Nader acting director of Administrative Studies
Peter Robinson College master and geography professor George Nader has agreed to serve as acting director of Administrative Studies to take the place of Kathryn Campbell who resigned as director in December.

        Interim vice-president academic David Morrison announced Jan. 20 to Senate that he and interim dean Colin Taylor will initiate a search process soon for a new director who will assume responsibility after July 1. Campbell was appointed director in 1994 for five years.

        In a Jan. 20 letter to Administrative Studies faculty and students, Morrison said he had initiated a review of the program last fall. The program lost two faculty members last year to retirement and transfer and Morrison "thought it was timely to clarify the program's role and the course of its future development."

        History professor Doug McCalla, economics professor Jackie Muldoon and political and environmental studies professor Robert Paehlke are reviewing the program with Morrison. They will soon present a draft proposal and recommendations to discuss at an open forum in late February or early March with the program's faculty and students. After consultations with faculty and students, the review team will propose an action plan for implementing recommendations.

PhD program on hold
The proposed Canadian Studies joint doctoral program with Carleton University will not start in September 1998 as hoped.

        Carleton's senate was originally expected to approve the project last fall. Dean of research and graduate studies Paul Healy says it will likely consider the project this term. Once the universities give the nod, the Ontario Council on Graduate Studies must approve it for accreditation. "There would not be time to go forward" with it in 1998, said Healy.

Academic priorities
David Morrison said he intends to begin discussions in February about developing long-term academic plans at Trent.

        The interim VP academic is also chair of the academic planning committee. "Whether this committee really carries planning at Trent needs to be addressed," he said. "The issues the committee will discuss are quite specific to academic planning though the process has to go beyond academics."

        Though the committee will present proposals for the planning process to Senate through the president, Morrison asked for Senate's guidance before the planning committee starts to work. Members have yet to be named to the committee, established last May on the recommendation of an ad hoc Senate committee on planning.

        Morrison presented faculty council's discussion paper on long-range planning to spur Senate's discussion. The paper says there is an urgent need for academic long-term planning because of downsizing and a projected wave of retirements -- 45 per cent of full-time faculty over the next 10 years.

        "We need to express more clearly what the philosophy is of a liberal arts and science university," said senator Carole Ernest. "Then we can know better what our academic priorities are and what we are achieving."

        "Our first task," said senator David Newhouse, "should be to sit down and discuss approaches to planning." People will need to buy into the plan, he argued.

        Senator Kathryn Campbell said a "rational planning process is not possible" or desirable. "What we want here is a self-interested and emotional debate about who we want to be. We've never had an open, public and mediated discussion that is wide-ranging and self-interested. That's what good long-range planning is all about." She said "we should embrace the emotion of it.... It would be messy and glorious all at the same time."