President's Newsletter — Issue 8 (January, 2010)

As we begin 2010, I extend my very best wishes to everyone for the year ahead. I hope, too, that everyone had a good and well-deserved holiday break. There is no question that challenges lie ahead of us in the coming year, but with these challenges will come new opportunities and possibilities. 2009 was an extraordinary year by any standard, and I fully expect the coming year will bring further change as we work out together how Kwantlen should progress as a university. I know there will be areas of disagreement and debate, but this is fundamental to being a university. What remains critical is that we find solutions and determine the institution’s direction in a positive and collaborative way.

Acting Vice-President (Academic) and Provost

As everyone knows, Judith McGillivray will retire from the University at the end of August, 2010. While Judith’s departure is a huge loss for the institution, I am also very pleased to inform the Kwantlen community that Dr. John McKendry has agreed to serve as Acting Provost and Vice-President (Academic), effective September, 2010 until such time as we make a permanent appointment. Dr. McKendry is currently leading the Langley campus revitalization, and will continue in that position until he takes over from Judith.

Dr. McKendry holds a B.A. and a M.Sc. from the University of Guelph and a Ph.D. in the Design and Management of Postsecondary Education Systems from Florida State University. He has a long and distinguished career in higher education. From 1987 to 1995, John was Dean of Applied Programs at Douglas College, and from 1995 to 2004, he served as Vice-President, Academic, also at Douglas College. Prior to joining Douglas, John served in the Government of Saskatchewan as Director of Policy, Planning, and Legislation in the Department of Advanced Education, and as Assistant Deputy Minister (Universities), also in the Department of Advanced Education. In his role as Assistant Deputy Minister, he served as the Government representative on the Boards and Senates of the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Regina, and was a Charter Board Member of the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College. Before coming to Kwantlen, he was Director of Community Outreach and Engagement for the Simon Fraser University Surrey campus. I consider us very fortunate to have someone of John’s accomplishments and background available to assist Kwantlen during our current formative period as a university.

Decanal Searches

At present, Kwantlen has or will have four decanal vacancies: the Faculty of Humanities, the Faculty of Community and Health Studies, the Faculty of Science and Horticulture, and the Faculty of Qualifying Studies. To have this number of decanal vacancies, along with a Vice-Presidential vacancy, presents a substantial challenge for Kwantlen over the coming year. Searches take time as well as institutional resources. We have, of course, already appointed Acting Deans in the case of Humanities, Community and Health Studies, and Qualifying Studies, but this is only an interim solution. I am also aware that discussions continue between Humanities and Social Sciences concerning the creation of a single Faculty, and that this may have an impact on any decanal search for the Faculty of Humanities.

Finding good candidates is going to be a challenge for Kwantlen. While the idea of contributing to Kwantlen during the current formative period is a substantial attraction for candidates, it is also the case that Kwantlen is not competitive with other institutions on a number of fronts. Significant among these is that academic administrators do not currently hold faculty appointments. This runs full in the face of the norm for Canadian universities. More than this, it does not recognize that academic administrators must be as much academics as they are administrators, and that only those who continue to participate in the academic life of the University have the moral authority to provide leadership for it. More than this, the current situation ignores the long-held tradition, going back hundreds of years, that senior academic administrators are selected from the Faculty by the faculty.

An important footnote to these searches is that Kwantlen has no established policy for the appointment and reappointment of senior University administrators, something which is required by the University Act and which demands both Senate and Board participation. Accordingly, we shall be bringing such policy forward over the next couple of months. It must first go to the Board, who will then send it to Senate for approval. This policy already exists in draft form, and is the result of substantial work over the last year.

It is a major disappointment that Dr. Kathleen Matheos will not be joining Kwantlen as Director of Continuing Education. Kathleen, who is currently at the University of Manitoba, was to begin at Kwantlen on January 1, 2010. Regrettably, family concerns will keep her in Winnipeg. Needless to say, this puts a big hole in our plans for Continuing Education. We have gone back to the original search firm, Pinton, Forest & Madden, who will continue to assist us in finding a suitable appointment. In the meantime, we are looking at a variety of short-term options.

Institutional Planning and Budget

The Mission and Mandate Statement was unanimously approved by Senate at its November meeting, and was forwarded to the Governance Committee of the Board, which has now forwarded the document to the full Board for consideration at its January 20, 2010 meeting. While we cannot presume to know the outcome of the Board’s consideration, we should at least begin to think about our next steps. We will, on the one hand, need a concise vision statement for the institution; and, on the other, a comprehensive strategic plan, which would, in the context of Mission and Mandate, develop specific recommendations and priorities for the University, identify who is responsible for implementing them, and establish measures for determining success. Presumably, this will constitute a framework for individual units to develop their own plans, and would be used as a context for budget allocations.

