  |
 Frequently Asked QuestionsWhat is the mandate of the Special Advisory Committee? President Steven E. Franklin formed a Special Advisory Committee in the fall of 2009 to advise him about academic administrative structures at Trent University. Two questions served to focus the Committee’s work: Does Trent University’s academic structure serve the needs of faculty and students in pursuit of academic goals? and Does Trent University’s academic structure support the development of goals and objectives, actions and targets, that will lead Trent University to realize a dynamic vision for the future? Who are the members of the Special Advisory Committee? Sally Chivers How did the Special Advisory Committee consult with the Trent community? The Special Advisory Committee sent out invitations to approximately 50 departments/programs, committees, executives of unions and student groups, as well as to some more loosely constituted groups. Members of the Committee met with approximately 400 people in meetings of those almost 40 committees/groups who responded to the Committee invitation to ask them what they thought about the current single-Faculty structure at Trent; what they thought about moving to a multi-Faculty structure; what reasons they had for preferring a new model or the status quo; and what consequent reorganization at other levels of Trent’s academic structure might follow from a different model. After meeting almost a dozen times to synthesize what the members of the Committee had heard and to do some comparative research on academic administrative structures at other Canadian universities, the Committee developed three models for consideration. It held a workshop on January 20th to which it invited all those members of the Trent University community who had expressed an interest in contributing to this Committee’s work through the Renewal of Planning Processes website, and it held consultations at which it presented three models for consideration, answered questions, and sought feedback at Faculty Council, Faculty Board, and Senate in early February. In addition, the Committee held three open consultation sessions in the week of February 8th to which all members of the Trent community were invited at which feedback was sought, and the Academic Planning & Budget Committee was asked to provide input at its February 9th meeting. At each of these presentations and consultation sessions, members of the Trent community were invited to provide written feedback to the Chair of the Committee or to any of its members. Almost 20 written submissions were received. The possible implications for the TUFA Collective Agreement of the proposed models were discussed at Joint Committee meetings in January and February. Why has the Committee concluded that Trent’s current academic administrative structure needs to be changed? During its consultations members of the Committee heard overwhelming consensus that the portfolio for the Dean of Arts & Science is unmanageably broad in scope. While different ways to deal with this problem were suggested, the members of the Committee did not encounter resistance to the idea of change. The members of the Committee heard that the current structure does not serve departments, chairs, and faculty members as well as it should. Because the Dean of Arts & Science is responsible for all departments, all undergraduate degree offerings, and the professional welfare of all faculty members, he/she cannot provide the kind of support required to permit departments, chairs, and faculty to flourish and to respond in meaningful and proactive ways to changes in the internal and external environments. The Committee identified ways in which the current structure likewise does not serve students as well as it could. The members of the Committee also heard that Trent has not been very good at strategic planning and strategic decision-making. Several faculty members thought that Trent’s strategy had been simply to “follow the money”. The Committee concluded that much of Trent’s poor history of planning can be attributed to the current structure, which does not permit the Dean of Arts & Science any time to engage in strategic planning and which grants the Dean of Arts & Science all the instructional resources and the Provost and Vice President Academic none. Because the Dean of Arts & Science is charged with supporting all departments equitably, he/she has little capacity (in good times or bad) to make differential allocations which would reflect agreed-upon strategic priorities at the University. Were the Provost and Vice President Academic permitted some discretion – in consultation with a council of Deans – in the allocation of instructional resources across smaller units of the University, the capacity to direct resources to priority areas over time would be increased. The members of the Committee heard another concern about the centralization of resource-allocation in a single office. While there was never any suggestion that the current Acting Dean of Arts & Science or any of the past Deans of Arts & Science had done anything other than try to allocate resources equitably, there was a sense that the decisions were not made in a transparent manner. While some faculty valued the maximum flexibility accorded the Dean of Arts & Science through the centralization of decision-making, others thought more transparent and more participatory decision-making would be in the best interests of departments and chairs. Were a Dean to have budgetary responsibility over a smaller number of departments, he/she would be able to institute mechanisms whereby resource allocation and priority-setting within that smaller unit would be the subject of discussion amongst the various departments. Trent’s inability to groom future administrators internally was also seen to be a weakness that is attributable to the current structure. The overwhelmingly large