Trent University Faculty Association Vol. 14 No. 2 March 2000 Editor, John R. Topic

We are rapidly approaching the end of another teaching term. This has been a particularly difficult term in a very difficult year for Trent and for members of TUFA. Internally at Trent we have continuing disputes and externally we continue to face funding disappointment.

In the midst of this, TUFA has been able to cooperate with the University on small issues as they arose and, of course, in a very major issue, we reached agreement on a three-year renewal term for the Collective Agreement. I hope that the University will be able to work cooperatively with TUFA as Trent attempts to confront the future.

As TUFA members are well aware, the Memorandum of Settlement and the ratification meeting were not unanimously greeted as great successes. Indeed, they were both sources of some concern. We do have a parity model formally incorporated into the Collective Agreement, but we have agreed to a one-year lag in the implementation of parity maintenance and the disparity correction. As a result, TUFA salaries are expected to lag behind the system average until the disparity correction 'kicks in' with an eventual above-average scale adjustment to bring us back in line. We questioned the University's wisdom in wanting to withdraw a VER scheme that provided an opportunity for needed faculty renewal and had a potential for cost savings as well; nevertheless, in response to the University's adamant stance on this, we agreed to suspend the VER scheme during this three-year term. We also consider issues on provision of facilities, including computing resources, to be unresolved.

Despite these and other concerns, TUFA has expressed its interest in solving problems by working together with the University with a minimum of confrontation. TUFA has demonstrated its willingness to accept temporarily some conditions that are not fully satisfactory in an attempt to work with the University to face an uncertain future. We hope that the University appreciates this 'leap of faith' and will, in turn, try to work with TUFA to address outstanding concerns.

As noted in the recently circulated election documentation, there will be turnover in the Executive. In particular, I will complete my term as President and as a member of the Executive. It has certainly been an interesting experience. As I have said before, I very much appreciate the support that I received from Aurora and the other members of the Executive.

Best wishes to the new executive. You too will have a challenging year.

TUFA sends contratulations to those faculty and professional librarians who have received Merit Awards in the current academic year.

J. Harrison	ANTH	Service, Teaching
J. Topic	ANTH	Research
M. Bidochka	BIOL	Research
C. Verduyn	CAST	Research, Service
E. Lewars	CHEM	Research
W. Lem	CDST	Research
R. Dellamora	CULT	Research, Teaching
J. Fekete	CULT	Service
S. Kane	CULT	Research, Teaching
D. Curtis	ECON	Research, Service
S. Keefer	ENGL	Research
J. Neufeld	ENGL	Teaching, Service
M. Peterman	ENGL	Research
D. Evans	ERST	Research, Service
C. Metcalfe	ERST	Research
S. Wurtele	GEOG	Teaching
I. Elbl	HIST	Research, Teaching
F. Stoertz	HIST	Research
G. Aitken	HSST	Teaching
D. Binkley	LIBR	Library Service
M. Scigliano	LIBR	Library Service
D. McCaskill	NAST	Service
J. Milloy	NAST	Research
J. Earnshaw	PHYS	Service, Teaching
M. Neufeld	POST	Research
D. Torgerson	POST	Research
C. Smith	PSYC	Research
F. Nutch	SOCI	Teaching
S. Arat-Koc	SOCI	Research

Professor Aitken was inadvertently omitted in the list of Merit Awards published in the printed version of the TUFA Times.

The Department of English Literature has established a scholarship fund to honour the memory of Michael Treadwell, who died suddenly last year. This initiative is part of Trent University's Beyond Our Walls fundraising campaign. To date, donations and pledges to the Treadwell Scholarship Fund total $66,000. For further information, please contact the Chair of the Department of English Literature, Professor Michael Peterman (748-1732; mpeterman@trentu.ca). Donations and pledges may be directed to Beyond Our Walls, Development Office, Trent University.

The TUFA Bursary is distributed annually by the Association to students in second-year or higher with a 73% average the previous year who have demonstrated financial need. The amount of each bursary is changed according to the degree of need demonstrated.

In the 1999-2000 academic year eleven bursaries were given, with the total amount being $6,000.00. Decisions to award the bursaries are made by TUFA with the assistance of the Financial Aid Office.

TUFA has also pledged an additional $10,000 to be allocated to the bursary fund in three payments over the next three years. The first chaeque will be issued this spring.

