What Questions Do You Ask a Board or Senate Candidate?

This post is written by guest writer Sean Heisler who is currently serving his second term on the Board of Governors, and his third on Senate with the position of Senate Vice-Chair in the most recent one. This is the prelude post to a more in-depth analysis of each race, along with endorsements!

This is a puzzle no doubt, but here’s what I came up with (replace the _____ with “the Board” or “Senate” respectively):

1. What one experience of yours will prepare you most for _____?
2. What current weakness would require the most growth to be optimally effective on the Board?
3. How does work get done on _____?
4. What are the two most critical resolutions passed in the past year on _____ and why?
5. What was the most critical discussion in the past year on ____ and why?
6. How do the commitments, goals and actions in UBC’s strategic plan relate to your campaign goals, and how will you leverage them on _______ ?
7. Allies are critical to achieving any initiative on a governing body of UBC. Which relationships on ______ will you leverage, and to what end? Why those people?

Now I fully expect that these may seem like a bit of a strange jumble of questions, so I’ll go through and break down the intent behind each of them individually.

1. What one experience of yours will prepare you most for _____?

To be honest, I don’t really care about the answer to this question from a technical or competency level. The main purpose here is to pitch something that the candidates should all have an answer to, and to provide some context to all the future answers – get an indication of the lenses or biases that may be present. It would be hard to fault any candidate for an answer here, and as many pointed out, no one experience could make anyone fully prepared, we are all a combination of tonnes of experiences.

2. What current weakness would require the most growth to be optimally effective on the Board?

I have a lot of respect for people who know their own weaknesses well, and any candidate who would be elected I would want to be consciously focussing on breaking through their largest barriers, so I tried to start that process now. Half answers are common to questions like these, expressing weaknesses that are already mitigated, or ones that realistically don’t impact the job much.

3. How does work get done on _____?

This should seem like an easy answer to many of the hacks, however in past years the number of candidates who didn’t fully understand the body they were running to be elected to was astounding. Most candidates did quite well here, highlighting the committee structure (one that is actually enforced and followed, unlike the current AMS model) that is paramount to both bodies. Many also noted that much of the Board discussions happen “behind closed doors” often because of the privacy and reputation concerns around the topics. It was also often noted that Senate is slow – which is really irrefutable. I can’t say I was looking for much more than that in this one, so brava to candidates!

4. What are the two most critical resolutions passed in the past year on _____ and why?
5. What was the most critical discussion in the past year on ____ and why?

Both of these questions are looking for the same thing. Read some of the Board or Senate minutes and pick out what you believe to be important. Again, it is difficult to categorically say which were the most important, but seeing the diversity of opinions across the candidates was a good way to differentiate them.

6. How do the commitments, goals and actions in UBC’s strategic plan relate to your campaign goals, and how will you leverage them on _______ ?

One of the two meanest questions in the set, and one that tripped up a number of candidates. To those who don’t sleep with a copy of Place and Promise (UBC’s Strategic Plan) under your pillow like I do, in that plan there are a series of statements called Commitments, Goals, and Actions. You can even see them all here: http://strategicplan.ubc.ca/the-plan/commitments/
UBC sticks to this plan quite intensely, and quite bluntly aligning initiatives with it is one of the best ways to get the first steps accomplished. So fundamentally all I wanted here was for each candidate to find, and head to that website, take a read through the language that is defining UBC, and place their campaign topics alongside UBC’s promises. Some did, some didn’t – any candidate that didn’t think to do this still should regardless!

7. Allies are critical to achieving any initiative on a governing body of UBC. Which relationships on ______ will you leverage, and to what end? Why those people?

And this question takes the cake for the meanest, and the question that received the most criticism. Comments like “I personally believe this question is entirely misguided” and “I challenge the fairness of this question” were both received, so I’ll dive into what I was looking for here more in depth for each body.
As only one member of a governing body it is extraordinarily difficult or even impossible to accomplish something by yourself. When considering how to implement a campaign promise one of the first steps is to target who you believe you’ll need to have a conversation with to help support those. That’s leveraging a relationship, and while it doesn’t always work it is in my experience by far the most effective way to get started.
On either body one of the easiest answers would be to target the committee chair of the group that would look over an initiative. For example, a push for a review of exam policy would need to have some level of support for discussion from the chairs of Senate’s Academic Policy and Teaching and Learning committees. At the Board level it doesn’t operate any differently.
Another option for a strong answer would be to highlight the institutional memory that exists in the Secretariats for both bodies. Chris Eaton (Senate) and Reny Kahlon (Board) both are absolutely critical to talk to about whatever plans may be afoot – their feedback and info will become a part of the conversation regardless and directly approaching these wealths of knowledge upfront is magnitudes more effective.
The last area that I was most hopeful to see candidates speak to (though I didn’t expect it to happen) was to look through minutes or pull from conversations with current student representatives and mention members of the bodies and some of the items they have become known for on the different bodies. On Senate, these could’ve included the Math faculty Senators who have historically been very supportive of student initiatives, Ken Baimbridge who has gone out of his way to accommodate student senators (and the chair of Teaching and Learning), or the convocation senators, three of which are currently employed outside of Senate in support of students (two in Student Development and one in Alumni Affaires focussing on Students and Young Alumni).

Hopefully that breaks down of the rationale behind the questions will be of some use to the candidates to struggled through the questionnaire, and also useful to interested readers or future candidates to help better understand some of the critical points to consider when voting. Endorsements for Board and Senate will be coming in the next two days!