portfolio for the Dean of Arts & Science has made the position relatively unattractive to internal members of the Trent community, and it reflects quite a large step up in terms of responsibility and accountability from departmental chair. Equally, the capacity to groom potential Provost and Vice Presidents Academic and potential Presidents is very limited, given the current structure. Several faculty noted that the oft-repeated desire to appoint senior administrators from within Trent is frustrated by the current academic administrative structure. And in those instances when seeking external candidates is thought to be desirable, the structure serves as a deterrent for many, either because the positions are anomalously labeled (for example, Director of the School of Nursing reporting to a Dean of Arts & Science, where in most places these positions would be decanal positions) or because the positions look intimidatingly large. The members of the Committee were conscious of how Trent’s current academic administrative structure is perceived externally. The members of the Committee heard several times that faculty thought that there was not a good fit between academic priorities and philanthropic priorities. The current Dean of Arts & Science’s workload does not permit him/her to play an active role in philanthropic initiatives, and this can be to the detriment of departments and faculty. Were the workload of the Dean of Arts & Science distributed across more portfolios, there would be greater capacity for academic administrators to work more closely with the Office of External Relations and Advancement and to ensure an alignment of academic priorities and philanthropic priorities. The members of the Committee also heard that there was a desire to have decanal portfolios which permit the incumbents the capacity to continue with their teaching and/or their research, albeit in a significantly reduced fashion. It was thought both that this would keep Deans more aware of the day-to-day struggles of faculty members and that this might make the positions more attractive to faculty members who wished to serve as academic administrators for a single term and then return to their faculty status. How do you see these changes helping faculty and students? Currently, given the workload, the Dean of Arts & Science is unlikely to be in a position to know each department and each faculty member well enough to understand ways in which he/she can best support them. Faculty from one division have historically been wary of having a Dean of Arts & Science from a discipline so unlike their own: having Deans for each division/Faculty should ensure both that the Dean shares an academic background with the faculty members in departments under his/her responsibility and that the departments and faculty members under the Dean have a greater coincidence of interests amongst themselves. Students will be better served by a structure which permits Deans to work with departments on curriculum development, quality enhancement, and initiatives that matter more locally. They should also be able to understand better and support more meaningfully the Office of Student Affairs, the Office of the Registrar, the Trent International Program, and the Colleges, amongst others, to ensure that the work done on recruitment, retention, and student support and engagement activities aligns well with the academic and curricular needs of students. Deans with smaller spans of responsibility will be able to support faculty more directly in their research, their teaching, and their professional development. They should be able to provide more training and support to chairs of departments. They should also be able to work with the Vice President ER&A to make sure that philanthropic initiatives are aligned with the academic priorities of each academic units. Do these models reflect what you were hearing in the consultations? The Committee heard over and over again that the work load in the Office of the Dean of Arts & Science was much too great. There were different suggestions as to how this should be addressed. The Committee did not encounter resistance to the idea of change. The Committee heard from some that a single Faculty of Arts & Science was what was distinctive about Trent; it heard from others that it was important for the future well-being of their unit that they have more autonomy for their unit and/or more capacity to plan their own futures; some interpreted this as the need to form separate Faculties. The Committee heard that Nursing and Education thought that their needs would be better served by being stand-alone administrative units outside the Faculty of Arts & Science, but that Business Administration and Forensics did not feel that membership in a School or a Faculty of Professional Programs was essential to their functioning. Business Administration, in particular, saw its placement within the Faculty of Arts & Science as a relative strength of its program. Interdisciplinarity was cited as very important and something that no changed structure should impede. The Committee noted that there did not seem to be a single sense of what interdisciplinarity is, and it heard that interdisciplinarity arises from grass-roots collaborations rather than from any particular structure. The Committee heard that students should be able to continue to take cross-listed courses, joint majors, and have a general, broad-based first year, and that faculty should continue to be able to be cross-appointed. The Committee heard from many that there should not be duplication in things like Faculty Council, Faculty Board, COAP, USC, and other committees that serve a pan-University function. The Committee heard of the importance of ensuring that Trent students are provided with professional and well-delivered student services, and that it is very important to find a structure that will work for Trent