This issue of the TUFA Times was a long time in the making. In the fall, in the "blackout" associated with ongoing negotiation at the table, I thought of trying to get a group of Trent people to write a series of articles focusing on issues that might stimulate broader thinking about the state of the academy. I settled on the general issue of commercialization, which encompasses ramifications in a number of different directions, including such things as research ethics, university governance, intellectual property rights, consumer's rights, and the potential chartering of for-profit private universities.

There are different perspectives on commercialization: some see it as the logical outcome of the fall of the Iron Curtain and the triumph of the market system; others as a more pragmatic adjustment to shrinking public funding of both the research and teaching aspects of the university; and still others see it as a dangerous threat to curiosity based inquiry and the free exchange of knowledge and ideas. It is clear that, whatever perspective one favors, commercialization is a major force that is reshaping the basic premises of research and education and, as such, deserves attention, analysis, and debate.

The contributors to this issue bring a Trent perspective to the problem. Former President Donald Theall provides an historical perspective, pointing out that there has long been tension between the central mission of the university and control by business interests. Robert Paehlke, a Trent Distinguished Research Award winner, suggests that industrial-academic partnerships are not invariably bad, but a balance needs to be maintained between the public and the private interests served by university research. Thomas Klassen brings the perspective of the classroom to the debate, reflecting on the different perspectives that students seem to have at the Oshawa campus and on the Symons campus. Ken Field reports on CAUT's consultations with federal governmental officials concerning the report of the Expert Panel on the Commercialization of University Research. Yves Thomas reports on OCUFA's concerns about the possible introduction of out-of-province, for-profit, private universities. Finally, Leslie Woolcott provides us with a summary of the kinds of support for industry partnerships that she, and her colleague, Nars Borodczak, will be providing over the next three years to faculty and students. I sincerely thank all the contributors for their time and energy.

For those wanting further information, I suggest a few starting places. The CAUT website (www.caut.org) has commentary on the Expert Panel recommendations, as well as other items of current interest. The OCUFA website (www.ocufa.on.ca) has an interesting research report titled, "Building Ontario Universities with the Wrong Blueprint: Trends in University Student Applications, Labour-Market Demand, and Ontario Government Funding". Universities for Sale (1999: James Lorimer and Co., Ltd, Toronto) situates the current impetus for commercialization within the larger framework of the development of Canadian universities since confederation with discussions of issues such as university governance, academic freedom, formation of faculty associations, and collective bargaining. The March issue of the Atlantic Monthly has an excellent and interesting article on the situation in the US, focusing especially on the commercialization of research.

Over the past decade, federal government funding of research has increasingly become contingent on matching funding from the private sector. Some examples of this trend are the Canadian Network for the Advancement of Research, Industry and Education (CANARIE), whose role is to bring university researchers and private industry closer together, in other words to give industry easy, ready access to university research; the NSERC Industrial Chairs, 50% of the funding for which must come from the private sector; and most recently, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI) which requires 50% funding by the private sector.

In March of last year, the Expert Panel on the Commercialization of University Research, which was established in October, 1998, by the Prime Minister's Advisory Council on Science and Technology, issued its draft report entitled Public Investment in University Research: Reaping the Benefits. The essence of the report was to place at the disposal of private industry all university research and to tie federal research funding to the potential commercial value of university research and the success of institutions in the transfer of research to private industry. All this to be done in the name of improving the Canadian economy.

The final report of the Expert Panel was released in May, 1999, and it differed little in essence from the draft report. The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) reacted quickly to the report. In its June, 1999,Bulletin, CAUT President Bill Graham is quoted as saying:

"If the recommendations of the [Expert] panel are adopted, they threaten to jeopardize socially and culturally valuable research that may not be profitable, while encouraging research that makes money for the private sector but may be trivial."

The threat to both the academic freedom of university faculty and to the pursuit of basic research is obvious in the recommendations of the Report. Industry and its pursuit of profit will become the drivers of research.

In September, 1999, CAUT issued its Commentary on the Final Report of the Expert Panel on Commercialization of University Research. In it, CAUT concluded that:

"...the report's recommendations encourage the steering of research toward the commercial interests of private corporations, undermine the tradition of open communication between scholars, and provide for the expropriation of the results of university research to the corporate sector." (p. 4)

It also (p. 8) condemned the recommendations of the Expert Panel as doing more harm to university research by "...focus[ing] limited resources on product tinkering with little human or commercial value," rather than addressing the issue of the constant and substantial decline in core funding to universities over the past decade.

