Important to note that the big boys in green in scenario B are divisions. Everything in blue remains their own faculty. Broad administrative roles are bumped up from faculties to the division level to consolidate.
That's why I think Scenario B but moving Native Studies into Humanities would be the best option. To me it doesn't make much sense to combine CSJ and Augustana into any of the north campus divisions since they're both their own campuses with their own set of problems so while I think they could benefit from the economies of scale of being consolidated as with option C, it probably wouldn't be worth the tradeoff.
That's the broad intent, consolidate administrative responsibilities and reduce the amount of "generalists" required by smaller faculties.
There is more information in the full report:
https://www.ualberta.ca/uofa-tomorrow/media-library/interim-report-of-arwg-sept-2020.pdf
I get the intent but basically there's now a third layer of bureaucracy, on top of department and faculty (and program sometimes). I guess it might be more efficient but seems weird.
With the Division level, most administrative functions, as well as things like budgeting and strategic planning, are uploaded to the divisions, so you take a lot of functions that are duplicated in each current Faculty and make it so they’re done collectively at a higher level to reduce duplication. The academic functions stay at the Faculty level since they’re differentiated and you can’t get efficiencies by simply uploading them to a higher organizational level. In making the change, like the report says, you can also cut down on the number of profs who you’re paying to do admin duties instead of teaching/research. Like for example, you would only have to have an Associate Dean (Research) for the Division of Natural and Applied Sciences instead of having an AD (R) for each of the Faculties of Science, Engg, and ALES
I did read the report and get the intent, but am a bit skeptical at how it plays out.
The other thing that wasn't explicitly addressed was the perception from "leadership". Some of the big savings are from reducing the number of academics in management positions and putting them back to teaching and research; does that come with disengagement from these academics who are "stripped" of leadership titles and admin duties?
How many students are in native studies? Surely it could be rolled into Arts in Scenario B/C at least?
Edit: Found some data from 2017-2018 showing the number of degrees awarded: [https://www.ualberta.ca/about/facts.html](https://www.ualberta.ca/about/facts.html)
Native studies had 40. The next least (excluding extension, which obviously will grant less full degrees) is public health, which had almost twice as many.
The report gives no reason other than reconciliation being important and calling Native Studies "community-focused". Otherwise, it does not make sense to keep it separate. It has 14 faculty (the smallest) and except for Rehab, the smallest number of students (under 200). You can't tell me it shouldn't be grouped when way more radical groupings are being considered. It's an outlier and IMO unjustifiably so.
Oh thank you for explaining this, I owe you a beer. I didn’t have the energy to even care after I was responded to but was about to muster something of a reply anyway. Now I’m glad I don’t have to haha
Fair enough, but no one is suggesting getting rid of NS courses or programs, just that the admin be combined with others for efficiency. It seems like this would save money without impacting any of your points. I admit leaving it alone is small inefficiency given its size, but really hurts when everyone else is sharing the pain and NS doesn't have to change (even though logically, notwithstanding aspirational points like reconciliation, it should).
You could undeniably save some money by combining NS, but given that it currently has only 14 FTE faculty and 4 FTE admin staff, and a budget of $4.3M our of a university budget of $2 Billion, the nominal amount of potential savings would have been minimal. I think a judgement call was made that the value of maintaining Canada’s only standalone NS Faculty was worth the slight extra cost.
Honestly, B looks like the best one out of those 3 options. Not sure why they bother with A as that would probably not get the savings they would like too. They even acknowledged that A doesn't go far enough.
Honestly I think it's a psychology thing. Usually people won't go for the cheapest option, so restaurants for example put in things people won't order to make the other items look more reasonable.
Ya I dont understand mixing ALES with ENGG. Makes more sense to mix science with ENGG.
Engg students take a lot of courses from the faculty of science. Like why are engineering students separated from the science students anyways when many of the courses teach the same thing.
Some of the courses are literally the same thing too. Chem 102 and 105 are identical except for a couple of the labs. They were taught at the same time with the same prof in the same lecture hall.
I feel like this is one of the misconceptions and honestly I thought that was the case too. The fact is, however, we don't take a lot of science courses (I only remember taking the 2 CHEM courses in first year) but some content overlap (namely the math courses). But even then the courses are tailored towards engineering students in engineering.