and that will permit all student support services to be well coordinated in order to improve the experience of Trent students both inside and outside the classroom. The Committee heard concerns that a new academic administrative structure was likely to impose additional costs at a time when cutbacks are occurring. Why do your models propose moving the School of Education and the School of Nursing out of the Faculty of Arts & Science? The School of Education runs on a different schedule, with several shorter terms; its students are all post-BA or BSc students; they do not take any undergraduate courses in the Faculty of Arts & Science at Trent; many USC and university regulations do not work for faculty and students in Education (e.g., drop-by dates); Education requires some different policies and procedures for its students; the B.Ed. is a direct entry program; its programs are subject to external accreditation requirements and Ministry compliance matters; Education students have to meet professional standards; every year many, many part-time contract faculty are hired, and all of these hirings are processed through the Dean’s Office, making the process very inefficient and time-consuming; in the provincial and national context, having the senior academic administrator be a Director (who reports to a Dean of Arts & Science) and not a Dean makes recruitment to the position difficult and undermines the credibility of the incumbent (and Trent) at provincial meetings. The School of Nursing runs much of the year; it is a collaborative program with Fleming, so there are inter-institutional partnership matters (including budgetary matters) about which the Director is required to report directly to the Provost and Vice President Academic; Nursing students take some undergraduate courses in the Faculty of Arts & Science and would continue to do so; the current cost-recovery models in place to compensate departments for delivering courses to primarily Nursing students would continue and would be refined; faculty could still be cross-appointed; Nursing programs are subject to external accreditation requirements; Nursing students have to meet professional standards; Nursing is a direct entry program; every year many, many part-time contract faculty are hired as clinical instructors, and all of these hirings are processed through the Dean’s Office, making the process very inefficient and time-consuming; in the provincial and national context, having the senior academic administrator be a Director (who reports to a Dean of Arts & Science) and not a Dean makes recruitment to the position difficult and undermines the credibility of the incumbent (and Trent) at provincial meetings. The Committee heard from both Nursing and Education that this was a change that they felt was long overdue. There did not seem to be any resistance from other units. Did the Committee consider proposing a Faculty of Professional Programs? The Committee did consider this possibility, but it concluded that there were not enough similarities between Nursing and Education (and, perhaps, other professional programs) for this model to make sense. Furthermore, the disadvantages of the current administrative structure (e.g., having regulations that do not match the needs of the programs, having to go one level up to seek approval for the multiplicity of hires for practicum supervision and clinical placements, not having a Dean at provincial, national, and Ministry meetings, recruitment challenges) would still persist. In Ontario, there is one university (Laurentian) that has Nursing and Education under a Faculty of Professional Schools; otherwise, Education is normally its own Faculty and Nursing is either its own Faculty or within a Faculty of Health Sciences or Applied Health Sciences. The Committee was also sensitive to the concern expressed by some that academic administrative positions not proliferate. Having a Faculty of Professional Programs with a Dean would introduce a new decanal position without any savings at the Director level. What responsibilities will the three Deans either within the Faculty of Arts & Science or as Deans of their own Faculties have? Under all models, the three Deans will have many of the same responsibilities as the current Dean of Arts & Science, but for a smaller group of departments and faculty members. These responsibilities include: oversight of departments; support of chairs; management of academic support staff within the division; representation of division needs and strategic initiatives to the Provost and Vice President Academic; the quality of undergraduate degree programs and participation in quality assurance procedures; attention to the recruitment, retention, engagement, and student support activities relevant to students within the division; an instructional budget; the hiring of tenure track faculty subsequent to recommendations from personnel committees; the hiring of LTAs and CUPE instructors subsequent to recommendations from personnel committees (although the delegation to departments of the hiring of CUPE tutorial leaders and markers and lab assistants might be possible); the professional development of faculty and participation in COAP recommendations; the celebration of the achievements of faculty and students; working with ER&A to align philanthropic priorities with academic priorities. Each Dean would be a member of Senate and a member of the Vice President’s Academic Advisory Committee. Each Dean would be expected to advocate for the interests and welfare of the division and departments under him/her, but each Dean would also be required to collaborate with the other Deans and to work cooperatively with the Provost and Vice President Academic in support of the Faculty of Arts & Science and the University. There are some additional responsibilities of the current Dean's portfolio (chairing Undergraduate Academic Policy Committee