In October, 1999, members of the CAUT Executive met with Dr. Tom Brzustowski, President of NSERC, Mr. Leo Derikx, formerly of NSERC, and Ms. Karen Corkery from Industry Canada, as part of the government's public consultation on the recommendations of the Expert Panel. At the meeting, CAUT reiterated its condemnation of the Report and indicated that balance in the objectives of research, the preservation of academic freedom, and the unfettered pursuit of knowledge must be key elements in the mission of universities.

Unfortunately, the report from the public consultation deals only lightly with the issues CAUT raised, dismissing them for the most part as the views of a "minority of academic stakeholders" and "a small number of faculty researchers."

In order to ensure that CAUT's message gets through to the Prime Minister, an open letter to the Prime Minister from concerned faculty is currently being circulated by CAUT. It has, at last count, 1400 faculty signatories and the number is growing. This will make a lie of the "minority of academic stakeholders" referred to in the report of the public consultation.

The text of the letter is available at the CAUT website: >www.caut.ca.

Two recent articles on universities in the editorial section of the Peterborough Examiner are particularly timely and should perhaps be doubly interesting in light of the recent debate at Trent University on the "brain drain". Eric Dowd's commentary on "Business less than ideal marriage mate" aptly raises a topic that touches on what has become a critical issue in Canada and the rest of North America in the last half century -- in fact, in the United States going back even further. The immediate topicality of the issue is illustrated by a feature article in the March issue of The Atlantic Monthly by Eyal Press and Jennifer Washburn entitled "The Kept University."

Harold Adams Innis, one of Canada's leading scholars in the history of political economy and former Dean of Graduate Studies at the University of Toronto, warned in a 1950 address at the University of New Brunswick of the damage that would be wrought on the important freedom of university research from influences external to the university, if the arms length relationship between the university and corporate and/or governmental power were not preserved. But in the mid-1950s, when Clark Kerr, President of the University of California chose to write a book defending the rise of the corporate university, the University of Toronto, under the influence of its administration and board, chose to follow the same path in order to rise in prominence.

There are two possible visions of the relationship between universities, as centers of disinterested research, and the corporate and governmental sectors in a society. The first, which was traditional in England, Canada and the United States, was to act as a participant in protecting democracy by maintaining a disinterested, critical role; the second was to go into active association with the corporate and governmental sectors as their servants. Since democracy is enhanced by discussion, debate and informed criticism, the first role more easily served the interests of a genuine democracy. Ironically, it also provided the leadership which built Canada into a major business and techno-scientific leader, as well as providing the basis for the society of safety nets (now rapidly eroding) which were erected in the first half of the twentieth century, making Canada a gentler, more protective society for all its citizens.

A university network free of potential manipulation could also develop a diversity of institutions and a diversity of competing interests within individual institutions. Many of the builders of Canadian culture such as Northrop Frye or Robertson Davies clearly articulated the importance of universities that were interested in providing an education that taught people to think, to develop flexibility and adaptability to change, to have a sense of history, including the history of how our sciences, institutions, values, and the protection of freedom and tolerance have developed.

That the dangers of corporate interference have become full blown was marked in one of our major universities by two major scandals involving the drug company Apotex, compromising the university's disinterestedness, both in research and in trading the university's influence directly for corporate donations. The Atlantic Monthly cites many other such cases across the United States, and many of us could tell of other similar incidents in Canada as well.

The universities today have little choice: they need the cash and, unless governments intervene by providing both more adequate funding, and also by placing stringent regulations on the terms by which tax free gifts are given to universities and/or contracts are negotiated, ensuring that they are in the public interest, any semblance of disinterestedness will be lost. Internally the universities rapidly become vulnerable as faculty researchers, competing for funds, can easily be lured into complicity with corporate donors, as well as by disturbing the internal balance between faculties in the universities. The result is the aggrandizement of faculties of administration or science and the relative poverty and loss of presence in faculties of arts -- and then massive regret when, as a computer science professor from the University of Western Ontario points out in the same issue of the Examiner, the standards in the universities with respect to the basic disciplines of thinking are watered down to meet the standards of a school system which has been deteriorating.

Perhaps a comment on a recent editorial in the Toronto Star, which praised the beneficence of Bill Gates's gift of computer equipment to schools and compared it to Andrew Carnegie's gift of public libraries to towns such as Peterborough, can illustrate the changing nature of philanthropy. Gates's gift of computer equipment, promoting his software and hence economic interests, is of a very different nature than that of Carnegie, who donated buildings to house books available to all, and who was neither in the building nor real estate business at the time. How many Macs or Linux operating systems did Bill Gates donate? The subject is far more complex than this and has been discussed in various books over the last century, such as the deceased University of Montreal scholar Bill Readings' The University in Ruins (1960). But discussion goes back to the early twentieth century -- to Thorstein Veblen's Higher Learning in America: A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men (1918). Like Innis, Veblen was an economist aware of the dangers looming on the horizon as universities continued to be governed primarily by businessmen and politicians.