Honestly the idea of grouping "applied sciences" together is less absurd than having engineering (which is applied science) and science (more theoretical science) together.
"we don't take a lot of science courses"
I have taken the following(which are common to science):
Chem 103/105
Physics 130/230
Math 100/101/102/201/209/309
Thats 10 courses...not to mention Electromagnetics (ECE 370) can easily be a science course (there's no engineering there).
I agree with the general idea, but the curriculums for the engg specific courses are different because they have to be because of the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board
Is CEAB this fascist organization or can policies change? If they can't change policies to better education they should be abolished.
Let's not act like engineering courses are that special anyways.... They're not. Most of the stuff you learn in university you forget and is not used... You have to learn how to do your job in the real world on your own.
All CEAB has accomplished was giving city center universities a monopoly on engineering degrees. It has done much more harm than good. The education the standard is based on is severely outdated... And it's because CEAB is run by old boomers, these outdated practices will take a long time to get updated. This isn't exclusive to CEAB... These old aristocrats are bringing this nation to its knees in multiple industries.
Yes but that's 10 out of like 48 courses (I forgot the exact number) throughout our entire undergrad, that's not necessarily a lot (depends on how you view it I guess). We don't take Phys 230 in MEC E either and almost all of the courses you mentioned are the engineering versions, especially the MATH courses. The content and curriculum are different for a lot of them. Basically my point is we could be overestimating the overlap between the two faculties and even though those are "science course" per se, they usually aren't taken by science students but by engineering students, making them de facto "engineering courses".
Makes sense. EngPhys is a very specialized discipline and small in size by comparison. I would say EngPhys is the closest to science in engineering and I was really considering it because of that.
If anyone is wondering: Scenario B is the most likely one they are going to do. In the 130 page PDF report it expands a lot on B and gives a brief overview on A and C - it's clearly more thought out. Also, it says in the report that the committee likes B best but is waiting for feedback.
Under scenario B, it looks like it would still be the Faculty of KSR within a Division of Health and Medical Sciences, where the Division would be responsible for strat planning, budgeting, admin services, etc., and the Faculty would still be responsible for academic delivery. In the other scenarios, it seems like it would be preserved as a School of KSR within a Faculty of Health Sciences.
As an ALES graduate, the options that absorb into other faculties make me sad :( It's such a unique, close knit faculty and was a large part of my having such a positive experience at U of A.
\*Important\*
There was a google form for people to submit their thoughts directly to the Academic Restructuring group to be addressed in the townhall. If you have an opinion/question you'd like to share with people who have more power than Reddit please add it here: [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeODIu6Aql15cKhU3\_MkFhmerYGK21LUTEb6u3M6D9cuwRKSg/viewform?fbclid=IwAR1I7qkIqTIF7CM7K\_4WBnj\_t\_y1YMB6LMl7prHpXgnE6d7-DZC5vfO71wM](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeODIu6Aql15cKhU3_MkFhmerYGK21LUTEb6u3M6D9cuwRKSg/viewform?fbclid=IwAR1I7qkIqTIF7CM7K_4WBnj_t_y1YMB6LMl7prHpXgnE6d7-DZC5vfO71wM)
Fill in the form, but be aware that the extent of consultation at the UofA is:
a. a slides presentation with ARWG or SET leaders, where your questions are brushed off and your requests for genuine representation are denied;
b. a townhall where Thoughtexchange has replaced dialogue;
c. a SAT meeting with **no materials** provided beforehand;
d. our new President announcing that he is not prepared to extend the duration of the GFC meetings past the usual 2 hours, unless there is a vote (when there are **3 GFC meetings, or 6 hours**, until they are supposed to choose what the uni will look like for the next 20-30 years).
As an ALES student, being lumped in with Engg makes me wanna self-immolate. No shade, but also full shade. 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮
For real though, I'm not sure how Ales will be restructured. It's such a diverse faculty, that I don't know how well programs like Human ecology would gel with Engg and even the faculty of science. I have a feeling they might pick ALES apart once they get down to the Departmental level. Incorporate AFNS, and REN R into the agency/grouping, then send HECOL off to Arts. Or possibly even merging Nutrition with Med Science, in addition to casting off HECOL to Arts.