and Nominating Committee) which will need to be discussed, and some additional responsibilities that might be assigned (e.g., management of space). How will departments (and faculty) be assigned to a Dean? The default assignment will be the three current divisions as specified in the Council of the Faculty of Arts & Science constitution; if this does not work for individual departments, there might be room for discussion. The concerns the Committee heard about Social Science departments which have some faculty who need science support staff and science equipment support would be looked after by making sure that the Dean of Social Sciences has a budget to support these kinds of needs. The Committee did hear from some units that a single Dean of Social Sciences and Humanities made more sense than a Dean of Social Sciences and a Dean of Humanities. Equally, the Committee heard that those departments that straddle the sciences and the social sciences, as well as several solidly social sciences departments, would not be best served if grouped with humanities departments. Several faculty in humanities departments spoke of the need for a Dean devoted to the humanities rather than one shared with the social sciences. What is your understanding of a School of Graduate Studies? The Committee is recommending the introduction of a School of Graduate Studies (common at other universities) because it thought that graduate studies at Trent had reached a stage that warranted its recognition as an administrative unit, with a Dean as its administrative head. The members of the Committee suppose that the new Dean of the School of Graduate Studies and the new Provost and Vice President Academic will work towards fleshing out the implications of having a School of Graduate Studies. Minimally, the Committee imagines that eligible faculty could have status appointments to the School of Graduate Studies; that there would be university-wide policies and procedures governing all graduate programs (including future programs in EDUC and NURS) that would be developed out of the School of Graduate Studies and approved through Senate; and that there might be more centralization of some procedures. Why is the Oshawa position called “Principal – Trent in Oshawa”? Because growth in Oshawa is a strategic priority for the University, and because Trent’s presence in Oshawa involves collaborations with our partners in Oshawa (University of Ontario Institute of Technology and Durham College), it is important that this position report directly to the Provost and Vice President Academic. Currently, the senior academic administrator position in Oshawa does not appoint TUFA faculty and has no authority over personnel decisions for TUFA faculty members. Nor is this position currently responsible for developing policy distinct from that which governs students and faculty on the Peterborough campus. For the immediate future this is likely to remain unchanged; thus the Committee thought that the title “Dean” was not the most appropriate. Nonetheless, the lead academic administrator at Trent in Oshawa will have significant responsibility for the running of a growing and an increasingly autonomous campus. Tell us a bit more about the proposed interdisciplinary schools either within the Faculty of Arts & Science or as stand-alone units? The Committee is recommending the idea of interdisciplinary schools as a placeholder which can feature in any of the models, and hence is not decisive amongst the models. The Committee is not recommending the founding of any particular interdisciplinary school. Rather, it would like Senate approval for the idea of such a school(s), and it is proposing some criteria that might be met should some combination of departments or faculty wish to pursue this option. These criteria include: that it reflect one of the University’s strategic priorities; that it provide capacity to enhance recruitment and retention (students and faculty), profiling, and fundraising opportunities; that it be department-less; that it be designed to address the genuinely interdisciplinary teaching and research needs of the relevant faculty and/or departments; that it require the union of one or more academic administrative units (departments/programs). Senate may wish to recommend that an Advisory Committee be established to determine the criteria for the introduction of an interdisciplinary school. The Committee supposes that Directors of interdisciplinary schools would have many of the responsibilities of the Deans within the Faculty of Arts & Science or the Deans of separate Faculties, including budgetary responsibilities, and would report directly to the Provost and Vice President Academic. In some of the models under consideration, they would be within the Faculty of Arts & Science. Any proposal for an interdisciplinary school would be subject to all the usual governance and approval procedures. Why should interdisciplinary schools not retain department structures within them? The Committee saw this as a way of bringing together faculty, possibly from across currently existing departments, into a single administrative unit with the end of uniting departments or faculty who share interdisciplinary teaching and research interests. Schools will be able to offer several degree programs, with subsets of members of a school assuming responsibility for curricular matters and student advising. The Committee thought this structure would offer a better and more flexible way to coordinate and serve the teaching, research, and long-term staffing needs in those interdisciplinary areas that reflect strategic priorities of the University. The Committee wishes to stress that the idea of interdisciplinary schools is something for which it would be expecting departmental and/or faculty uptake before any school was introduced: it is not something the Committee intends to impose, and the Committee