Senate Roundup, September 2015

The UBC Vancouver Senate will be holding their September meeting this Wednesday. Here’s a rundown of some notable items on the Agenda ^[1]. Overall, this a pretty dry agenda even for Senate.

New members of Senate

Arvind Gupta’s out, so Martha Piper’s in as the new Chair of Senate. David Farrar’s also out as Provost, so Anji Redish is there instead. The deans of Law and Medicine also turned over.

There are two vacancies for faculty members – one from Law and one from Land and Food Systems so get in there, profs in those faculties.

New Programs

If you didn’t know what to do with your future because there did not exist programs that would allow you to become a Master of Geomatics for Environmental Management or a Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) in Reading Education, you will soon be in luck because those exact programs are being started!

Why Senate is Boring

There are 21 pages full of seemingly minor wording changes to a variety of scholarships.

Broader-based admissions for the MD program

“In order to make the study of medicine more open, to enhance diversity within the program and remove barriers to the study of medicine, the science pre-requisites [for admission to the MD program] have been removed and will instead be strongly recommended. Removal of the science pre-requisites will allow applicants from a nontraditional background the opportunity to study Medicine.”

Aboriginal Recruitment through Colleges

To bolster UBC’s recruitment of Aboriginal students, they want to sign a Collaboration Agreement with Langara to better serve Aboriginal students starting their post-secondary education at Langara then transferring to UBC.

So, uh, we kinda need a new president.

The Terms of Reference for the Search Committee to identify the next UBC President are being presented to Senate. It will have 21 members who will be appointed by a wide variety of groups on campus. The committee’s size, composition, and mandate is basically identical to the process that chose Gupta.

Exam Prep Database

Someone from the AMS will be presenting to Senate about the Exam Prep Database ^[2], which is an official collection of past exams and midterms to help students prepare themselves for exams and midterms. Since the database works on the model of instructors being the only ones able to upload content, it looks like the big challenge currently being faced is convincing instructors to upload content.