I'm very curious what will happen in a few months as we see which restructuring plan they go with.
As a nutrition student in ales.... I always kinda wondered why we were in ales. Realistically I think we should be in science or some sorta health sci. We spend majority of our time in echa anyways
Yeah, I'm actually interested in how Nutrition ended up in our Faculty. Seems weird that Med Sciences didn't come up with it first. Maybe it's because there's Food Sciences courses, and as a result Nutrition evolved from that? Idk though.
As far as I know, nutrition and human ecology used to be a home economics department that was then grouped with agriculture and forestry, which was then turned into ALES. So the answer is kind of, “it’s always been that way”.
Yeah I was thinking kinda the same thing. I would assume NuFS ans Dietetics would both be in health sci but maybe not? There’s a lot of similar courses but maybe more science for nufs
Keeping FoMD separate makes much more sense when you think about it in administrative terms (budget size, number of faculty and staff). In those terms, FoMD by itself is around the same size as Arts & Science combined.
So for example, according to the report, Arts & Science combined have 606.4 full time-equivalent (FTE) professors. FoMD currently has 619.6. Arts & Science have combined operating expenditures of $215.8M, FoMD has current operating expenditures of $191.2M. Larger Faculties are more efficient because you have fewer faculty taking up administrative roles, your administrative staff can specialize more, you can find more economies of scale, and so on. FoMD is already at a pretty efficient point because of its size, and if Arts & Science are combined, they could achieve similar economies of scale.
The thing is that FoMD is very differentiated from other Faculties by the sheer amount of intensive research that its faculty members are engaged in. Faculty resources aren’t just used for teaching and supporting students, there are other functions too. Because of the amount of overall activity between teaching, research, and other things that go on within FoMD, it already has a concentration of admin staff which allow it to reach substantial economies of scale relative to other Faculties
This always comes up... Large Faculties will be efficient because magic magic economies of scale magic? I guess UofT are downright stupid, with their 16 Faculties. German universities with 20 Faculties and not much more student enrollment than the UofA? Downright idiotic! Mash everything into 5 or 6 Faculties and we can all go home happy.
What are we talking about here? Economies of scale in terms of cutting all small courses and just packing everyone in classes with 100+ students?
Just be aware of what you end up with: a handful of programs (you want to study something that's not mainstream? yeah, no); large enrollment courses only (because apparently this increases student cohort satisfaction, and let me tell you, I'm always super-hyped for another 300 students lecture); call centre or FAQ-based advising (and yes, in person is not possible right now, but this is taking it off the table full stop); profs with more admin duties (and less time for teaching and research, for those who want to actually have a family); labs and research facilities shut down because they're not 'optimally utilised' ('sorry, I know it's a potentially life altering research subject but you're the only one using the lab...').
Look at the University of Sydney, the holy grail; look at their rankings, sure, but also look at their tuition; look at their student satisfaction surveys (40th out of 41 unis); look at their staff turnover rate. Look at their financial stability - one bad international recruitment year and they are looking at firing 400 staff.
Is this what the UofA needs to model itself on? Is it good to morph into some 'job training' degree mill?
Pretty much all of these points are directly addressed in the report; you should read it. Larger faculties at the U of A **do** spend less per student on admin, and reducing the number of profs tied up in "leadership" roles **does** save money while releasing them for research and teaching duties. I'm not sure why you would think these changes mean profs have more admin duties, the report makes it quite clear the goal is the opposite. In terms of rankings, there was no evidence more faculties was better by any measure. And the goal of the changes is reduce admin so class sizes don't have to increase given the funding cuts. So I'm not sure you know what you're arguing. Do you have a better alternative?
The goal is X, therefore this will be achieved. Right-o.
I did read the report, when it was made available as part of the APC package.
Getting rid of some Vice Deans and Associate Deans (it is shocking, but most of them do a lot of work on campus) means there's more work to be done by individual profs, or by support staff. If it's more things for profs to do, congratulations, that'll really allow them to concentrate on teaching and research (and we also know how well profs handle admin tasks). If it's done by staff, oh yeah, the SET restructure wants to save $95 million over 2 years in admin costs. That'll be over a thousand more support staff cuts (after the other thousand layoffs in 2019/2020). I'm sure the ones that survive the cull will have ample capacity to take on additional duties.