is not recommending any particular candidates for a interdisciplinary school. How will these proposed changes affect Faculty Council and Faculty Board? The Trent Act accords the University the power to establish and maintain, inter alia, Faculties and Schools. The Act specifies that there is to be a Council of the Faculty of Arts & Science, and that each Faculty or School to be established would likewise have a Council. If Education and Nursing were to become separate Schools outside the Faculty of Arts & Science, they would need to explore whether they would establish their own Council or formally decide to be part of the existing Council of the Faculty of Arts & Science. Likewise with a School of Graduate Studies. Some of the models do not appear to affect the functioning of the Council of the Faculty of Arts & Science very much, although there might be changes to the “divisions” and hence minor changes required to its constitution. Introducing multiple Faculties could introduce more challenges: the Trent Act cites the Faculty of Arts & Science in the context of the Council of the Faculty of Arts & Science. It does not preclude the introduction of other Faculties, but there might be some consequences of proposing more than one Faculty. None of the models requires changes to Faculty Board, although the question of who chairs Faculty Board would need to be discussed. One possibility would be to have each of the Deans in the Faculty of Arts & Science (or of different Faculties) chair it on an annual rotating basis. Another possibility would be to have the Provost and Vice President Academic chair Faculty Board. Some constitutional changes to Faculty Board would be required were there no longer a Dean of Arts & Science. What are the advantages of having multiple Deans in a single Faculty rather than having multiple Deans of separate Faculties? Advantages of preserving a single Faculty of Arts & Science include: first, that students will still be able to apply to the Faculty of Arts & Science and declare joint-majors and graduate with joint-major degrees across the sciences, social sciences, and humanities, and faculty will still be able to be cross-appointed; second, that pan-University committees (e.g., COAP, Faculty Board, Faculty Council, USC, UPR, UAPC, etc.) can continue as such; third, that it requires fewer “constitutional” changes (e.g., possible amendments to the Trent Act and/or the constitution of the Council of the Faculty of Arts & Science). The Committee heard anxieties about anticipated competition should there be multiple Faculties. The model of multiple Deans in a single Faculty of Arts & Science is designed to require maximum cooperation and consultation among the Deans and between the Deans and the Provost and Vice President Academic. Do other universities have multiple Deans in a single Faculty, and if so, how well does it work? It is very difficult to be confident about the answer to this question because organizational charts often list Deans and not the Faculty or College or School of which they might be a Dean. There is certainly no requirement of a one-to-one relation between a Dean and a Faculty or School or College. The Committee could find no other university of more than 1,000 students in Canada with a Faculty of Arts & Science and no other Faculty. In Ontario, the University of Toronto, Queen’s University, and Nipissing University have a Faculty of Arts & Science, but the first two say they do so to provide strength against the many other more powerful Faculties. Both the University of Toronto and Queen’s have a significant number of Associate Deans, each with many support staff. In other Canadian provinces, it is not common to have a single Faculty of Arts & Science. Is Trent not already over-administered? The Committee researched administrative structures across Canada and Ontario, looking at the number of Vice President positions, Associate Vice President or Vice Provost positions, Dean positions, and where possible Associate Dean, Assistant Dean, and Vice Dean positions. Trent is significantly under-administered relative to our Ontario counterparts and relative to national counterparts our size. Likewise, the support staff for the Provost and Vice President Academic and Dean of Arts & Science positions at Trent is very modest in number. See Appendix A. How much will the change cost? It is very difficult to calculate the costs exactly. And it is not possible to calculate the externalized costs and the lost opportunity costs of continuing with the status quo, with all the in-built structural weaknesses identified above. There was unanimity that the workload of the Dean of Arts & Science is too much for one person. The different models under discussion provide different ways of addressing this problem. They are designed to redistribute the work in a way that addresses the needs identified through the consultations, with the minimum of additional costs. In all of them, the positions of Dean of Arts & Science, the Associate Dean of Science, and the Associate Vice President Research can be thought of as being replaced by the positions of the Dean of Science, the Dean of Social Science, and the Dean of Humanities. The members of the Committee expect that the majority of additional costs will arise from the need for additional administrative support for some of the reconfigured and/or new positions. How much support is required will be a function of whether some of the administrative offices can be co-located, thereby permitting some administrative support positions to be shared. Even if the status quo were to be maintained, the members of the Committee anticipate that there would be the need for an Assistant to the Provost and Vice President Academic as well as some additional support for the Dean of Arts & Science starting July 1, 2010. The Committee also notes that, were one or more of the Deans to teach (as the