1) OCADFA – You’re Already a Member! If you’re getting this email, you’re an OCADFA member. This means that we’re here to protect your rights and improve your working conditions. If you have questions, concerns or suggestions about your workplace, please contact our office by emailing Connie Reid (conniereid@ocadu.ca) or me (creeve@faculty.ocadu.ca).
2) Spring meeting, Thursday, April 25th 1-3 p.m., in room 1525 at 113 McCaul Street. We are surveying interest in free childcare during the April 25 OCADFA General Meeting and Faculty Appreciation event. If you’re interested in childcare for either or both of these events, please contact Claudette Lauzon (clauzon@faculty.ocadu.ca).
3) Negotiations – You will have seen Bill Leeming’s email, and he’ll report further next week but, to recap, last week we served the administration with a request for “Negotiations Mediation and Arbitration” per the MOA’’s Article 12.1.1.
4) Performance Reviews – Many of you are getting notices to make appointments to sign off on your performance reviews. This is fine if you are satisfied with your review. **However** if you do not feel your review reflects your accomplishments, you can request a meeting with the Chair of the Faculty Performance Review Committee. If that meeting isn’t satisfactory, you have 15 days more to make a written appeal to your dean. We’ve seen announcements stating that this process must be completed by April 22, so it’s important to note that this deadline is subject to you being satisfied with your review. 5) Re-Imagining the Quality of Education at OCAD, Part 5
Ideally, a university’s administration should support the goals of the faculty and students. Yet, increasingly, it’s the reverse: students and faculty support the goals of the administration. Why?
Those of you who attended our event about post-secondary education on earlier this month heard some talk about the “new managerialism.” This phenomenon has been in play in universities for over a decade, characterized by four factors: burgeoning upper management; a dramatic up-turn in the percentage of university budgets being spent on administration; distancing between upper management and the university’s day-to-day activities (for instance, fewer and fewer of them do any teaching); and more and more teaching being done by contractually limited appointments. (See Rosemary Deem’s “Unravelling the Fabric of Academe” in Universities at Risk—a book I’ve referenced before and highly recommend.)
This phenomenon is particularly pronounced at OCAD. For example, we’ve mentioned previously that, in the last 6 years, our student population has increased by about 26.5%. During the same period, OCAD’s vice-presidential complement grew by 300% — from two vice-presidents and no associate vice-presidents, to three vice-presidents and three associate vice-presidents. We now have one vice-president or associate vice-president to every 670 students. By contrast, the University of Toronto has just under 90,000 students, and thirteen vice-presidents and vice-provosts—or about one vice-president/vice-provost to every 6,700 students. So, student-by-student, OCAD’s vice-presidential complement is ten times that of the University of Toronto (even though we’re a specialized institution). Here’s another comparison: not one of the top seven people of OCAD University —president, vice-presidents, associate vice-presidents — have taught here. By contrast, U of T’s out-going president, David Naylor, and in-coming president, Meric Gertler, rose through the ranks at that university.
This is why we say that new managerialism, while hardly unique to OCAD University, is especially egregious here—and why our administration expects the faculty and students to support their goals, rather than the reverse.