U of L faculty group vote deserves response from administration

Editor:

Unlike corporations, universities operate via “collegial governance” in which faculty members (the “collegium”) are active participants in academic decision making.

They typically work in partnership with an external board of governors whose role is to provide financial expertise to complement the faculty’s academic expertise.

In healthy university governance, both fields of expertise are respected. When senior administrators exclude faculty members from academic decision making, the university as a whole suffers.

On April 12, 286 University of Lethbridge faculty members informed University Board Chair, Kurt Schlachter, that they have no confidence in President Michael Mahon, VicePresident (Academic) Erasmus Okine, and Vice-President (Finance and Administration) Nancy Walker.

Eight days later, Mr. Schlachter informed us that the Board of Governors ‘rejects’ the fact that 286 (now 296) faculty members have no confidence in these three senior administrators.

In that letter, Mr. Schlachter attempted to dismiss the votes of 328 faculty members on the ground that these votes were collected by an ad hoc group of professors and instructors.

In his May 3 email to faculty and staff, Mr. Schlachter further implied that the No Confidence vote could be dismissed because it was organized by “a small group of faculty members.”

But Mr. Schlachter is mistaken on both fronts.

We and our strong vote of No Confidence have undeniable standing in the U of L’s collegial governance, for an integral part of our academic freedom is “the right... to criticize University... administrations” (U of L Academic Staff Collective Agreement, Art. 11.01.1), either as individuals or as a group of faculty members.

Furthermore, the validity and integrity of our vote are beyond reproach. About 50 senior faculty members contributed to the organization of this grassroots movement, 75 per cent of full-time faculty members voted, and 97.7 per cent of those who took a position on the Motion (i.e., not including abstentions) voted in favour of the No Confidence motion against President Mahon, V.P.A. Okine, and V.P.F. Walker.

Why do so many faculty members have no confidence in senior leadership?

There are many reasons, but most of them centre around the circumvention of collegial governance.

Because of the size and complexity of a university, professors must choose some among their ranks to serve in administrative roles.

True collegial governance is the governance of the university by faculty members, some of whom have administrative roles.

In this way, faculty members and administrators work together to govern all academic facets of the university— from curriculum proposals to faculty hires to administrative hires.

In what ways do faculty members feel that the U of L’s senior administration has circumvented collegial governance in recent years?

Two years ago, senior administrators invented 21 Task Forces to investigate ways — many of them involving serious academic matters — to further cut costs at our lean university.

These 21 Task Forces should have been established by the principal governing body of the University, the General Faculties Council (GFC), on which sit faculty members, students, administrators, and others. But they were not established by GFC.

Instead, 20 of these Task Forces completely bypassed collegial governance by excluding all faculty members who were not administrators.

On many of the Task Forces, non-academic administrators such as the Executive Director of Ancillary Services decided matters of academic import, including Faculty Structures (#14), the Assignment of Duties to Faculty Members (#16), Term Appointees (#6), Sessional Lecturers (#6), and Study Leaves (#9).

Academic matters of this nature clearly require the expertise of academics.

Furthermore, it has become increasingly common for senior administrators at the U of L to circumvent proper collegial search and appointment procedures for senior leadership roles.

Without any consultation, the President or the V.P.A. have repeatedly appointed people to interim/acting appointments for periods as long as three or more years, when a one-year term would have sufficed to conduct a proper eight-month search.

Conducting proper collegial searches for senior academic leaders is vitally important to the integrity of a university. The decision to bypass faculty participation has also contributed to the erosion of faculty confidence in senior administration.

For many years now, faculty members at the U of L have tried to tell senior administrators that they must govern with us, the faculty members who teach students, who conduct important research, who select peers to be administrators, and who are mandated to help govern the University. For years, these three senior administrators have continued to ignore our pleas and arguments, continuing in the same authoritarian way.

The Board of Governors cannot dismiss this cry of No Confidence. The current terms of President Mahon and Vice-President (Academic) Okine end June 30, 2023. We, the faculty, are seriously concerned about further erosion of collegial governance in the interim.

It has now been 30 days since senior administrators received our April 12 letter, and their lack of response is typical of how they are disconnected, non-responsive, and disrespectful to the faculty. We deserve an immediate response from President Mahon.

Victor Rodych Louise Barrett Olga Kovalchuk Igor Kovalchuk David Naylor Paula Cardozo Jim Byrne Pamela Adams Katherine Haight Yale Belanger Peter Henzi

Faculty Members’ Governance Group of the University of Lethbridge