Directors of the School of Education and the School of Nursing and the Associate Deans currently do) and/or were one or more interdisciplinary schools to be introduced, there might be savings and/or efficiencies. For the reasons cited in response to the question, “Why has the Committee concluded that Trent’s current academic administrative structure needs to be changed?”, the Committee is of the view that an investment into academic administrative positions and administrative support for these positions is required for faculty, chairs, departments, students, and staff to be well supported and for Trent to be able to engage in the kind of strategic planning that will permit it to realize its preferred future. What kind of support will each of these positions require? The models do not require any changes to the number of administrative support positions for the Librarian, the Principal of Trent in Oshawa, the Dean of the School of Graduate Studies, the (Associate) Dean of Undergraduate Studies, the Dean of the School of Education, and the Dean of the School of Nursing. Nor does the Committee anticipate that the models would affect the administrative support required for those portfolios that are being moved back from reporting to the Vice President Research, International and Strategic Enrolment Management to the Provost and Vice President Academic. The proposed reconfigured or new positions would require administrative/secretarial support, and the University will be looking at ways to share support, where feasible. These models begin to address the consensus that the Committee heard that the Offices of the Dean of Arts & Science and the Provost and Vice President Academic are insufficiently supported. Will additional administrative support be OPSEU or exempt positions? Job descriptions for administrative support positions would have to be developed and then evaluated through the regular processes before an answer to that question could be determined. Are there union implications to any proposed changes? Again, until job descriptions are developed, it is premature to know whether there would be any implications on the OPSEU or exempt side. Any proposed changes to the composition and chair of COAP would require discussions with TUFA and the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding. Academic administrative positions reporting directly to the Provost and Vice President Academic would be out of TUFA. The possible implications for the TUFA contract were discussed at Joint Committee meetings in January and February, and there is a commitment to ongoing discussions. Why could the workload of the Dean of Arts & Science not be addressed through assigning additional support (i.e. more Assistants and/or more Associate Deans)? Providing academic administrative support and/or non-academic administrative support below the level of the Dean of Arts & Science would help with some of the day-to-day matters, but it would not permit the Dean of Arts & Science to do as much of the medium- to long-term planning and working with departments and faculty as is optimal. Nor would it introduce a structure that would permit the making of decisions that reflect institutional strategic priorities. It would not solve the problems generated by a structure with a Dean whose mandate is to allocate resources equitably across all departments/programs and to support and to be seen to be supporting all departments/programs equally and a Provost and Vice President Academic with no budgetary capacity to direct strategic priorities. There is considerable evidence that faculty (and chairs) want to go to the administrator who has the authority to make decisions for their unit, especially staffing and other resource allocation decisions. Supporting the Dean in this manner would not likely make the position sufficiently attractive to generate a strong pool of candidates. Nor would it help with succession-planning. Currently it is sometimes difficult for the Dean of Arts & Science to participate effectively and credibly in provincial and national associations/councils of Deans, which are often split according to Faculty affiliation. Depending on the Dean of Arts & Science’s academic background, he/she can represent and understand the issues at Deans of Science meetings and at Deans of Social Sciences and Humanities meetings well or badly, and will be taken more or less seriously. Would searches for Deans be external searches? That would depend, among other considerations, on how quickly a changed structure were approved, whether having Acting Deans for 2010-2011 was thought to be feasible, and whether a new Provost and Vice President Academic is named in time to provide input. Did the committee consider changing the Vice President Research portfolio back to an Associate Vice President portfolio? The Committee discussed the academic administrative structure in place prior to September 2008, including the fact that the research portfolio used to be an Associate Vice President Research reporting to the Vice President Academic. The Committee thought that Trent’s research accomplishments and profile were significant enough to warrant a Vice Presidential portfolio for research. The Committee was also concerned not to make the portfolio of the Provost and Vice President Academic unmanageably large. In the Ontario context, only the University of Ontario Institute of Technology and Wilfrid Laurier University do not have Vice President Research portfolios, and amongst the comparably sized Canadian universities the Committee reviewed, only St Mary’s University and the University of Winnipeg do not have a Vice President Research position. The Committee was also aware that the President recently announced that the Vice President Research and International portfolio would be reviewed next year. Where do Research Centres go in the new plan? The Committee had not intended to alter