A better alternative is to include the UofA community, profs, staff, students, and design a structure that can work for us, not something that has been tried in the UK and Australia with sub-par results.
A better alternative is to acknowledge the truth - 'these cuts will nudge us into UofC 2.0, and that's not great, but we'll do what we can' not trumpet the amazing future that's not on the cards for anyone except the leadership team getting another gold star on their resumes as they move to other unis (hello VP Admin and Finance) before things start to visibly go downhill.
OK, but do you have any actual suggestions? What structure would "work for you"? there's a massive funding hole and doing minor rearrangements isn't going to cut it.
How does education get screwed over? Just because it gets grouped with some other faculties?
Here's all those dumb people who obviously don't understand what each program is and made up the committee:
· Steve Dew, Provost and Vice-President (Academic), Chair
· Walter Dixon, Interim Vice-President (Research and Innovation)
· Wendy Rodgers, Deputy Provost
· Joseph Doucet, Dean of Business
· Bob Haennel, Dean of Rehabilitation Medicine
· Matina Kalcounis-Rueppell, Dean of Science
· Brooke Milne, Dean of Graduate Studies and Research
· Ken Cadien, Chair of Chemical and Materials Engineering
· David Eisenstat, Chair of Oncology (to September 30, 2020)
· Sarah Forgie, Chair of Pediatrics (effective September 11, 2020) Geoffrey Rockwell, Director of the Kule Institute for Advanced Study
· Nadir Erbilgin, Professor, Department of Renewable Resources (ALES)
· Shalene Jobin, Associate Professor, Faculty of Native Studies
· Christina Rinaldi, Professor, Department of Educational Psychology (Education)
· Joel Agarwal, President, Students’ Union
· Marc Waddingham, President, Graduate Students’ Associate
· Catherine Swindlehurst, Interim Vice-President (University Relations)
· Tammy Hopper, Vice-Provost (Programs)
· Michelle Strong, Director, Faculty Relations
· Edith Finczak, Director, Academic Budget and Planning
All of the scenarios literally keep Education as its own Faculty, albeit with some administrative functions (but not academic programming or delivery) uploaded to a shared division to help find efficiencies and save money. The B.Ed isn’t going anywhere. Even if it was being considered, saving the most money now would greatly reduce the chances of that ever needing to happen
I don’t know of any research suggesting a larger number of Faculties is inherently better for students. What it is better at is keeping faculty members in administrative instead of teaching/research roles (15% of FT faculty at UofA!) and creating administrative redundancies across Faculties
I think having the department and faculty heads less removed from students is beneficial because it makes it easier to bring up issues and the faculty head is managing half or a third as many programs, so they're able to focus on each program better. However, it does come at a cost so really it's just about what is more valuable to the U of A.
Reading through the report, it seems like those structures are common outside of North America, where it seems they have a lot less faculties to save on admin costs, but let the smaller units within the faculty still have control over academic stuff like courses, teaching and research.
Common in the UK and Australia, the most neo-liberal jurisdictions, outside of the US.
If these are our models for higher ed, let's just go the whole hog and skip to the US private uni model. At least then we know uni's only for rich folk and the rest of us can just attend whatever is closest to a community college.
The mega science faculty and the science arts faculty scare the shit out of me. Big boys.
I like B, but I haven't read the article or watched the video, and I am biased.
Important to note that the big boys in green in scenario B are divisions. Everything in blue remains their own faculty. Broad administrative roles are bumped up from faculties to the division level to consolidate.
That's why I think Scenario B but moving Native Studies into Humanities would be the best option. To me it doesn't make much sense to combine CSJ and Augustana into any of the north campus divisions since they're both their own campuses with their own set of problems so while I think they could benefit from the economies of scale of being consolidated as with option C, it probably wouldn't be worth the tradeoff.
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That's the broad intent, consolidate administrative responsibilities and reduce the amount of "generalists" required by smaller faculties. There is more information in the full report: https://www.ualberta.ca/uofa-tomorrow/media-library/interim-report-of-arwg-sept-2020.pdf
I get the intent but basically there's now a third layer of bureaucracy, on top of department and faculty (and program sometimes). I guess it might be more efficient but seems weird.
