On Wednesday night, the Senate met to discuss the UBC Strategic Plan refresh, the annual report on review of academic units and to approve various motions.
Here’s what you might have missed.
Update on UBC’s strategic plan refresh
President Benoit-Antoine Bacon provided an update on UBC’s strategic plan refresh.
According to Bacon, UBC gathered over 5,900 data points through a variety of community engagement activities, workshops, pop ups, targeted engagement sessions and survey emails for the first phase of the plan.
“I understand that at this time 16 emerging themes have been identified [from these data points]. These 16 themes are grounded in community voices. They provide a foundation for envisioning the kind of university we will strive to be over the next 25 years,” he said.
“What we're hoping to do now is refresh the plan, and in particular, define a series of priorities or aims for the next three to five years that can be implemented largely focused on our academic and research mission,” Bacon added.
Various motions pass
The Admissions Committee moved a motion to approve a revised calendar entry for the Faculty of Medicine Undergraduate Distributed Program for the 2025 winter session and thereafter. Senator and chair Joanne Fox said the motion is to approve clarity about the distributed nature of the MD program.
“What we are proposing with this calendar change is that students are admitted directly into geographic learning communities ... where they will do the majority of their training in a geographically distinct learning community so they can build relationships with peers, faculty and community,” said Cary Cuncic, the regional associate dean of Vancouver Fraser.
“What we mean by learning community [is] we are roughly dividing the Vancouver Fraser site into geographically based learning communities,” she added.
The Nominating Committee also moved a motion to amalgamate the Academic Building Responsibilities with Budget Sub-Committee.
“We had ... a previous external review that brought up that we would effectively recommend the merging of these committees ... [and] this reflects the practice as seen on the Okanagan campus and effectively reflects discussions that have been happening by committees” said Chair of the committee Ben Britton.
Senator Paul Harrison moved a motion to postpone further discussion on forming an Ad Hoc Committee on institutional neutrality until the March meeting, citing incomplete consultations and insufficient background information provided to senators for making an informed decision.
All three motions were approved.
Senators discuss the annual report on Reviews of Academic Units
Provost Gage Averill presented a report on reviews of academic units and Senator HsingChi von Bergmann raised concerns about the decline in the number of PhD students in the Faculty of Education and asked about UBC's plans to address the issue.
Averill said many faculties rely on a shared pool of funds, which did not see significant growth during the period when the funding guarantee to PhD students was increased.
“The overall goal is to increase over the next few years the amount of funds available in general for graduate funding. This is a major commitment of ours as we move forward on the strategic plan,” he added.
Faculty of Post-Doctoral Studies Dean Micheal Hunt said they needed to do a better job of advertising the funding available but all information regarding funding was available online
“We have all of the data for every individual graduate program on our graduate website ... all of that information is transparently online. We do need to do a better job of advertising that,” he said.
Britton said some commitments outlined in the review might be constrained by new financial pressures and asked whether all proposed commitments could still be fulfilled.
In response, Averill said there might be a slight pullback on commitments.
“We are in tighter financial conditions this year and we will be likely making some tough decisions. There will probably be a little bit of pullback from some of those commitments as a result,” said Averill.
Share this article
First online