Founded by Thomas H. B. Symons, Trent was dedicated to promoting diversity, a commitment to Canadian Studies, and to the foundations of knowledge. The history of the forty or so years during which it has matured make it seem ever more difficult to defend what it stands for. It can only be of very secondary interest to most corporate donors, since it cannot compete with the priorities of universities directed only toward the instrumental, rather than to the visions of a disinterested institution pursuing the roots of human knowledge. Hopefully the Examiner, in including these two articles simultaneous with the publication of The Atlantic Monthly's expose in the United States and the current "troubles at Trent" that are paralleled by a multitude of university problems across the province, has acknowledged the importance of that central historic mission of universities which is in the greatest danger of being lost.

(Editor's note: This article first appeared in the "Letters to the Editor" section of the Peterborough Examiner on Saturday, March 11. We have made minor editorial changes to the text.)

The deliberate and considerable insertion of a greater role for the corporate sector in university research decision- making in Canada must be seen in broad context. It is of a piece with "global competitiveness" and with what might be called "the commercialization of everything." One now goes to a hockey game at the Corel Centre or to the opera at the Hummingbird Centre. As well, virtually all athletes are logo-ized, right down to those participating in 10K fun runs. Nearly every individual live performance in the arts is now "sponsored" (though ticket prices remain high). We are now at the point where there are few urban windows one can peer from without seeing an advertisement. There is almost no form of electronic or print media free from dependence on advertising revenue -- and even fewer that are not owned outright by some global-scale corporation. Even public schools now show sponsored, and one assumes not too-terribly-socially-critical, "public" affairs programs, and university cafeterias are suddenly indistinguishable from shopping mall food courts.

Essentially, there are few spaces, physical or intellectual, which are not somehow at the service of commercial expansion and economic growth. How far down this road we have come was brought home to me recently in a dinner conversation with a person with a lifetime of successful experience in the Canadian chemical industry. He made the observation that within large chemical firms there were, until recently, usually a number of full-time researchers who only rarely added anything directly to the corporation's bottom line. Most of the time, these employees did pure research in chemistry. The corporation understood this to be the case and paid their salaries as a general contribution to the advance of science and, perhaps, to the firm's own internal learning process. Such possibilities can no longer exist, he noted, if firms are to continue to compete successfully within the new global-scale economy.

What has also happened, of course, is that almost no firm can or will contribute significant amounts of research money outside their own operations unless the contribution gains them considerable visibility or some other advantage. At the very least, they must be assured that there will be some measurable gain for their industry and the economy as a whole. What is also striking is that few, if any, governments or even influential individuals would imagine that there is any problem with this new reality. Our culture and our politics are, thus, not so far from monolithic in this regard. Anything which does not contribute to "the economy" and/or to some corporate bottom line cannot be easily justified. The arts explain how they contribute to the economy; wilderness exists if, and only if, ecotourism (or hunting) can demonstrably bring in more cash than it would if converted to logs.

Corporate leaders are, of course, very intelligent people. The best of them understand that there need to be independent voices in science lest corporations and governments make very costly errors in what is called risk management and risk communications. Mad cow disease, for example, was a very, very expensive mistake. As regards university research, they -- in most cases -- want only to nudge, in a broad way, the general direction of research rather than to control output in any detailed way (though there are a few examples of heavy hands at play in this regard).

On the other hand, few corporate decision-makers would be enthusiastic about, or fund, inquiries into the pernicious effects of advertising -- or, for that matter, the study of the social and cultural effects in the middle ages of the writings of Ovid (a current research interest of my eldest son, a graduate student at the University of Toronto). Nevertheless, it is the case that public research money in Canada is now, increasingly, allocated on a "matching" basis or has as one funding criteria the attainment of a good list of corporate and other "partners" who will directly use and/or fund the research in question.