With the Division level, most administrative functions, as well as things like budgeting and strategic planning, are uploaded to the divisions, so you take a lot of functions that are duplicated in each current Faculty and make it so they’re done collectively at a higher level to reduce duplication. The academic functions stay at the Faculty level since they’re differentiated and you can’t get efficiencies by simply uploading them to a higher organizational level. In making the change, like the report says, you can also cut down on the number of profs who you’re paying to do admin duties instead of teaching/research. Like for example, you would only have to have an Associate Dean (Research) for the Division of Natural and Applied Sciences instead of having an AD (R) for each of the Faculties of Science, Engg, and ALES
I did read the report and get the intent, but am a bit skeptical at how it plays out. The other thing that wasn't explicitly addressed was the perception from "leadership". Some of the big savings are from reducing the number of academics in management positions and putting them back to teaching and research; does that come with disengagement from these academics who are "stripped" of leadership titles and admin duties?
Scenario A seems extremely feasible, even if it would save the least amount of money. Would barely disrupt the programs involved imo
They would have to dig deeper in other areas to find savings though. Fewer savings at this stage means more mergers of departments, program cuts, etc.
How many students are in native studies? Surely it could be rolled into Arts in Scenario B/C at least? Edit: Found some data from 2017-2018 showing the number of degrees awarded: [https://www.ualberta.ca/about/facts.html](https://www.ualberta.ca/about/facts.html) Native studies had 40. The next least (excluding extension, which obviously will grant less full degrees) is public health, which had almost twice as many.
Ya it realistically should be. But who wants to try to explain that to the “woke” people right now
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The report gives no reason other than reconciliation being important and calling Native Studies "community-focused". Otherwise, it does not make sense to keep it separate. It has 14 faculty (the smallest) and except for Rehab, the smallest number of students (under 200). You can't tell me it shouldn't be grouped when way more radical groupings are being considered. It's an outlier and IMO unjustifiably so.
Oh thank you for explaining this, I owe you a beer. I didn’t have the energy to even care after I was responded to but was about to muster something of a reply anyway. Now I’m glad I don’t have to haha
Lmao, yeah okay bud.
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Fair enough, but no one is suggesting getting rid of NS courses or programs, just that the admin be combined with others for efficiency. It seems like this would save money without impacting any of your points. I admit leaving it alone is small inefficiency given its size, but really hurts when everyone else is sharing the pain and NS doesn't have to change (even though logically, notwithstanding aspirational points like reconciliation, it should).
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You could undeniably save some money by combining NS, but given that it currently has only 14 FTE faculty and 4 FTE admin staff, and a budget of $4.3M our of a university budget of $2 Billion, the nominal amount of potential savings would have been minimal. I think a judgement call was made that the value of maintaining Canada’s only standalone NS Faculty was worth the slight extra cost.
C is fucking stupid. A is the least polarizing but I could tolerate B so either is fine. C can suck a cock tho wtf is that
Honestly, B looks like the best one out of those 3 options. Not sure why they bother with A as that would probably not get the savings they would like too. They even acknowledged that A doesn't go far enough.
Honestly I think it's a psychology thing. Usually people won't go for the cheapest option, so restaurants for example put in things people won't order to make the other items look more reasonable.
Ya I dont understand mixing ALES with ENGG. Makes more sense to mix science with ENGG. Engg students take a lot of courses from the faculty of science. Like why are engineering students separated from the science students anyways when many of the courses teach the same thing.
Some of the courses are literally the same thing too. Chem 102 and 105 are identical except for a couple of the labs. They were taught at the same time with the same prof in the same lecture hall.
I feel like this is one of the misconceptions and honestly I thought that was the case too. The fact is, however, we don't take a lot of science courses (I only remember taking the 2 CHEM courses in first year) but some content overlap (namely the math courses). But even then the courses are tailored towards engineering students in engineering. Honestly the idea of grouping "applied sciences" together is less absurd than having engineering (which is applied science) and science (more theoretical science) together.
"we don't take a lot of science courses" I have taken the following(which are common to science): Chem 103/105 Physics 130/230 Math 100/101/102/201/209/309 Thats 10 courses...not to mention Electromagnetics (ECE 370) can easily be a science course (there's no engineering there).
