End-of-Year Report from LCFA President Kevin Wiber
Looking Forward to summer.
To say it has been a busy year is an understatement. We recognize that since this time last year all of you have been performing miracles in terms of shifting teaching assignments and dealing with the many obstacles and the uncertainty that face all of us. I have heard accolades all the way to the board level and each of you deserve credit for the job you have done. We recognize that last summer was very busy transitioning to the blended format, we hope this summer will be restful and rejuvenating.
The year in the Faculty office has also been busy.
In July we hired Keith as our new Faculty Relations Officer. Keith has been a very valuable addition to our team, his experience and expertise, particularly in the political arena have provided us with significant insights. On a personal level I would like to thank Keith for all the effort he has put in to become familiar with the organization and the work he has done to support me in my role. As many of you realize the faculty office has moved to temporary quarters while renovations to the Patterson building are completed. Keith can be reached by e-mail of by the office phone, the number remains the same. Like many of us, Keith is working from home when he can so before you make the long trek to TT2965, at the top of the southern stairs in the TTRIP building, it might be a good idea to ensure he is in.
As part of our ACIFA commitments Cheryl, Ryan and I have been attending weekly meetings as part of president’s council and Cheryl and Ryan have also attended meetings of the executive. Ryan is chairing the NAC and Dave is a member of the PAC. ACIFA executive and Presidents Council met with Minister Nicholaides often this year. We have had numerous discussions around the budget changes, and as a provincial group we have expressed great concern around the performance based budget formulas, including the impact on students and auxiliary infrastructure it will require driving growth in administration. Ryan will report on the implications of the government influence in bargaining which has also been a hot topic of these meetings. More recently we have been attending town halls and hearing proposed results of the 2030 McKinsey review of Post-secondary in Alberta and the Skills for Jobs task force. Bill 67 introduced earlier this month is expected to bring significant changes to the Trades and apprenticeship training in the province, including expanding the apprenticeship model into other occupations and professions, while recognizing trades training toward academic credentials. Minister Nicholaides has indicated that we can expect a bill to introduce changes driven by the recommendations of the Alberta 2030 review very soon. More information on the 2030 process can be found in the slide deck from the minister’s office at this site - AB 2030 Townhall slide deck dated Jan 6, 2021 - ae-ab-2030-townhall-slide-deck.pdf
ACIFA is working with Public Interest Alberta to provide information hoping to inform the public and influence public opinion while lobbying the government around the budget issues with Post-secondary. The campaign is centered around the theme “learning conditions are working conditions”. You may notice adds on bus shelters or busses and in newspapers across the province, and you can visit the web site stopPSEcuts.ca. Our local effort started with lawn signs, which are still available through Keith, followed by a social media photo campaign. March 30th we participated in a town hall around the impact our institutions have in the region. The video can be found at https://youtu.be/5oF4pDs4WIc
The pandemic has impacted our landscape and will continue to do so in some ways as we emerge from the immediate conditions. The minister announced a return to face to face and then another variant, this time potentially more aggressive, emerged. Lethbridge College announced earlier that we will plan to continue in a blended format prior to the minister’s announcement but that seems like the most reasonable course of action under the circumstances. Once we can return to our preferred educational methods, we will certainly benefit from our experience this year. In our school of trades we often hear, “there will never be another snow day”. Some faculty have asked if they can continue with the on-line delivery and some have begun to explore a HyFlex delivery model. All these have potential in the right application and administration have expressed an interest to explore the options. I want to congratulate the teams tasked with keeping our workspace, students, faculty and staff safe. Up until the variants emerged most recently, Lethbridge College had done a great job of keeping the virus at bay in our institution, very few if any transmissions were traced back to the institution. In our area we had students arrive with the symptoms or AHS contact them due to close contacts, even faculty who had been flagged, but to my knowledge our protocols have been quite effective. I sincerely hope those teams can stand down proud of a job well done in the near future.
The new Bylaws are finally ready to be introduced. The bylaws committee has been working on the required updates and filling in the details for some time. As the Faculty executive has changed so have faces around that table. I’d like to thank all for the exceptional long hours contributed to the project and encourage everyone to look at the by-laws in preparation for a vote to adopt them at the Annual General Meeting May 10th. The general meeting on Monday April 26th will focus on bylaws and negotiations, there will be an opportunity for questions and discussion.
Your executive has attempted to address any questions as they arose during the year. It is a challenging environment because we often feel we do not have access to the correct people for our questions. Many of the decisions that we hear about are driven by government policy and we have tried to address those questions with the minister through ACIFA. Governance issues are the interest of the board and we try to address issues there while not ignoring the administration. We meet with ELT to discuss issues from a management perspective and recently we started talking about attending Deans Council meetings periodically to address more fundamental questions in that forum.
Ryan has attended the Board of Governors meetings with me through the course of the year and I have provided a report to the Board for each meeting. At these meetings we do not speak except to answer questions but I have expressed concern over the stress created by the environment we are in now. Board members have expressed their concern for the health and wellbeing of faculty, and appreciation for the work faculty have done in dealing with the pandemic.
ELT meetings have predominately been updates to current conditions around government policy, budget and Alberta Health Services mandates. It was at this level that the decision was made to suspend full time faculty evaluations in order to separate the instructor from the conditions imposed by the pandemic in the eyes of the student. (Course evaluations and evaluations of those on probation continue.)
We are engaged in discussions on many other topics in sub-committees around the college, primarily dealing with negotiations. We have sub-committees dealing with workload, Distance Learning, Faculty Full-Time to non-continuing ratio, and policy development. In addition the Faculty association is working on issues like providing better definitions for the role of the chair, defining categories of work integrated learning and understanding the implications of Hyflex delivery. We were invited to participate in the Health and Wellness strategy development and the People Experience committee. I’d like to thank all the faculty members who have volunteered and contributed time to many of these efforts.
A significant change to the governing regulations is set to arise in 2022 as the Post-secondary Learning act continues the transition to the Labor Relations act. This would see the association officially become a union, and the association needs to understand the implications. We have done some research on the topic through ACIFA, and through ACIFA we have asked Minister Nicholaides to reconsider and allow associations to retain sole bargaining status, at least for the time being. Although the minister has expressed general support he has not had an opportunity to follow up to this point. In the interim the executive has tried hard to understand the implications of moving to a union status, including how the right to strike or lock-out could potentially affect our members. ACIFA has some training planned and we have reached out to our legal counsel in an effort to provide the most accurate information to our members specific to our contract. Once we have all that information we will try to provide a synopsis.
Our association executive has developed stronger ties with AUPE and the student association through these troubled times. We have met on many occasions, visited with MLA Neudorf, MLA Philips and PSE critic David Eggen together. The three groups worked together with university representatives on the PIA campaign. I believe this association makes each of us stronger.
Have a great summer, hopefully we have a chance to spend some time in our chosen pursuits, with the people we would choose to be with.