I want to be very clear here: I think that there should be some such initiatives. I am, in fact, currently a participant in one such research proposal. Given the people involved with me in the application, I do not think my integrity will be compromised, the subject is one that I would have chosen to study in any case, and will in fact pursue even if the application is unsuccessful. But there are always opportunity costs --involvement in such a project always precludes pursuing other research initiatives in the same block of time. There is, then, a very grave danger of an imbalance in overall research orientation, especially in Canada. In the United States, by comparison, there is far more foundation money available, and utterly staggering levels of university endowment, to fund a very broad range of intellectual activities and perspectives. I know, for example, several researchers who are highly critical of contemporary environmental policy directions -- and indeed American society generally -- who hold privately endowed chairs in major universities. The few "green chairs" that were publicly funded in Canada required the attainment of private sector sponsors.

In Canada non-governmental resources for research do not run deep, and, indeed, there is a desperate need for commercially relevant research (25% of all direct corporate research and development in Canada is done by one firm). All non-commercial research funding in Canada must compete in this context. The government money to ameliorate, through partnerships, this serious shortfall generally comes from funding for research that is not commercially oriented -- either in terms of absolute reductions or in terms of foregone opportunities for a long-overdue expansion of non-commercial and potentially critical social research by the SSHRCC and other public agencies. In Ontario, the situation is particularly acute at this juncture given the fact that there is a government which is essentially unable to imagine any reason whatever for anyone engaging in a non- commercial activity -- in terms of research, or everyday life. I sometimes wonder if the current Ontario government even understands why there needs to be any public sector beyond the Department of Highways (formerly the Department of Transportation).

So, as that not-very-democratic fellow with a name one dare not speak on grant applications once asked, "what is to be done?" Perhaps a better way to put it now is "what can one do, anyway?" Albert Camus said in The Plague -- and a new plague is indeed upon us -- "one does what one can." Academics can still, in fact, set our own research agendas. Some of us can do research with little, if any, research funding if necessary. Even when the Ontario "double cohort" arrives at our door with no funding for additional faculty, we can (if we have paid off our mortgages and are content to listen to our opera on CBC radio), do our teaching and our research in alternate terms or years. We can try, as well, to communicate to our fellow citizens that our nation will not suddenly fall into a chasm of poverty and desperation if some tax dollars fund activities which carry no commercial advantage whatever. We might even hold out a faint hope that some prosperous individuals and firms will also understand why this is important.

The commercialization of the academy is a multi-faceted phenomenon representing, in part, the disintegration of two previous conditions: First, the widespread acceptance of the notion of post-secondary education as a public good with government providing substantial grants to both institutions and individual students. Second, that students graduating with a university degree would quickly find stable, interesting, and well-paying employment.

Although these two notions have not disappeared altogether, they are now much weaker than was the case when Trent University first opened its doors in 1964-65. Governments are less willing to fund universities, forcing institutions to scramble after other sources of support, including support from alumni and from industrial partnerships. At the same time, recent graduates are less assured of secure and rewarding employment, and in any case may have sizeable loans to repay. Labour market and technological changes, along with globalization, mean that individuals now are less assured of a predictable career path than was the case thirty years ago.

For instance, the percentage of the paid labour force that is self-employed has grown from 10.9% in 1976 to 17.2% in 1998, while the number of part-time and casual workers has also increased.

Given this altered environment, what might the academy of the future look like? Oddly enough, Trent's Oshawa campus may provide a glimpse of the future (just as the Symons campus -- in both its physical and cultural aspects -- provides a glimpse of the conditions that existed in the 1960s).

The Oshawa campus, with 400 full-time and 1,000 part-time students, is a far more commercial undertaking than Trent University in Peterborough. The majority of faculty teaching in Oshawa are on contract, allowing for rapid adjustments in response to enrolments (as well as being a cheaper pool of labour). Decisions concerning the Oshawa program are driven largely, and explicitly, by the availability of funds rather than by pedagogical considerations. Furthermore, the program requires Trent to work in partnership with both York University and Durham College.

Moreover, students at the Oshawa campus tend to regard their education as a commercial transaction to a greater degree than is the case for Peterborough students. For example, during a debate in a recent introductory sociology class, one student referred to Trent University as a "brand name." At first, I was shocked! How could a university possibly be compared to Nike or General Motors? After all, isn't a university utterly different from a purveyor of shoes or cars?

On the other hand, "Trent" is a brand name in that it promises something in return for money, just as Nike promises a "just do it" attitude and car companies promise wide-open roads and sensual encounters. Furthermore, potential students must choose between a variety of vendors, each making rather vague promises about its product. In view of the cost of tuition, and the opportunity costs, a decision as to which school and program to attend has very much become a commercial decision.