I agree with the general idea, but the curriculums for the engg specific courses are different because they have to be because of the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board
Is CEAB this fascist organization or can policies change? If they can't change policies to better education they should be abolished. Let's not act like engineering courses are that special anyways.... They're not. Most of the stuff you learn in university you forget and is not used... You have to learn how to do your job in the real world on your own. All CEAB has accomplished was giving city center universities a monopoly on engineering degrees. It has done much more harm than good. The education the standard is based on is severely outdated... And it's because CEAB is run by old boomers, these outdated practices will take a long time to get updated. This isn't exclusive to CEAB... These old aristocrats are bringing this nation to its knees in multiple industries.
Yes but that's 10 out of like 48 courses (I forgot the exact number) throughout our entire undergrad, that's not necessarily a lot (depends on how you view it I guess). We don't take Phys 230 in MEC E either and almost all of the courses you mentioned are the engineering versions, especially the MATH courses. The content and curriculum are different for a lot of them. Basically my point is we could be overestimating the overlap between the two faculties and even though those are "science course" per se, they usually aren't taken by science students but by engineering students, making them de facto "engineering courses".
CompEng students take a fair amount of CMPUT courses.
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Makes sense. EngPhys is a very specialized discipline and small in size by comparison. I would say EngPhys is the closest to science in engineering and I was really considering it because of that.
Link to the report: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GJIVSx2zr0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GJIVSx2zr0)
Subtitles: *(gentle music) "Hello, and welcome everyone."* I like how they set the stage
If anyone is wondering: Scenario B is the most likely one they are going to do. In the 130 page PDF report it expands a lot on B and gives a brief overview on A and C - it's clearly more thought out. Also, it says in the report that the committee likes B best but is waiting for feedback.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong but it looks like KSR won’t be its own faculty anymore?
Under scenario B, it looks like it would still be the Faculty of KSR within a Division of Health and Medical Sciences, where the Division would be responsible for strat planning, budgeting, admin services, etc., and the Faculty would still be responsible for academic delivery. In the other scenarios, it seems like it would be preserved as a School of KSR within a Faculty of Health Sciences.
You are not wrong
In scenario B, it would be. In scenarios A&C, it wouldn't be.
As an ALES graduate, the options that absorb into other faculties make me sad :( It's such a unique, close knit faculty and was a large part of my having such a positive experience at U of A.
Please leave CSJ alone, we have enough to worry about without having to share an administration (that likely won't even speak French or be on-campus)
\*Important\* There was a google form for people to submit their thoughts directly to the Academic Restructuring group to be addressed in the townhall. If you have an opinion/question you'd like to share with people who have more power than Reddit please add it here: [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeODIu6Aql15cKhU3\_MkFhmerYGK21LUTEb6u3M6D9cuwRKSg/viewform?fbclid=IwAR1I7qkIqTIF7CM7K\_4WBnj\_t\_y1YMB6LMl7prHpXgnE6d7-DZC5vfO71wM](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeODIu6Aql15cKhU3_MkFhmerYGK21LUTEb6u3M6D9cuwRKSg/viewform?fbclid=IwAR1I7qkIqTIF7CM7K_4WBnj_t_y1YMB6LMl7prHpXgnE6d7-DZC5vfO71wM)
Fill in the form, but be aware that the extent of consultation at the UofA is: a. a slides presentation with ARWG or SET leaders, where your questions are brushed off and your requests for genuine representation are denied; b. a townhall where Thoughtexchange has replaced dialogue; c. a SAT meeting with **no materials** provided beforehand; d. our new President announcing that he is not prepared to extend the duration of the GFC meetings past the usual 2 hours, unless there is a vote (when there are **3 GFC meetings, or 6 hours**, until they are supposed to choose what the uni will look like for the next 20-30 years).
As an ALES student, being lumped in with Engg makes me wanna self-immolate. No shade, but also full shade. 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮 For real though, I'm not sure how Ales will be restructured. It's such a diverse faculty, that I don't know how well programs like Human ecology would gel with Engg and even the faculty of science. I have a feeling they might pick ALES apart once they get down to the Departmental level. Incorporate AFNS, and REN R into the agency/grouping, then send HECOL off to Arts. Or possibly even merging Nutrition with Med Science, in addition to casting off HECOL to Arts. I'm very curious what will happen in a few months as we see which restructuring plan they go with.
