilities,” said Adams. “When we can be as inclusive in our classroom as possible, it often reduces the need for accommodations. That means we can be more proactive instead of reactive in addressing environmental barriers on campus.”

Learn more about the Dalhousie Senate at its website. Minutes for past Senate meetings are available on DalSpace. Minutes for this meeting will be posted once approved by Senate at its subsequent meeting.