Given the cost of a university education, it has been my experience that students are far more concerned (than I recall them being when I was a student at Trent) about quality and value. Indeed, they crave to become involved and shape aspects of their education. At the University of Waterloo -- perhaps Ontario's most "commercial" university -- a current proposal supported by faculty and the administration would see two students become non-voting members of the university-wide tenure committee. As a Waterloo student (quoted in the Feb. 12th Toronto Star) noted, "When someone's buying a product, they want the most for their money. If the teaching is not good, you have trouble justifying the expense."

To me the greater desire of students to become involved, which is obvious at the Oshawa campus and, to a lesser extent, in Peterborough, is an important development that faculty should seek to foster rather than to curtail. Active, activist, interested and creative students, who have a real sense of ownership of their educational experience, are not only a joy and challenge to teach, but will also help protect the core values of the academy. When faculty toil to resist the negative aspects of the commercialization of universities, having students as allies is imperative.

By systematically underfunding post-secondary education, the present goverment of Ontario is forcing universities to look and behave more and more like for-profit companies. The recent funding announcements, for example, tie university funding to corporate-style performance indicators. Moreover, the trend toward corporatization is accompanied by considerable tuition increases for students and a failure to understand the urgent need for faculty renewal. As a further proof of the Harris government's resistance to the idea of improving funding conditions for universities, and certainly an added demonstration of its ongoing search for possible cost savings, there is increasing evidence that private universities may be introduced in Ontario. "We would like to see," Mike Harris told reporters on March 7th, "the benefits to see if the addition of private universities and training schools can augment our public system. We have served notice, we are exploring those options. We do have proposals before us from technical universities."

While seriously considering a proposal made by the University of Phoenix to create a campus in this province, the Harris government is also studying proposals which include new post-secondary schools in the Brampton and Durham regions. The Ontario Confederation of University Associations (OCUFA) says, however, that Harris is reorienting university education to reflect his own narrow vision, a vision that often neglects historical factors. In this perspective, OCUFA is concerned that:

• the quality of programs offered by out-of-province institutions might not be at the same high level as that of Ontario universities.
• university programs offered by out-of-province institutions, but taught by college faculty could eventually open the door to colleges being given degree-granting status and diminish the value of university degrees.
• the wholesale granting of ministerial consent could adversely affect Ontario universities through a decline in enrolment and, consequently, funding.

The Harris government plans to gather wide support for the permanent installation of private universities in Ontario. However, OCUFA is in the process of drafting a policy paper which will underscore the importance of this threat to our present system. At the same time that funding for the provincial system is being reduced in real terms, it would be a further blow to post-secondary education to allow funding to be used to subsidize these private universities in terms of student loans and bursaries. We must condemn without restraint the Harris government for its insistance on impoverishing existing public universities in order to finance initiatives that have the overall effect of destroying programs that don't relate directly to business or technology.

What might a liberal arts and sciences education contribute to the private sector? What does a liberal arts student have to offer industrial settings? If the primary goals of academic life are teaching, research and community service, then how are universities to work with the private sector -- a vital part of our communities? While these questions work their way across minds on Canadian campuses, universities are moving to respond to pressures on a number of fronts.

Universities today are enduring government cutbacks and facing increased requirements by federal and provincial granting agencies to establish third-party, private sector partnerships. For their part, students grapple with severe debt-loads on graduation. Few are free to evaluate their post-secondary education without considering the job market, their potential earnings, and the possible applications of what they have learned over the course of three or four years of study. Members of the university community seek ways to apply their efforts to the resolution of problems they see in the world. The Trent Centre for Community-Based Education (TCCBE) is an example of community organizations working with faculty and students to answer social research questions. Such important pursuits are rarely successful when implemented in isolation; they require collaboration with other sectors of the community.

As a university respected for its teaching and research contributions locally, nationally, and internationally, Trent is faced with the question of how to advance research and learning through relationships with both the public and the private sectors. Such relationships already exist. Current collaborations include the establishment of three Industrial Research Chairs between 1995 and 1999, and success in competitions requiring private sector support: the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and the Premier's Research Excellence Awards. Major industrial research funding of Trent faculty research has come from corporate partners such as INCO, Alcan, Monsanto, Unilever Industries, Proctor & Gamble and Ontario Power Generation, Inc.

In order to ensure continued research excellence with the growing number of research competitions requiring third-party support, Trent applied for and received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council's Intellectual Property Management Program. These funds, matched in part by the University through the Fair Funding Grant, enabled the creation of two contract positions that will help the University community formulate a response to some of these increasing pressures. Over the next three years as Industry Liaison Officer, I will be working on campus with a part-time Industry University Coordinator, Nars Borodczak, providing support in Toronto and Ottawa. Our aim is to support existing relationships with industry and to assist members of the University community wanting to forge new relationships with private sector partners.

