News 03/30/09

"With its fixation on cutbacks, Laurentian University is putting faculty renewal at risk," said LUFA President Jim Ketchen at a special membership meeting called to discuss A Plan for Regaining Sustainability at Laurentian University, passed by the Board of Governors at its February meeting.

Overall, the plan features a combination of cutbacks on the expenditure side and growth in the revenue side, particularly from an increase in student numbers.

While the final university budget has not been set, members were growing increasingly concerned by what they had been hearing from their deans. One school had been told that three vacant positions would not be filled, including that of director, which would have to be filled internally even though nobody wanted the job. This pattern was more or less repeated in a couple of other units reporting.

Members also noted that the push to reduce overloads would mean that some smaller classes would have to be consolidated, a necessity described as "pedagogically unsound." While this was going on, as one member noted, Laurentian was also out trying to market itself to students on grounds of "small classes" and "personal attention."

One department had been told that 42 credits of overload would disappear if it didn't support the expansion of its program at Georgian College to four years and another was promised new space that was required for its program but only if it succeeded in upping enrollment. "I am not an ad agency," the chair of the department protested. The space is vacant now.

Worst of all, one unit was told that part of its program would be permanently cut.

Because of the uncertainty all round, members were also having problems planning workload for the coming year.

There were only two bright spots amidst the gloom.

President James Ketchen told members with tenure track appointments that they were safe in that they could not be terminated on financial grounds.

The other bright spot was the state of the university pension plan. True it had been seriously damaged by the economic collapse, but J-C Cachon, a member of the pension committee told members that Laurentian was "better off than most universities" and that the solution to pension woes here and across Canada was to extend the number of years that employers were required to make up short-falls.

Dr. Ketchen concluded the meeting by asking that units keep the Association informed of all developments affecting them.