Biology professor Barb Moffatt helps a young visitor look through a microscope in the “plants rock” room at the annual science open house event, held Saturday. Elsewhere in the CEIT building, youngsters explored the inner working of a giant cell, and went home with “incredible edible cell kits” including candy and instructions on how to make your own cell.

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Town hall talks of staff pay — and parking

Some 450 people turned out yesterday afternoon for the latest twice-yearly “town hall meeting” with the university’s top officials — this one a debut for Geoff McBoyle, who became provost a month ago, and the first appearance for Feridun Hamdullahpur as president after two such meetings as provost in 2009-10.

“You didn’t have to be here, but you chose to be here,” Hamdullahpur said in thanking his audience of staff and faculty members in the Humanities Theatre. Like previous town hall events, yesterday’s was chaired by vice-president (external relations) Meg Beckel, and like previous meetings it was a mixture of general remarks from the top executives and answers to audience questions. Scan the Twitter live feed.

It wouldn’t be a town hall meeting without some discussion of parking, but the issues raised in the 90-minute event ranged from the number of women faculty members and the shortage of classroom space to whether a University of Waterloo sign will ever sprout on the Pharmacy building in downtown Kitchener. (“Yes, hopefully soon,” said the president. “We have a beautiful building and we’re proud of our school of pharmacy.”)

Hamdullahpur also made one new public commitment, in answer to a question about whether the recent five-year salary settlement for faculty members, with annual scale increases of 0, 0, 3, 3 and 3 per cent, will be a precedent for the staff group. Yes, he said, the university will offer the same deal to negotiators for the staff, “if that’s what they wish.”

He was also asked whether he can guarantee that there will be no job losses for staff members. “We are committed for two years,” he said. “Beyond that, we cannot be certain.”

A looming issue for this university and others, he said, is the prospect that the federal government will start to reduce its transfer payments to the provinces, which are a major source of the money Ontario spends on post-secondary education. Everyone is aware, he noted, of “the horrible experiences some of the US universities are going through”, not to mention major grant cuts faced by universities in Britain. “There are some external factors that we have no control over,” he said.

However, the president declared, Waterloo is on a roll just now, with “tremendous momentum” after a year of achievements. Referring to the Sixth Decade Plan (“I think everybody in this room has heard of it at least two hundred times”) he called it “well thought out and designed” and said the challenge now is working out the details to get to its ambitious goals.

For example, the percentage of graduate students who come from outside Canada is already close to the 30 per cent target the plan sets for 2017, but the percentage of undergraduates who are international students is only about half of the 20 per cent goal.

• One of the questions for the president and provost, submitted by e-mail ahead of time, asked whether it would be possible to pay faculty and staff members twice a month instead of monthly. “We did a study of this about four years ago,” McBoyle told the meeting, adding that it’s estimated the loss to the university would be $250,000 a year in foregone interest, with government tax collectors the main beneficiaries.

• “Facilities need to be improved,” the provost acknowledged in answer to a question about a shortage of good classroom space. Rooms are being included in new buildings as they’re erected, he pointed out, and he added an announcement that the university is now budgeting $350,000 a year for renovations to existing classrooms.

• The executives were also asked about residence and athletic space for student use. McBoyle acknowledged that “we have an issue” with the policy of guaranteeing residence rooms to first-year students, sometimes at the expense of those in upper years. A long-term plan for residence renovations is under way, he said. Similarly, athletics director Bob Copeland, called up to the microphone, told the meeting that “a facilities master plan” is being developed because “we definitely are falling behind.”

The main parking question was about its price, which went up again this fall although many staff members didn’t see much in the way of pay increases. It’s a matter of economics, Hamdullahpur said: “Parking has a direct cost implication,” and if the money didn’t come from users it would have to come from the university’s budget at the expense of something else. “Our parking,” he added, “is a lot lower than it is at many other institutions.”

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Student success, and the need for faculty

Much of the discussion at yesterday’s town hall meeting was — as announced beforehand — about “student success” and the role of staff and faculty members in seeing that students get the most out of their university years.

Hamdullahpur said the things that make a difference to students are by no means all in the classroom. He cited one example: the care with which staff from the registrar’s office, plant operations and other departments operated last week’s Convocation ceremonies, even taking care to line up the chairs in patterns so that each individual would have a good view of the stage. “They thought of the students, they thought of the parents,” he said, acknowledging work that goes far beyond the minimum requirements of the job.

“Students will continue to be the focus of this administration, this university,” said the president. “We are making a difference in the lives of our students.”

He said too few students seem to know about sports events, arts activities, lectures and conferences, and he’d like to increase involvement by students and also by faculty and staff members. “I will be there personally,” promised the president, known as a sports fan in particular.

One goal of the “student success” efforts that the university is now launching, said Hamdullahpur, is to improve the retention rate — the number of students who, having started at Waterloo, continue in their programs. Some other universities are doing notably better, he said, declaring one “quantifiable” goal, a reduction of one percentage point a year, for the next several years, in the fraction of students who drop out after first year.

One of the questions submitted ahead of time dealt with programs and staff that already exist in some of the university’s faculties, aimed at meeting student needs of various kinds. How, the questioner asked, will the “student success” effort be linked with those? “We hope to expand them,” said McBoyle, “and scale them up to the university-wide level.”

The president added: “I don’t see any distinction between faculty and staff in terms of student success. Everybody has an important role to play.”

During the meeting itself, someone asked whether the university can improve student advising and the way it helps students. There’s a vast amount to be done, McBoyle said, and the starting point is programs for newly arriving students and students who are “at risk” academically, with changes gradually affecting services for other students.

While topics of that kind took the largest share of yesterday’s meeting, the subject of “excellence in research and scholarship” was also on the agenda, and McBoyle gave the audience a rundown of Waterloo’s ranking among international universities and the kinds of indicators, such as research grants, that lie behind it.

“We need to hire to maintain UW’s position,” the provost said, declaring that advertising for some 50 faculty jobs will be going into the world this winter. Take a look at University Affairs magazine, which is action central for academic recruiting in Canada, he suggested: by far the largest number of ads come from Waterloo. Indeed, said McBoyle, in the current economic crisis, there are only two North American universities that are replacing as many as 50 per cent of the professors who retire or leave, and one of them is Waterloo (the other is Michigan). He said he hopes to get that number up to 70 per cent in the current year.

CAR

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