An important first step in the work of the Industry Liaison Officer (ILO) involves the development and promotion of a comprehensive intellectual property management policy that will include Trent faculty, staff and students. Our present policy concerns faculty and has been negotiated with the Trent University Faculty Association (see section IV.7 of the Collective Agreement). A consultative process, that encourages learning and discussion about intellectual property management and invites the participation of all members of the University community, is in the planning stages. The insights and experiences of TUFA members will be particularly important if this process is to result in an intellectual property management policy that reflects Trent's values and mission as a liberal arts and sciences institution.

Establishing research/work placements, particularly for students in the sciences, is a second component of the activities the University ILO will undertake to enhance relationships with the private sector. These placements will offer students the opportunity to learn about their field of study in different settings and from diverse perspectives while building employment experience and opportunities. Over the long-term, these placements may culminate in better understanding between university and industry, building the potential for future collaboration and external research support.

Finally, these new appointments enable the University to assist researchers wanting to secure funding for research from industry. We will build on the reputation of quality research and innovation at Trent that has already been of service to companies like Peterborough Paper Converters, Milltronics, Lakefield Research, and Enbridge Consumers Gas, as well as to numerous government ministries. This may result in the development of patents, research agreements and contracts, copyrighted materials, licenses for inventions, or small business pursuits.

The Industry Liaison Officer and the Industry University Coordinator will be available to support faculty applying to compete for research grants requiring private sector support. With the additional administrative support of these two positions, the University community will receive timely and knowledgeable advice on matters relating to patents, intellectual property, and university-industry funding sources. Over time, Trent faculty will have access to improved and more diverse research funding opportunities.

If you have any comments or questions, or if you require assistance from the Industry Liaison Officer or the Industry University Coordinator, you are welcome to contact me at the Office of Research and Graduate Studies. I can be reached by phone: (705)748-1674; e-mail: lwoolcott@trentu.ca; or at Otonabee College Room 131.

[Editor's note: As we go to press the Université de Moncton Faculty continue the strike that began on March 2. TUFA has provided contributions to the strike fund, and we also sent the following letter of support.]

Monsieur Jean-Bernard Robichaud
Recteur
Université de Moncton

Cher Monsieur,

Je vous écris au nom du syndicat des professeurs de l'Université Trent (TUFA) à Peterborough en Ontario avec le plus vif intérêt pour les événements qui se déroulent ces jours-ci à Moncton.

Comme vous le savez peut-être les professeurs de Trent (le masculin est utilisé ici à titre épicène) ont fait grève à deux reprises entre 1991 et 1998. Les deux grèves ont été longues et pénibles, mais elles ont toutes deux marquées des victoires importantes pour notre convention collective. Cette lutte, en fait de près de 10 ans, a mené à la parité salariale avec la moyenne provinciale des salaires universitaires et à un régime de pension avec indexation qui fait l'envie des universités canadiennes.

Lors de la première grève, en 1991, alors que tout semblait indiquer une impasse comme chez vous ces jours-ci, le Recteur de l'Université John Stubbs est intervenu directement auprès du Conseil des Régents pour faire admettre le principe d'une parité de salaire avec des augmentations prévues de 5%, 6% et 7% sur trois ans. Son intervention a eu pour effet de mettre fin immédiatement à la grève qui aurait pu, après trois semaines, devenir une catastrophe pour l'Université et ses étudiants.

Au moment de la deuxième grève, l'entêtement de la part de l'Administration à refuser de poursuivre les négociations sur les bases d'une reconnaissance de la parité de salaire avec la moyenne provinciale ainsi que de l'amélioration du régime de pension a occasionné une prolongation inutile de la grève. Prises par ses mauvais sentiments, sa méfiance et son opposition aux revendications syndicales, la Haute Administration de l'Université n'a pu que céder devant toutes nos revendications lorsqu'elle se rendit compte que son manque flagrant de vision fondé sur des préoccupations de comptabilité achoppait à une ténacité justifiée et bien documentée de la part des professeurs. Peu de temps après la signature du nouveau contrat, l'Administration s'écroula complètement. Le Recteur, le Vice-Recteur et le Doyen durent démitionner.

Je vous demande donc, par la même occasion, s'il vous est plus souhaitable de vous entêter ou d'intervenir?

A vous de jouer...

