Historic Underfunding, Redressment and a Sense of Ourselves

By Mike McIntyre, Psychology

The University has struggled, since shortly after its transformation from United College, with a funding base more suited to a college within a university than to an independent university.  This under-funding has restricted the budgetary freedom of the University to bring our salaries in line with similarly sized and mandated universities.  It is very much in the interest of the administration to have salaries for faculty and staff that are distributively just.  Just salaries enhance recruitment and retention and foster morale.  The monies available to redress injustice, however, are limited.  Grant and tuition increases typically allow us barely to keep pace with inflationary pressures and provide very little room for discretionary improvements.  The main source of funds beyond the percentage growth provided by changes to the grant and tuition monies is provided by fall-in from the existing budget.  For example, the retirement or resignation of a senior professor who is replaced by a junior professor may save as much as $75K in salary and benefits. This type of fall-in constitutes the major source of funds for the University to make progress—perhaps, tediously slow progress— toward institutional goals. What is required is a commitment by the University to establish a distributively just salary structure and to make reaching this goal an institutional priority.  The more senior amongst us may remember that Dr. Duckworth made such a commitment and that it motivated the 12% increase in the first Collective Agreement.  Every nook and cranny in the University’s budget was searched to secure adequate resources.  Essentially, all the fall-in for a period of years was devoted to making the salary structure of the first Collective Agreement possible.

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"The Sphere of the Sun," or, The University I Would Like to See

By Jane Barter Moulaison, Theology

In the past dozen years or so, I have grown accustomed to the patterns of life as scholar and mother. Days pass before me through the regular vistas of mini-van and computer screen.  Increasingly, however, I am compelled to turn my view to my mobile device, with its hazard lights ever flashing: “Be always on guard!” Life is full and life is good, but, lately, there is one ball that is dropped in this, my frenetic act.

In the eleventh Canto of the Paradiso, Dante and Beatrice travel to the fourth sphere of the heavens, the sphere of the Sun. The Sun, a little higher than Venus, the sphere of lovers, is where the scholars reside. Above the Sun is Mars, the sphere of the glorious martyrs.

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Pondering the Word Untenable

By Margaret Sweatman, English

I’ve heard the argument in diverse contexts that Canadian universities are “untenable.”  It’s a canny choice, the word “untenable,” in the company of professors, tenured and otherwise.

Doubt is necessary, unless it’s insinuated into a workplace with the intention of making people frightened.  Or unless the people in the workplace let themselves be frightened.

I’m writing this at night after a long day of mostly pleasurable work.  I’ve still got work to do tonight for tomorrow.  The roof is leaking and my car is broken.  My entire working life has been untenable, though I come from a generation of five-hundred dollar yearly tuition, of bursaries given to students from rural areas, of bursaries even for the offspring of the middle class. That economic situation made my untenable career – and the careers of many of my contemporaries of many disciplines – possible.

Our students’ working lives are now untenable.

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A Steep Price for a Miracle

By James Christie, Theology

Story is to religion as mathematics is to science: foundational.  Trust me on this. 

The story of The University of Winnipeg is the story of a miracle – and the price that miracles can exact.

Once upon a time, there was a little college that could …

United College was born in 1938, a “church” college, the consequence of the establishment of The United Church of Canada in 1925.  Its alumni register reads like a who’s who of great Canadians: Ted Scott, Lois Wilson and Lloyd Axworthy.  United College was the successor of two great pioneer schools: Manitoba College, Presbyterian, established in 1871 and memorialized in Manitoba Hall; and Wesley College, Methodist, established in 1888. Alumni and graduates were, if possible, even greater, including J.S. Woodsworth and Salem Bland.

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The University as One Might Like It

Recently the Catholic Church beatified Cardinal John Henry Newman, the famous 19^th century divine, the penultimate step in his becoming a saint. Newman was justly famous for his work The Idea of a University. Tom Axworthy, a noted alumnus of this university, tells of reading Newman in order to be better able to perform as a speech writer and adviser to Pierre Elliott Trudeau in the 1980s. Newman and Axworthy’s comments are very relevant in the ongoing debate about the purpose of a university:

“As I read  the Apologia and Idea of a University, I took three concepts out of Newman that I thought influenced Mr Trudeau and that, in retrospect, I think have some continuing validity. The first is …  that knowledge should not be examined as a series of specialties, but as a conceptual whole – that there is a unity in knowledge for which an educated person should strive … I remember meeting (Trudeau) and asking him what he had been reading lately. I was not exactly expecting the latest novelist, but was taken aback when he told me he was re-reading Marcel Proust’s A Remembrance of Things Past. The broadening aspect of knowledge was obviously something that attracted him.

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Follett to Close Canadian Office

By Daniel Draper, UWFA Administrative Assistant

Early this month, Follett – the company that now controls the UW Bookstore – announced that it would be closing its Ottawa offices and centralizing its operations in Oak Brook, Illinois. According to reports, Follett will be moving its trade book purchasing and sourcing to Illinois, while moving some of the other responsibilities to its bookstores in Canada.

The move to close the Canadian offices has caused serious concern for local publishers, including Wayne Antony of Fernwood Publishing. In a letter to Dr. Axworthy, he expressed concern that “only the largest national and international publishers will be able to effectively present their titles to the Follett buyer in Illinois. Local and Canadian publishers and authors have been, for the most part, shut out of the new U of W bookstore.”

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A Name is a Name is a Conundrum

By Tracy Whalen, UWFA Secretary

So much lies in a name. The typeface we know as Helvetica started life with the less striking—-and certainly less marketable—-Neue Haas Grotesk. Scientists have given us the Big Bang theory, Nemesis (or Death Star), and Black Hole, names that tap into human neuroses, love of cataclysm, and fascination with annihilation (at a distance, anyway). A form of argument about the value of a discovery, names can make a phenomenon worthy of notice. These values explain in part why we take such care in naming children and anything we hold dear.

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UW Returns to its Roots: An April Fools Joke

By Dr. Jim Clark, Psychology

In a surprise press release today (1 April 2010), U of W announced that it had decided to cut back on administration and return to the governance structure that existed 20 years ago. Administration made this unexpected given the opportunity provided by the exodus of the current VP Academic.

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Community Learning? The UWFA Executive Responds

Is “Community Learning,” as contemplated in President Axworthy’s recent position paper, a good thing for the University of Winnipeg?  The UWFA Executive is not yet convinced. The Association has responded to concerns the document raises in the domains of academic freedom, faculty workload, and Collective Agreement provisions. We also have commented on the implications for the funding of core academic operations of university fundraising for community activities. Concerns remain about process and about the need for academic review. The UWFA response is too lengthy for inclusion here, but members are urged to read Dr. Axworthy’s paper.

Then read UWFA’s response.

Still Waiting...

By Pauline Greenhill, Women’s and Gender Studies

Remember the administration’s request in March 2009 that UWFA members take days without pay?  (See article “Who is better at math? Lloyd or Pauline” in the last newsletter (www.uwfa.ca/may-uwfa-news). While the University of Winnipeg President suggested that the University of Winnipeg’s administration had shrunk since his arrival, their own administration charts clearly indicate that they had grown in number by over 50% since Axworthy took over, greatly outpacing faculty growth at just under 18% for the same period.

During that meeting, I asked him if he would provide the figures to support his contention.

Still waiting.