It is hard to believe that as an executive team we have already been in office for 2/3rds of our term. My fall semester proved to be very busy with countless committee meetings, GovWeek 2017 and continued advocacy work filling my time. I hope to provide you with a brief overview of what keeps me so busy and how some of my big projects are going.
Committee Work
Most of my day to day is taken up with committee work. This semester the General Faculties Council (GFC) and its committees meet more than ever before, and groups like COFA and GFC Student Caucus have continued to meet regularly. I also continued the work of past VPAs on committees like the Peter Lougheed Leadership College Academic Oversight Committee and the UofA Open Educational Resource Interest Group, both of which led to new committees like the PLLC Steering Committee and the OER Advocacy Group, respectively. I also was invited to join the Council on Experientials Learning and the Institutional Equity, Diversity and Inclusivity Scoping Group. At my last count, I sit on 22 committees and have 5 regularly scheduled meetings almost every month.
Supporting Student Representatives
An ongoing focus over my term has been to support student representatives at all levels. Throughout the summer and into the fall term I have continued to chair the Council of Faculty Associations (COFA), and all of the COFA boards have met several times to do things like professional development, share ideas and to build cross faculty relationships. This all culminated in the very first joint-COFA Board, bringing together representatives from all four COFA boards and most faculty associations. Individually, I have made sure to make myself available to all Faculty Association to support them whenever they need it, be it any of the four FAs who went through the Faculty Association Membership Fee proposal process, or groups like the Alberta Pharmacy Students’ Association which needed additional support in their advocacy this year. Likewise, I have continued to hold GFC Student Caucuses, preparing student representatives before each months meetings. I have also hosted 2 semi-annual Student Governance Mixers to provide student representatives at all levels with an opportunity to meet and network in ways never before possible, including students from department associations all the way up to General Faculties Council.
Understanding Diverse Identities on Campus
One of my campaign promises to students during the election was finishing large internal research projects, including a project that was looking at diversity in student governance. This project would go on to become the the Identity Matters! report which was formally launched during GovWeek in September. This research project consisted of a survey which received 2,000 undergraduate student responses, a number of smaller survey among Student Councillors and Faculty Association (FA) executives, and a number of interviews with the last four years of Student’s Union executives. The study found that identity does shape the experience of individuals on their decision to run, the experience when they run, and their experience when serving in the role. This research is being used to inform the content of programs like STRIDE and the UASU Got This campaign, and has brought the Students’ Union national recognition for the trailblazing work that the report is.
Throughout the first semester of the year, I met with many campus stakeholders to discuss the need for better, comprehensive demographic collection information. I strongly believe that before we can truly address the complexities of student life, we need to better understand the students who walk our campus. While response has been overwhelmingly positive, there has not been a very concentrated effort to even discuss this issue, let alone push the changes needed to gather that information. Moving into the last trimester of my term, I am rolling out a petition to begin to gather and identify the campus wide support for demographic collection. This will allow us to concretely show to true breadth of support for this initiative.
UASU Got This Campaign
As I mentioned, the Identity Matters report has gone on to inform the new UASU Got This campaign. Originally this project was seen as a way to bring the messages of positivity and encouragement from STRIDE to the broader community, but it has grown from there. This is a campaign which will champion two central messages: anyone can and should run in the SU elections, and it is up to us as a campus community to support them. This message is being delivered through a series of posters which will be on campus for most of January and February depicting what diversity does and can look like, and calling on individuals to run. There will also be some key messaging around supporting all candidates who decide to run. This campaign is not meant to highlight how far we may think we have come when it comes to diversity in student governance, but to highlight how far we have to go. Part of this is getting more traditionally underrepresented groups to run in student politics, but the other part is changing the narrative that surrounds them if they do decide to run.
Access to Syllabi
Finally, one of my other platform points was to establish better accessibility to course syllabi. Early on in my term I identified a potential solution to this project, building on a syllabus creation tool currently being designed by the Provost's Office, Centre for Teaching and Learning and Information Service Technology (IST). I have been working specifically with the Provost's Office and advocating to develop a front-end to this system so that students can access the information being collected. This has also led to a new “Course Outline” Working group which will be meeting in January. The primary focus will be on the policies that govern course outlines; I will ensure that the creation, dissemination and collection of syllabi is something captured in this discussion.