After approving the budget at its March meeting, university Senate addressed a proposal to alter the composition of the selection committee for what had been the vice-provost (academic programs and students) and registrar, and was now proposed to be the vice-provost (academic programs). The motion further proposed the establishment of a selection committee to appoint a registrar.
This motion was the only outward sign of a radical reorganization of the portfolio of the vice-provost, John Doerksen. It correctly reinstated the job of the registrar as a separate position, with a vote on Senate, as required by the UWO Act, a job that had been folded into the vice-provost’s already overburdened portfolio about 15 years ago without much reason.
This decision makes good sense.
The further decision, to be inferred from the motion changing the composition of the selection committee for the vice-provost and guessed at from the brief background provided, to split the vice-provost’s remaining portfolio into two jobs, might also make sense. The only public comment as to what the second job entails had come in an editorial from then University Students’ Council (USC) President Pat Whelan, lauding the new job as a position that “will be a natural partner to the USC.” The provost spoke briefly to this job at Senate.
So why am I not yet applauding?
As a senator, it is my responsibility to keep academic matters transparent and obvious in the purview of Senate. Moreover, I take academic matters as a broad remit. Senate may well not act often on the issues that emerge, but it should see them.
In this case, as a senator, I have to engage in guesswork to figure out what the new job entails.
Doerksen continues as vice-provost (academic programs), and the job description is provided for his portfolio: supervision of the Office of the Registrar, undergraduate academic programs, dealing with the government and its grasping desire for yet more and more detailed reports, and handling various elements of the student learning experience (especially e-learning). Whelan also believes that this job will focus greatly on teaching support and tech-enabled learning.
The new portfolio, one step down from Doerksen, but appointed solely by and reporting directly to the provost, is the associate vice-president (student experience).
There are many killingly funny comments for others to make about how the “student experience” has now been enshrined at Western. My concern is what the portfolio entails and why it no longer answers to Senate through Senate’s Appointment Procedures for Senior Academic and Administrative Officers of the University.
To figure that out, I have at hand the published comments from Whelan, a report in Western News from April 3, my own dim memories of what should be in the portfolio, and many hours searching on the university website. These sources tell me collectively the new associate vice-president oversees student counselling and career services, students with disabilities, student discipline issues and the office for aboriginal students. I can’t figure out if student academic offences and appeals fall under this portfolio or not; I suspect that dealing with Orientation in September does.
I would certainly have expected student health services to be in this portfolio, especially given Whelan’s comments on this point, but it appears this is not the case. Both student health services (presumably including the important issue of mental health services) and the Office of the Ombudsperson appear on the university website as now being under the purview of the vice-president (resources and operations), and explicitly not part of the Office of the Provost.
It would appear, then, the “out-of-the-classroom” portfolio somewhat connects to what at our comparator institutions is more or less the role of the Dean of Students; at Western that job garners a more senior title. Does it have more senior responsibilities? Perhaps, but I don’t think so.
I know this is a comment on a matter of procedure, and most of the campus finds procedure as boring as the coffee lineups in September. Until a few years ago, the annual report of the ombudsperson appeared as an adjunct to Western News, and it provided a clear picture of student complaints and concerns.
Probably, deans and administrators loathed it.
Three years ago, the report (much shorter and later) was to be found online. Last year, according to the ombuds office, technological issues precluded posting the 2011-12 report to the web. That report is now posted, along with the 2012-13 report, at https://www.uwo.ca/ombuds/reports/reports.html.
These reports don’t provide me with the level of detail and reflection that I recall from the past. Can I ask a question about this? Probably. Can I propose a motion to reinstate a published report? Probably not.
The reconstruction of the vice-provost’s portfolio appears to have involved some items remaining with Doerksen, some items now under the administration of the acting associate vice-president, Angie Mandich, the Office of the Registrar now under the leadership of Glen Tigert, and some items disappearing to other portfolios altogether. It remains my belief Senate should have seen a much clearer picture of these changes, and should continue to have a much stronger involvement in these matters.
The USC may well be thrilled to have a natural partner for its operations; as a senator, I am less thrilled, partly because it has taken so much effort just to figure out what should be fairly straightforward issues of who will be doing what. I don’t approve of how difficult that job was.
On a lighter note, I have run a count of all our vice-provosts and associate vice-presidents, as best I can decode the situation. We seem to have 14. We also have one vice-provost and vice-president. Good luck replicating my work. Western now has vices enow, methinks.
M.J. Toswell is a professor in the Department of English and Writing Studies in the Faculty of Arts & Humanities.