Strategic Vision 2030...how do we get there?

MacEwan’s Strategic Vision 2030 outlines a bold agenda.  Unprecedented growth. 30000 students. “Smashing the Calendar”. New initiatives like experiential learning and community engagement. Scholarly innovation that “pushes the envelope.” Yet at the same time, MacEwan is “not prepared to sacrifice our commitment to exceptional teaching” nor is the institution prepared to grow “just for the sake of growth”. How are these multifarious goals to be met? Strategic Vision 2030 envisions an institution “in perpetual motion”. Yet as the Laws of Thermodynamics tell us, perpetual motion is impossible without a corresponding expenditure of energy.  And faculty are already exhausted by increased class sizes, growing research expectations, a student mental health crisis, and ever-increasing administrative busywork. How can we be “best in kind” scholars and teachers, how can we develop truth and wisdom, how can MacEwan achieve the visions of “Teaching Greatness,” without the requisite empowerment of those tasked with delivering its agenda: MacEwan’s faculty?  Grand ambitions do not happen without trusting and believing in the people who will achieve them.

Over the past few months, GMUFA’s team have met with the Board of Governors’ team to begin collective bargaining and to therein provide thoughts about a way forward. GMUFA’s ultimate bargaining priorities, heard resoundingly from members, are to achieve fairer compensation and more sustainable workloads. But this work begins with laying out a vision of the university that recognizes us for what we are: an intellectual, self-governing community of scholars. 

GMUFA’s first significant proposal tabled new language revising Article 14 (Annual Reports). Responding to member feedback, a new system of performance evaluation proposes regular, timely, and (hopefully more) formative feedback for those that need and want it—including new, tenure-track faculty—while introducing a triennial system of reporting for seasoned experts whose resources are better spent on student learning and mentorship than on composing burgeoning annual reports at the start of Fall term in exchange for feedback that comes several months and many teaching hours later. The proposal simultaneously aims to find administrative efficiencies given that the Board’s team acknowledged the enormously time-consuming task that is annual report evaluation. Imagine what could come true if senior administrative resources were freed and repurposed to invest into the procurement of space and experiential opportunities and connections for our students.

The Board’s team agreed that 99% of faculty have been meeting, and in many cases exceeding, expectations in their roles. Yet with existing policies, it doesn’t always feel that way. Based on numerous member engagement exercises, it is clear that faculty often feel they are subject to unwarranted levels of monitoring and micromanagement. The Annual Report process is but one example. As an institution with bold ambitions, this begs the question of where finite resources are best directed. In other words, what is the right level of investment into management and oversight for all when only a tiny minority might need improvement? Alternatively, how might one instead empower the vast majority?  Should faculty—who have the highest credentials in their fields, who win national grants and inspire the next generation—be treated like wayward subordinates in need of “management,” or should they be recognized as pedagogical leaders and passionate scholars who only need time and resources to get on with their jobs? 

An analogy here might prove useful: think about traffic control and regulation. No jurisdiction puts stoplights at every intersection, even though accidents can happen anywhere. Instead, planners and analysts focus on complex or high-traffic areas, or places with a history of collisions, ensuring the system runs smoothly where it’s most needed. Selective use of traffic control exists because installation and operation is costly, and resources are limited. Similarly, subjecting every faculty member to exhaustive review is like putting stoplights on almost empty roads—it slows everyone down unnecessarily and consumes resources that are much better deployed elsewhere.

Currently, MacEwan requires all faculty to undergo an annual review process to ensure that each of the approximately 500 full-time continuing members are meeting the expectations of the university. How costly is this process?

• If each member spends one workday completing their annual report (and many of us are spending substantially more time on reporting), then faculty participation in the process consumes 500 working days (or 2.16 years).
• Annual reports are reviewed separately by both Chairs and Deans. If Chairs and Deans each spend two hours reviewing and commenting on the report, this would translate into a rate of about 4 per day. Accordingly, this two-stage review consumes a further 125 Chair workdays and 125 Decanal workdays (54% of a work year).
• Combining the above, the current system requires 750 working days, which is more than three years of full-time work (assuming 30 days annual vacation).
• The salary cost of faculty participation, based on Step 7 of the Assistant Professor grid, is $82,716 x 2.16 years, or $179,039.
• The Chair cost of participation, based on Step 12 of the Associate Professor grid and the Chair Stipend, is 54% of ($98,240 + $8,000), or $57,370. The Decanal cost of participation, based on the average of 2022/3 disclosed compensation values of $221,000, is 54% of that dollar value which equals $119,222.
• Additional costs such as benefits and pension contributions aren’t included above.

The answer: more than $350,000.

The current system consumes the equivalent of 3 full-time positions at academic salaries, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, in order to detect the roughly 1% or 4 or 5 members in any given year, who are not meeting expectations. That money could instead pay for 3 new Assistant Professors or Counsellors to invest in the student experience. It could fund at least 35 sessional course contracts to provide course releases or add capacity at a time of unprecedented growth. Or, it could fund 175 research dissemination grants.

Is this money we could use to help MacEwan reach its 2030 goals? Or are these funds better expended on requiring the 99% of faculty who meet expectations to write a lengthy, unpublished report with no impact beyond the institution each year? Many academic papers are 4000-6000 words, and annually our members produce on average at least half of that in their annual reports.

GMUFA sees considerable value in provisions that afford its members meaningful mentorship and feedback as they discharge their workload and aim to progress in their careers. Indeed, if members of the academy are repeatedly socialized to anything, it is that review and critical feedback is ever at the ready (thanks “Reviewer #2”). Arguments have been made at the negotiating table to evolve the annual performance evaluation system towards one that much more effectively provides time and resources for meaningful review and feedback to those who want and need it, but where the institution can more usefully deploy the resources currently attached to an indiscriminate screening process in search of very rare outcomes.

GMUFA awaits a counter proposal to draft language that was tabled October 4, 2024. In the intervening time, continued discussions on the matter have confirmed the Board of Governors’ does have interest in finding some efficiencies in a system that has been described at the table as absolutely not a means of surveillance but rather a process for detecting risks, issues, and/or those who are unsatisfactory. Further, the parties appear to share a belief that form follows function. Scrutinizing functions and empowering ones are quite different, of course, and would lead to the design of very different evaluative systems. Cycle of review is one aspect of form, but so is manner of collection and submission. The eCV form is clunky, time-consuming, and universally disliked by GMUFA members—and we have yet to hear any convincing rationale for maintaining. A simple Google or Microsoft form would be effective, efficient, and cost-neutral. GMUFA looks forward to hearing more about how the Board views faculty and their value at MacEwan as negotiations progress.