September 2020
We hope you’ll take the opportunity to express your views on a proposal to amend the Deans/Principals Appointment Policy (AP5) and its associated Procedures
The Policy Proposal:
- includes a process pursuant to which final candidates for the position of a Dean will be requested to participate in a confidential forum to which faculty members of the applicable Faculty, staff members employed within such Faculty, and the students registered in a degree program offered by such Faculty will be invited; as a general practice, forum participants will be required to agree to maintain the confidentiality of the identity of the finalists, and the identity of the finalists would be disclosed to forum participants at the forum, and not prior to the forum;
- provides flexibility by including the option of utilizing an alternative process for engaging the UBC stakeholder community where the Advisory Committee determines that it would not be appropriate to proceed with the forum as outlined above; however, any such alternative process must include the opportunity for all faculty members of the applicable Faculty to provide feedback regarding the final candidates for the position of Dean of such Faculty;
- includes the principle that confidentiality of information, including Personal Information, regarding applicants for the position of a Dean must be respected, safeguarded, and maintained in accordance with the requirements of FIPPA and any other requirements respecting confidentiality that may be set by the Board or the President from time to time;
- clarifies the application of the Deans/Principals Appointment Policy and its Procedures in respect of the Dean of the UBC Okanagan College of Graduate Studies;
- updates out of date information and definitions;
- removes the definition of “Principals” and references to the “College of Health Disciplines” in the Joint Appointment Policy to reflect the disestablishment of the College of Health Disciplines effective July 1, 2015;
- reflects the realignment of titles as between the Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Principal, UBC Okanagan, and the Provost and Vice-President, Academic, UBC Okanagan;
- clarifies and streamlines the process for electing members of Advisory Committees which expressly set out that the Registrar is responsible to determine the conduct of elections, and provides that if no individual is elected by the end of an election process, the Chair(s) of the applicable Advisory Committee may appoint the requisite number of members from the applicable constituency. This allows Advisory Committees to be created without undue delay or restrictions in circumstances where, for example, no nominations or votes are received;
- includes language that requires the President to seek to include a diverse range of perspectives and experiences, such as from various academic disciplines and underrepresented stakeholder communities when making appointments to Advisory Committees;
- replaces references to “his/her” and “his or her” with references to the specific person doing the action; and
- includes an example to clarify that when replacements of Advisory Committee members must be made, the replacement members will be from the same stakeholder groups of the persons being replaced.
For further information about this Policy Proposal, please see the information posted on the University Council website.
Please review the Policy Proposal and if you have any questions or concerns, let us know by responding to this email or sending an email to the Faculty Association. We would appreciate your comments to the Association be submitted by September 30, 2020 so that we may have time to formulate our response.
You also have the option of forwarding your questions or concerns regarding the Policy Proposal directly to the Office of the University Counsel. If you submit to the University directly, we would appreciate a copy ([email protected]). The University submission deadline is October 13, 2020.
Thank you.