The Planning and Priorities Committee of Senate has established academic priorities for this year as a prelude to the budget considerations for 2010-2011, which will begin in January, 2010. I much appreciate the committee’s efforts, given the very tight timeline. This document, though, is largely limited to academic programs. Any university plan must go beyond this to include all the units that contribute to the institution’s larger role as an educational and community resource. We have learned a substantial amount about process from the Mission and Mandate exercise, and will need to be cognizant as we move forward of the relationship between Board and Senate relative to establishing educational policy for the University. I comment more about this below.

We have established a new budget template for the upcoming budget considerations, although we need to be frank in telling everyone that there will be few new resources available. While we are aware of the substantial work that completing the new budget template entails, we must also recognize that the institution needs to be better organized than it is at present. Even in difficult budget times, funding will, from time to time, come available, and we need to be prepared to take advantage of these circumstances when they occur; otherwise we are always in a responsive position and making decisions on the fly.

A key element in our planning is the current branding exercise, which aims to present Kwantlen as the new and innovative institution to which we all aspire. Some of you might have already been contacted by Ci, as we conduct a broad-ranging consultation with Kwantlen’s stakeholders about the current status and reputation of the institution, and, perhaps more important, about Kwantlen’s future as a new university. I urge any of you who might be contacted to provide your full and candid assessment of Kwantlen. It is important for us to know both the good and the bad if we are to move forward in positioning Kwantlen relative to other B.C. universities, never mind universities across Canada. To this end, as well, we have committed to participate in the Macleans survey and the Globe and Mail survey of student satisfaction. While, like many universities, we might have questions about the veracity of each, they will provide the university with a sense of how it is positioned in comparison to other Canadian universities.

Senate Governance

We have been a university for a year and a half, and it is hardly surprising that discussions of institutional governance have been prominent during Kwantlen’s early days as a university. This is especially the case with Senate and the various Academic Councils. I know, too, that the whole issue of university governance continues to generate much discussion, as we work diligently on developing University policy. If nothing else, I hope the following observations will contribute to this discussion. I recognize that there will always be divergent points of view and that our current process is an evolving one.

It is not for naught that universities are sometimes said to resemble a loose configuration of medieval states with many individual areas of influence and authority. The British Columbia Government, the Kwantlen Board of Governors, the Senate, the Kwantlen University Foundation, the Faculty Councils and Academic Departments, the Kwantlen Student Association, the Alumni Association, the Administration, and the various unions representing university employees, all have some voice in institutional governance.

Universities have, traditionally, had a bicameral governance structure, which identifies a distinction between the powers of the Board of Governors and the powers of the Senate, the former being the senior body having fiduciary, legal, and financial responsibility for the institution, and the latter having responsibility for academic policy and programs. This distinction in large measure grows out of the document, University Government in Canada: Report of a Commission sponsored by the Canadian Association of University Teachers and the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (University of Toronto Press, 1966), written by James Duff and Robert O. Berdahl.

Over the last forty years, the role of Senate as the “academic” decision-making body of the university has remained at the core of the institutional governance model in British Columbia and across Canada. While the Board of Governors has general authority over the University, as per the University Act—“the management, administration and control of the property, revenue, business and affairs of the university are vested in the board”—the Senate has jurisdictional authority over a large number of academic matters. At Kwantlen, this includes setting criteria for awarding certificates, diplomas and degrees, curriculum content for programs, qualifications for admission, and policies relating to examinations and evaluation of performance.

While the amendment to the University Act allowing for the “new universities” provides for a bicameral governance structure, there are differences between the structure of the older universities and that of Kwantlen and the other new universities. Specifically, it suggests a much greater degree of interdependence between the Senate and the Board. A good example is the requirement that the Senate of a special purpose teaching university must “advise the Board, and the Board must seek advice from the Senate, on the development of educational policy.” Among those areas where this especially pertains are “the mission statement and the educational goals, objectives, strategies and priorities of the special purpose, teaching university.” In other cases, the relationship is more explicit, as in the appointment and reappointment of senior administrators. Here the Act specifies that it is with “the approval of the senate” that the Board is “to establish procedures for the recommendation and selection of candidates for president, deans, librarians, registrar and other senior academic administrators as the board may designate.”

A further element in the new university governance structure is the Academic Councils, which, subject to Senate’s authority, are responsible for making academic decisions as they pertain to individual Faculties. While Academic Councils are limited by the authority of the Board in the same way as Senate, the very existence of Academic Councils further underlines the decentralized nature of decision making in universities, and stresses the importance of broad-based collegial governance that filters up from the institution rather than being imposed downwards. Important as Senate is, the academic councils of the various Faculties, working from recommendations that come from the departments, constitute the place where ideas take shape relative to academic programming and standards.

A key element of Senate is its relationship with the President that traditionally at least assumes the principle of “primus inter pares,” or “First among Equals,” which has been long established as defining the academic, if not the administrative role, of the President. It is perhaps most obviously demonstrated in some European universities where the Rector or Vice-Chancellor is elected by faculty from the faculty rather than appointed by the Board. One thing is, however, absolutely clear: the President has no “management” or “executive” authority over Senate, a fact underlined by his or her single vote on Senate.

