Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA)
17 Isabella St. M4Y1M7 Toronto, ON, Canada

***Deadline is May 28, 2021.*** Reminder: 2020-2021 Annual OCUFA Teaching and Academic Librarianship Awards Call for Submissions

"The news was shocking not just for the magnitude of the cuts, but because midwifery at Laurentian was always operating at capacity and was funded by $1 million annually from the provincial government. According to faculty, students and graduates, the program is also key to ensuring the delivery of essential health-care services in an area of the province that’s often overlooked. Most of the midwives practicing in northern Ontario are from the region and attended Laurentian, says Kirsty Bourret, a former faculty member."

In a letter to the president of OCAD University, OCUFA has condemned the university’s termination of four senior librarians and two other library positions. OCUFA President Rahul Sapra described the important role played by university librarians at Ontario universities and urged OCADU’s administration to reinstate all six positions and rehire the librarians whose jobs were eliminated.

"How can an Ontario university, under the governance of your minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, declare bankruptcy as if it is a private corporation? Surely, senior officials of the responsible ministry were/are in constant communication with all of Ontario’s colleges and universities. Surely, they must have been aware of the financial status and challenges faced by Laurentian? As deficits generally tend to accumulate, would your minister not have been apprised of the situation by the governing body? So, what’s the game plan, Premier? The ball is in your court. Will you assume responsibility for post-secondary education in Ontario?"

On June 26, join OCUFA and the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) for the province-wide virtual Education Assembly to discuss what Ontarians need from our education systems during COVID-19 and beyond.

"In the midst of a pandemic and associated move to mass online learning, criticality, let alone critical or radical pedagogy, is at risk within the neoliberal university"

In response to the events unfolding at Laurentian University, OCUFA’s Grievance Committee passed the following motion of solidarity while calling on the Ontario government to provide immediate funding to the university. Read the motion: https://ocufa.on.ca//ocufa-grievance-committee-stands-in-/

"The imminent question is, what can post-secondary institutions do to mitigate the harms caused by deficits in real inclusion for racialized, Indigenous and Black students? Such problem-solving must not just happen as a short-term COVID response; rather, this inflection point in history should be taken as an opportunity to make sustainable, systemic transformations."

"Dans le cadre du processus de restructuration financière de l'Université Laurentienne où l'on craint la compression de certains cours et programmes, nous donno...ns la parole à une dizaine de professeurs. Ces représentants de différents départements francophones partageront l'importance de leur programme et leurs histoires à succès" .#HumansofLU #FundLU #FinancerULaurentienne #LesGensULaurentienne

Laurentian University is a cornerstone of Northern Ontario, West told MPPs. While everyone in Sudbury was shocked by the decision of Laurentian’s administrat...ion to seek creditor protection (under the federal Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act), this government and the ministry clearly knew what was happening and allowed it to happen." Maybe it’s because they knew their $700 million in cuts to universities only made things worse. The minister (Ross Romano) said he knew six months ago about the financial problems of Laurentian. Why did he do nothing? https://www.thesudburystar.com//sudbury-will-lose-hundreds

"The wounds these impending cuts would cause to our local Indigenous and francophone communities are difficult to overstate. Both Minister Romano and Minister of Francophone Affairs Caroline Mulroney have refused to meet with us. We feel we have been abandoned by the Ontario government."

[From the new issue!] "Facing a global health pandemic and an uncooperative administration, the King’s University College Faculty Association decided it was time to unionize. Now they’re stronger than ever."

"As universities have confronted and attempted to adapt to the demands being made by Black members of the academic community, there is an opportunity for real c...hange. Universities can lift up Black faculty, staff, and students by unlearning the ways that they, as Eurocentric institutions, have contributed to anti-Blackness and by giving Black members of the academic community influence and power in the decision-making process." See more

"she hopes the pandemic will shed light on this paradox: How can colleges continue with the same approach to work and still think of themselves as ethical? 'I just don’t see how we can,' she said."

"Ontario’s adoption of the IHRA definition leaves academics and students vulnerable. Enacting laws or adopting statements that potentially criminalize criticism... of state violence and racism subverts the struggles of marginalized communities seeking social justice. These decisions set a dangerous precedent." See more

"The COVID crisis has exposed the destructive consequences of an over-reliance on casual labour across the economy. Australian universities provide one of the c...learest examples of this. For the past two decades, universities have leaned into international student fees on the revenue side and casual workers on the expense side. This approach effectively shifted the risks of the international student fee market onto insecurely employed staff with few entitlements or employment rights. Since the pandemic caused international student fee revenue to dry up, thousands of casual university staff have lost their jobs."

