Annual Reports are due on August 1 for all non-Sessional faculty members, with members asked to list activities between July 1, 2025 and June 30, 2026. We understand all three faculties now have closely aligned, if not identical, forms. One question we’ve heard from several members, from all faculties, is what should you put under Graduate Supervision if you did not supervise any graduate students over the year?

Our Letter of Understanding re: Graduate Supervision (new as of the previous bargaining round, with this past year being its first year in effect) explicitly recognizes graduate supervision as an “essential” component of a faculty’s member’s Teaching and Teaching Related Responsibilities; that supervising one graduate student each academic year is part of your “basic expectations”; and that contributing to supervising graduate studies “will be a factor in performance reviews, the awarding of merit, tenure and/or promotion, and sabbaticals.” Understandably, members who did have any supervisions may feel uncertain about how to approach filling out the Annual Report, which directly asks for a list of such supervisions.

When negotiating the Graduate Supervision LOU, OCADFA’s Negotiations Committee was keenly aware that not all non-Sessional faculty members will be supervising, and for a variety of reasons. Sometimes you will not have the capacity. Sometimes there will not be a good fit with the expertise the students are looking for. Sometimes you simply will not be matched with anyone. There are a variety of reasons a member may not be supervising a graduate student, and our Negotiations Committee made that abundantly clear at the bargaining table.

That’s why its important to underscore that graduate supervision is just one of the many teaching and teaching related responsibilities performed by faculty member, and that while it is factored into performance reviews, it is not the only factor. There are 14 sub-articles (in Article 20.2.1) that list teaching and teaching related responsibilities, and not all will be applicable every year for every member

The goal of the Graduate Supervision LOU is twofold: to take steps towards a more equitable distribution of the workload associated with graduate supervision, and to better recognize the workload with credits towards a course release. The goal is not to punish those who have not, for whatever reason, supervised a graduate student in any given academic year. If you were not assigned a graduate student to supervise in 2025-26, we recommend simply stating so on your annual report.