Je vous prie d'agréer, cher Monsieur le Recteur, mes voeux les plus cordialement dévoués pour un nouveau départ dans ces négociations qui devraient plutôt vous unir aux professeurs de l'Université de Moncton.

Yves Thomas
Responsable des affaires exterieures
Le Syndicat des Professeurs de l'Université Trent

[Editor's note: University College of Cape Breton finally settled the strike with their faculty association on March 17, after five weeks. The Faculty Association of University Teachers won a 20% salary increase over the life of a four-year contract. In addition, lawsuits brought by the Administration against the Association and its leaders will be dropped. TUFA provided contributions to the strike fund.]

Dr. Jacqueline Thayer Scott, President
University College of Cape Breton

The Trent University Faculty Association is appalled at the lack of progress in your negotiations with the Faculty Association of University Teachers.

Although they have not had a salary increase in more than a decade, the FAUT had shown amazing patience and good will in trying to negotiate a first contract over the last four years. Throughout this protracted process, they have bargained in good faith and sought final offer arbitration on monetary issues. Your intransigence finally pushed them into a strike, a strike that clearly is strongly supported by their membership. The strike has now gone on for more than four weeks and has been marred by threats of civil lawsuits and charges of bad-faith bargaining -- a tactic that your lawyers seem exceptionally fond of using. We understand that, while the FAUT has sought mediation for outstanding issues, you have chosen to break off negotiations.

FAUT members have the lowest salaries in the country. You must realize that the long term health of your institution depends on being able to recruit and retain good faculty. By all accounts, you have a very dedicated faculty now, but low salaries and a heavy handed, authoritarian, administrative style make UCCB a very unattractive place to work.

We urge you to draw upon your institution's solid financial base to address the problems of salaries and working conditions that are still at issue. Surely, the sizable budget surplus reported by Statistics Canada should allow you to pay a fair wage to your faculty.

Negotiate in good faith so that UCCB can get back to the business of educating students.

E.A. Maxwell
President
Trent University Faculty Association

c.c. Dr. Michael Manson, President UCCB-FAUT

The U.S. standard railroad gauge (distance between rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's how they built them in England, and the first U.S. railroads were built by English Expatriates.

Why did the English people build them like that? Because the first rail lines in England were designed and built by the same people who designed and built pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did "they" use that gauge then? Becuase the people who designed and built the tramways used the same jigs and and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that same wheel spacing.

Okay, why did the wagons use that odd wheel spacing? Well, when they tried to use any other spacing, the wagons were prone to breaking down on some of the old, long distance roads, because that's the spacing of the old wheel ruts.

So who built these old rutted and gouged roads? The first long distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were first made by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were all made to certain specifications for or by Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

Thus, we have the answer to the original questions. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot.

But one "nagging" question still remains. Why did the design of the Roman army war chariots incorporate that specific wheelbase? Answer: Because the chariots were designed to be just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.

So the next time you are handed some oddball specification and you assume that some horse's ass was responsible for coming up with it, you may well be right!

Nominations for the TUFA Executive were closed on Thursday, 23 March. Professors Morgan Tamplin and James Driscoll were nominated. Professors Stefan Bilaniuk and John Topic were re-nominated. All four were elected by acclamation. Your 2000-2001 Executive, thus, is composed of the following members:

Stefan Bilaniuk
Peter Dawson
James Driscoll
Susan Jamieson
Morgan Tamplin
John Topic

Two positions for members-at-large remain open and the Executive will take steps to fill them in due course.

President:

Skip Maxwell, Mathematics, 748-1417, eamaxwell@trentu.ca

Vice-President & Secretary:

Doug Lowe, Psychology, 748-1792, dlowe@trentu.ca

Grievances:

Janice Millard, Library, 748-1326, jmillard@trentu.ca

Pension/Benefits:

Stefan Bilaniuk, Mathematics, 748-1474, sbilaniuk@trentu.ca

Treasurer

Peter Dawson, Physics, 748-1628, pdawson@trentu.ca

Editor, TUFA Times:

John Topic, Anthropology, 748-1393, jtopic@trentu.ca

Members-at-Large:

Susan Jamieson, Anthropology, 748-1627, sjamieson@trentu.ca

Yves Thomas, French, M.L.L., 748-1527, ythomas@trentu.ca

Administrative Assistant:

Aurora Wait
TUFA Office: CC E3
Telephone: (705) 748-1415
Fax: (705) 748-1651
tufa@trentu.ca
http://www.trentu.ca/tufa/