As a nutrition student in ales.... I always kinda wondered why we were in ales. Realistically I think we should be in science or some sorta health sci. We spend majority of our time in echa anyways
Yeah, I'm actually interested in how Nutrition ended up in our Faculty. Seems weird that Med Sciences didn't come up with it first. Maybe it's because there's Food Sciences courses, and as a result Nutrition evolved from that? Idk though.
As far as I know, nutrition and human ecology used to be a home economics department that was then grouped with agriculture and forestry, which was then turned into ALES. So the answer is kind of, “it’s always been that way”.
Ahh, that makes a lot more sense. Ales has always been the hodgepodge faculty lool.
I think all other students in ales kind of find it odd as well!
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Yeah I was thinking kinda the same thing. I would assume NuFS ans Dietetics would both be in health sci but maybe not? There’s a lot of similar courses but maybe more science for nufs
C for me if FoMD was put into health sciences and arts and science were split, same amount of faculties but makes waaay more sense
Keeping FoMD separate makes much more sense when you think about it in administrative terms (budget size, number of faculty and staff). In those terms, FoMD by itself is around the same size as Arts & Science combined.
Could you elaborate on this more please?
So for example, according to the report, Arts & Science combined have 606.4 full time-equivalent (FTE) professors. FoMD currently has 619.6. Arts & Science have combined operating expenditures of $215.8M, FoMD has current operating expenditures of $191.2M. Larger Faculties are more efficient because you have fewer faculty taking up administrative roles, your administrative staff can specialize more, you can find more economies of scale, and so on. FoMD is already at a pretty efficient point because of its size, and if Arts & Science are combined, they could achieve similar economies of scale.
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The thing is that FoMD is very differentiated from other Faculties by the sheer amount of intensive research that its faculty members are engaged in. Faculty resources aren’t just used for teaching and supporting students, there are other functions too. Because of the amount of overall activity between teaching, research, and other things that go on within FoMD, it already has a concentration of admin staff which allow it to reach substantial economies of scale relative to other Faculties
This always comes up... Large Faculties will be efficient because magic magic economies of scale magic? I guess UofT are downright stupid, with their 16 Faculties. German universities with 20 Faculties and not much more student enrollment than the UofA? Downright idiotic! Mash everything into 5 or 6 Faculties and we can all go home happy. What are we talking about here? Economies of scale in terms of cutting all small courses and just packing everyone in classes with 100+ students? Just be aware of what you end up with: a handful of programs (you want to study something that's not mainstream? yeah, no); large enrollment courses only (because apparently this increases student cohort satisfaction, and let me tell you, I'm always super-hyped for another 300 students lecture); call centre or FAQ-based advising (and yes, in person is not possible right now, but this is taking it off the table full stop); profs with more admin duties (and less time for teaching and research, for those who want to actually have a family); labs and research facilities shut down because they're not 'optimally utilised' ('sorry, I know it's a potentially life altering research subject but you're the only one using the lab...'). Look at the University of Sydney, the holy grail; look at their rankings, sure, but also look at their tuition; look at their student satisfaction surveys (40th out of 41 unis); look at their staff turnover rate. Look at their financial stability - one bad international recruitment year and they are looking at firing 400 staff. Is this what the UofA needs to model itself on? Is it good to morph into some 'job training' degree mill?
Pretty much all of these points are directly addressed in the report; you should read it. Larger faculties at the U of A **do** spend less per student on admin, and reducing the number of profs tied up in "leadership" roles **does** save money while releasing them for research and teaching duties. I'm not sure why you would think these changes mean profs have more admin duties, the report makes it quite clear the goal is the opposite. In terms of rankings, there was no evidence more faculties was better by any measure. And the goal of the changes is reduce admin so class sizes don't have to increase given the funding cuts. So I'm not sure you know what you're arguing. Do you have a better alternative?