their current status. Why are the positions of Associate Vice President Research, Associate Vice President Student Services, Registrar, Director of the Trent International Program, and Head of Colleges and College Heads, as well as those departments and/or portfolios that currently report to these positions being changed or moved? In September 2008, the positions of Senior Director of Student Affairs, Registrar, Director of the Trent International Program, and Head of Colleges and College Heads, and their reporting departments, were all moved temporarily from reporting to the Vice President Academic to reporting to the Vice President Research, International, and Strategic Enrolment Management. In the spring of 2009, the position of Senior Director of Student Affairs was made Interim Associate Vice President Student Services. The Interim Associate Vice President Student Services has also been serving as the Acting Registrar until a new Registrar is recruited. The Committee is proposing moving all these positions, and their reporting departments, back under the Provost and Vice President Academic. The Committee is aware of the importance of coordinating all undergraduate curricular and academic matters and all extra-curricular and student support services in order to improve recruitment and students’ undergraduate experience while at Trent. The Committee considered proposing a new position of Associate Vice President Academic with primary responsibility for ensuring that the Associate Dean Undergraduate Studies, the Student Affairs portfolio, the Registrar, the Director of the Trent International Program, the Head of Colleges and the College Heads, as well as all the reporting departments, are all working in concert to deliver to Trent students the best in-classroom and out-of-classroom experience possible. Equally, the Committee considered assigning this role of coordinating initiatives designed to improve recruitment and enhance the undergraduate experience to the Provost and Vice President Academic, to whom many of these positions would report directly. Because the Vice President Research and International portfolio will no longer be responsible for strategic enrolment management, the Committee is recommending that the position of Associate Vice President Research be phased out. What is the approval process for your recommendation? Subsequent to the consultation process outlined above and the Committee’s further deliberations, it will submit a report to the President, who will then refer it to Academic Planning & Budget Committee, after which a recommendation will be made to Senate. Subsequent to Senate approval, approval by the Board of Governors would be sought. Did the Committee discuss to what extent the other “renewal activities” at the University were relevant to its deliberations? The Committee was aware that several renewal activities, designed to result in a new Vision Statement, a new Mission Statement, and a new Strategic Directions document, were underway across the University. The creation of a College Review Task Force had also been announced. The Committee discussed in what ways the outcomes of these renewal activities might affect its deliberations about preferred structures. Members of the Committee attended a retreat hosted by the President on December 15th which included representatives of the Vision Renewal Review Committee, and the Strategic Directions Advisory Committee (which encompassed the Mission Statement Working Group). The interrelation of the work of these committees was discussed, and the consensus was that the anticipated outcomes would not likely affect the work of the Special Advisory Committee on Academic Structures. The Committee did think that the outcome of the College Review Task Force might be relevant to determining an optimal reporting structure for administrators of the Colleges. Was it not difficult for the Committee to contemplate structural change when there are so many administrators serving in “Acting” capacities and/or filling portfolios which are interim? The Committee was aware, as it began its deliberations, that several senior academic administrators are currently serving in “Acting” capacities, that several portfolios are “Interim” portfolios, and that several reporting lines had been changed on a temporary basis. This assisted the members of the Committee in thinking of the academic administrative structure in functional terms and not in terms of the occupants (acting or otherwise) of the current positions (interim or otherwise). When will any approved changes be implemented? Trent is currently searching for a new Provost and Vice President Academic, and there is some thought that searches for new Deans should be left to the new Provost to conduct. One possibility is to identify people as Acting Deans for a year with full-scale searches being conducted in 2010-11. Trent is currently searching for a new Dean of Graduate Studies and a new Registrar, and we currently have an Acting Dean of Arts & Science. The President has recently announced that the position profile for the Vice President Research and International will be reviewed in the fall of 2010. The implementation of any changes can be staggered. Some of the changes and some of the models could be implemented more easily than others. Given the current searches underway and the terms of some current administrators, it may make sense to defer the implementation of some of the changes and/or to have people serve in “Acting” capacities for a year. The incumbents of some of the affected positions each have letters of appointment, which specify terms that do not all coincide. Fair and orderly implementation of these changes must be consistent with these commitments. APPENDIX A (see notes at end) Academic Administrator positions at Ontario universities:
Academic Administrator positions at comparably sized Canadian universities:
NOTES:
|