The Duff Berdahl Report specifies that faculty should be in the majority on Senate and that it should be elected by faculty. Kwantlen’s Senate deviates from this model. At the same time, one might assert that the spirit if not the letter of Duff Berdahl has been maintained, and perhaps even strengthened in the way the Act recognizes the collective importance of faculty, staff, and students in academic decision making. At Kwantlen, Senate has the following membership: Administration—13, Faculty—16, Students—4, Staff—2. This membership, it might be argued, identifies the several constituencies of the institution, and the need to recognize all voices in institutional decision making.

The university as conceived, even forty years ago in the Duff Berdahl Report, has dramatically changed. Its role has moved well beyond one of teaching and research, and university administration has over time become a highly specialized and demanding career choice involving a range of skills and competencies. Gone for the most part is the election process of a Rector or Vice-Chancellor, who takes on the job for three years or so out of a sense of obligation, and who is only too happy to return to faculty. The world of university administration is simply too complex, and it is unrealistic that faculty can simply opt in and out as might have been the case in the past.

Yet there is a pervasive concern in Canadian universities that more and more control is being placed into the hands of a small group of administrators. The growth of faculty unions is viewed as a mechanism intended to protect faculty rights, and the academic rights which are so important to the university. Equally important, though, is the balance brought by the Senate, which retains substantial responsibility for academic matters, and over which the University administration has no authority.

It is in this context that Kwantlen is developing Senate policy that aids in understanding our new governance model. Accordingly, there must be conversation and consultation as we work through how the University is to be governed. We need, too, to encourage the collegiality necessary in university decision making where all voices are heard and respected. This is a crucial element of academic freedom. Finally, we need to recognize that the University operates within a specific labor-relations context defined, in large measure, by the collective agreements with the Kwantlen Faculty Association and the British Columbia Government Employees Union. All these elements are operating at once, as we develop governance structures that are in the best interests of the communities we serve, including our students, those who work here, and the institution generally. This is not an easy task, and it is essential that we avoid the pitfalls of misunderstanding and miscommunication.

Academic freedom is a cornerstone of how the University does business, allowing as it does for the free exchange of ideas without outside interference. It is something fundamental to the university since its earliest days, and, as such, it must be a core value of Kwantlen as a university. Senate, then, must be a place where ideas stand or fall under their own weight in the best interests of the University. This should always be our ambition and we must do whatever is necessary to ensure that the freedom fundamental to tradition and implicit in the University Act is encouraged and maintained.

My List for 2010

I have long believed that the President’s job is to work to enable the institution to find its own way, to make up its own mind, to determine its own direction, especially during this formative period as we define who and what the institution is and will be. In this connection, people sometimes ask if I maintain a “to do” list, which reflects my own personal ambitions for the institution. The best I can say by way of an answer is to indicate the various issues which I believe will need addressing during the coming year. It is a long list, and is not intended to anticipate any institutional planning. Few, I suspect, will be surprised by its contents.

1. The further development of collegial governance, the completion of our current policy development initiative, and the successful completion of collective bargaining with Kwantlen’s two unions.
2. The continued development of degree programs at Kwantlen, which express and reflect its mission as a polytechnic university, and which are key to its development as a university
3. The development of an institutional vision statement and a strategic plan for the next three to five years.
4. Planned growth of the institution, dependent on resources, that recognizes Kwantlen’s commitment to accessibility.
5. Development of a comprehensive recruitment strategy that establishes Kwantlen as the university for the South Fraser region.
6. Completion of the current branding exercise intended to establish the institution’s reputation and image in the south Surrey region.
7. Increasing institutional focus on global issues and the further recruitment of international students.
8. Improved student services, including the continued expansion of Recreation Services and Athletics.
9. Increased use of the Cloverdale campus, which contributes to improved integration of the Faculty of Trades and Technology with the remainder of the University.
10. Continued revitalization of Langley campus that allows, at minimum, for the first two years of all degree programs to be offered at Langley.
11. The successful completion of Kwantlen’s decanal searches, and the search for a Director of Continuing Education.
12. The move of the senior administration to the Langley campus.
13. Continued focus on improving space at Kwantlen which assists in providing identity for academic departments.
14. Completing a feasibility study for a residence at Kwantlen.
15. The successful rezoning of the Surrey campus that will allow for further campus expansion.
16. The opening of the Aboriginal Gathering Space, and further development of First Nations Studies at Kwantlen.
17. The allocation of space at the Richmond campus that ensures Kwantlen’s long-term interests as well as those of the Richmond community are being well served.
18. Commencement of planning for a Student Building on the Surrey campus.

My most important wish for Kwantlen, though, is that everyone who constitutes our community will have a healthy and prosperous 2010. Universities are their people. Kwantlen cannot flourish without the commitment, energy, and effort of those who work, study, and support the institution. My very best wishes to all.

David W. Atkinson
President & Vice Chancellor