On the matter of student evaluations of teaching (SEoT), our position is clear: we propose that these measures not be used in the summative evaluation of teaching for appointment, reappointment, promotion, and tenure. The invalidity of these instruments has been known for a long time; the evidence that they are also biased against protected classes of people increases seemingly weekly.
We are all familiar with the titles associated with the research professoriate: Assistant, Associate, and full Professor. UBC’s “Educational Leadership” stream has titles that are quite a bit less tidy. In 2010 we entitled the final rank in the then-new Educational Leadership stream “Professor of Teaching,” but the first and second ranks in that stream don’t have matching titles. We’ve been trying to fix that.
The Association continues to seek to modify Part 5, Conditions of Appointment for Librarians to ensure that workload is collegially assigned in a fair and equitable manner, and to create Heads language for the Library that mirrors Heads language for faculty (i.e., term appointments, stipend, administrative leave). In addition, in this round we have proposed a change in the confirmation review process and introduced definitions upon which candidates for confirmed appointments will be judged.
When the BC Government announced in 2007 that it would end mandatory retirement in the province, the Faculty Association got busy to protect our most senior colleagues from forcible retirement while that legislation was pending. The result was our Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) #2 on page 26 of the Collective Agreement.
The UBCFA has responded to the University’s call for comments on the Proposed Amendments to Policy 3 (Discrimination and Harassment). Our correspondence to Hubert Lai, Q.C., University Counsel is available at this link. Thank you to those members who provided their comments as we formulated our response.