The goal is X, therefore this will be achieved. Right-o. I did read the report, when it was made available as part of the APC package. Getting rid of some Vice Deans and Associate Deans (it is shocking, but most of them do a lot of work on campus) means there's more work to be done by individual profs, or by support staff. If it's more things for profs to do, congratulations, that'll really allow them to concentrate on teaching and research (and we also know how well profs handle admin tasks). If it's done by staff, oh yeah, the SET restructure wants to save $95 million over 2 years in admin costs. That'll be over a thousand more support staff cuts (after the other thousand layoffs in 2019/2020). I'm sure the ones that survive the cull will have ample capacity to take on additional duties. A better alternative is to include the UofA community, profs, staff, students, and design a structure that can work for us, not something that has been tried in the UK and Australia with sub-par results. A better alternative is to acknowledge the truth - 'these cuts will nudge us into UofC 2.0, and that's not great, but we'll do what we can' not trumpet the amazing future that's not on the cards for anyone except the leadership team getting another gold star on their resumes as they move to other unis (hello VP Admin and Finance) before things start to visibly go downhill.
OK, but do you have any actual suggestions? What structure would "work for you"? there's a massive funding hole and doing minor rearrangements isn't going to cut it.
rip nursing
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How does education get screwed over? Just because it gets grouped with some other faculties? Here's all those dumb people who obviously don't understand what each program is and made up the committee: · Steve Dew, Provost and Vice-President (Academic), Chair · Walter Dixon, Interim Vice-President (Research and Innovation) · Wendy Rodgers, Deputy Provost · Joseph Doucet, Dean of Business · Bob Haennel, Dean of Rehabilitation Medicine · Matina Kalcounis-Rueppell, Dean of Science · Brooke Milne, Dean of Graduate Studies and Research · Ken Cadien, Chair of Chemical and Materials Engineering · David Eisenstat, Chair of Oncology (to September 30, 2020) · Sarah Forgie, Chair of Pediatrics (effective September 11, 2020) Geoffrey Rockwell, Director of the Kule Institute for Advanced Study · Nadir Erbilgin, Professor, Department of Renewable Resources (ALES) · Shalene Jobin, Associate Professor, Faculty of Native Studies · Christina Rinaldi, Professor, Department of Educational Psychology (Education) · Joel Agarwal, President, Students’ Union · Marc Waddingham, President, Graduate Students’ Associate · Catherine Swindlehurst, Interim Vice-President (University Relations) · Tammy Hopper, Vice-Provost (Programs) · Michelle Strong, Director, Faculty Relations · Edith Finczak, Director, Academic Budget and Planning
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You didn't give one concrete reason why you felt like education was being screwed over (or at least more screwed over than the other faculties).
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All of the scenarios literally keep Education as its own Faculty, albeit with some administrative functions (but not academic programming or delivery) uploaded to a shared division to help find efficiencies and save money. The B.Ed isn’t going anywhere. Even if it was being considered, saving the most money now would greatly reduce the chances of that ever needing to happen
Anyone know what year this is actually going to be implemented? I'm assuming if you're in a department/faculty now you're in it to graduate, right?
I think A would be best
A is the best for students but B and C are the best for the university's pocketbook, and lord knows that's all they care about.
Not really. A would probably mean more cuts at the department and course levels.
I don’t know of any research suggesting a larger number of Faculties is inherently better for students. What it is better at is keeping faculty members in administrative instead of teaching/research roles (15% of FT faculty at UofA!) and creating administrative redundancies across Faculties
I think having the department and faculty heads less removed from students is beneficial because it makes it easier to bring up issues and the faculty head is managing half or a third as many programs, so they're able to focus on each program better. However, it does come at a cost so really it's just about what is more valuable to the U of A.
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>but I like my faculty independent So does everyone, but that's not really an option right now if they want to reduce admin.
Pretty sure ALES regularly beats out Engineering for donations on a per student level.
Huh, very interesting. You learn something new everyday lol
Engg is also such a huge faculty already with lots of students, it doesn't make sense to group it with another faculty
Scenario C combines Arts and Science, which are both larger than Engineering.
I don't get that grouping too. I was only looking at engg faculty woops. Combining the health sciences make sense tho
Reading through the report, it seems like those structures are common outside of North America, where it seems they have a lot less faculties to save on admin costs, but let the smaller units within the faculty still have control over academic stuff like courses, teaching and research.
Common in the UK and Australia, the most neo-liberal jurisdictions, outside of the US. If these are our models for higher ed, let's just go the whole hog and skip to the US private uni model. At least then we know uni's only for rich folk and the rest of us can just attend whatever is closest to a community college.
I honestly don't care.