Congratulations to William Cluett, a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry at the University of Toronto and member of the University of Toronto Faculty Association , on winning a 2020 OCUFA Teaching Award! (cc: University of Toronto Engineering)

"it wouldn’t be Proctorio’s first attempt to hush its opposition. This past March, as Motherboard also reported, the company asked the journal Hybrid Pedagogy to retract a peer-reviewed article warning educators that algorithmic proctoring tools could be discriminatory"

A warm welcome to Jenny Ahn, who has been hired as next Executive Director of OCUFA!

Why is the Ontario government trying to discreetly pass legislation to allow the Canada Christian College to award degrees? Bigotry has no place in postsecondary education. Read our letter of concern sent to Minister of College and Universities Ross Romano:

Congratulations to Joel Faflak, a professor in the Department of English and Writing Studies at Western University and member of the University of Western Ontario Faculty Association (UWOFA), on winning at 2020 OCUFA Teaching Award!

Read the final part in Dianne Conrad's enlightening series about online education.

Congratulations to Kim Hellemans, an instructor and Chair of the Department of Neuroscience, Carleton University at Carleton University (Official) and member of the Carleton University Academic Staff Association, on winning a 2020 OCUFA Teaching Award!

"COVID is the great 'truth-teller,' exposing the structural inequalities and systemic racism that have been with us the whole time. If we want to build sustainable, safe and sane spaces, we must confront the underlying causes of our imbalance; we can only do so if we make spaces for truth-tellers to challenge hegemonic assumptions without fear of reprisal."

"In recent years there has been mounting evidence of the dubious validity and inherent bias in student questionnaires on courses and teaching (SQCTs), sometimes also known as student evaluations of teaching (SETs). In 2018, OCUFA supported a study of the implications of open-ended student comments in these questionnaires and how they might affect faculty mental health, wellbeing, professional self-esteem, and pedagogical practise. Also supported by the Canadian Sociological A...ssociation (CSA), the results have been published in a new report. Among other results, Rachel La Touche, Lisa Kowalchuk, and Rochelle Wijesingha found that faculty from equity-seeking groups are more likely to receive comments that are pedagogically irrelevant, and are more frequently subjected to comments that are hostile or abusive. The negative impact on well-being is also higher for women and racialized faculty members. Negative professional self-esteem is also experienced at a greater rate by contract faculty." See more

Congratulations to Shoshanah Jacobs, an associate professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Guelph and member of the University of Guelph Faculty Association, on winning a 2020 OCUFA Teaching Award!

Congratulations to Aaron Langille, a master lecturer in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Laurentian University - Université Laurentienne and member of the Laurentian University Faculty Association, on winning a 2020 OCUFA Teaching Award!

"As our society endures a second wave of COVID-19, now is the time to take stock of what is important for our collective future. With little fanfare, our public...ly funded postsecondary education system has been eroded over time, diminishing the promise it once held. We should demand change." See more

Solidarity with the hardworking support staff at the University of Ottawa!

"we offer practical short-term and long-term action for faculty and administrators who desire to respond to the clarion call of the Black Lives Matter movement to stop police brutality in our cities/on our campuses as well as to tear down statues and statutes that perpetuate a culture of white dominance and deny wealth-/power-sharing opportunities, respectively."

"Freire would have criticized the online education model that has disfigured the labor of teachers. In the virtual classroom, an instructor’s job becomes more r...outinized and disembodied than before. Teachers are increasingly expected to function as technological mediators instead of critical mentors." See more

"Most of all, the controversy has directly impacted students of the already under-resourced [University of Toronto] human rights program who worry about what it means for their advocacy work that affects Canadians and people around the world."

"From the first rumblings of its spread, COVID-19’s impact on women academics was immediate. In a sign of the gendered nature of the pandemic’s impacts, men’s r...esearch submissions to academic journals almost instantly increased by 50%, single-author articles by women dropped. The structure of labour and reward at universities has long followed gendered lines. During the pandemic, these lines have become more entrenched."

"Among its findings, [the report] shows that an overwhelming 88 per cent of faculty association respondents considered their institution’s pandemic response to be top-down in nature. Further, at institutions where a COVID-19 task force or committee was created, in 73 per cent of cases, these bodies did not include any faculty or student representatives."

"Sidelining the work of Black and Indigenous academics does more than limit academic research and social advancement. I ask Trotz what she thinks we lose when only a narrow subset of ideas and topics are seen as worthy, or when we ask questions about only particular segments of our society. Her answer is simple and immediate: 'Everything.'"

OCUFA Report - Brescia Faculty Association agreement delivers big win for contract faculty and, in case you missed it, watch the recording of Combatting anti-Black racism in the academy - https://mailchi.mp/ocufa/ocufa-report-3177988