Posts from March 2017

On Thursday, March 16, members of the Windsor University Faculty Association (WUFA) gathered at Windsor’s historic Walkerville Brewery to enjoy a night of great music, refreshing drinks, and engaging conversation. The evening brought together tenured and contract faculty from across the university. It provided an opportunity for faculty to get to know each other, develop […]

Download a pdf of this document. It is a common practice at universities to have students complete end-of-term questionnaires about their courses and instructors. Sometimes called student evaluations of teaching (SETs) or student questionnaires on courses and teaching (SQCTs), these are often used to make decisions about faculty tenure and promotion without an appreciation of their limitations. These questionnaires could be […]

On March 3 and 4, OCUFA co-sponsored and attended a national conference on university governance hosted by the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of British Columbia (CUFA BC). The event, “University Governance in the 21st Century: Meeting the Challenges of Openness, Accountability, and Democracy,” sparked important exchanges between faculty, staff, and university administrators about policy challenges […]

On Friday, March 10, more than 100 faculty members at Western University came together for a solidarity lunch hosted by the University of Western Ontario Faculty Association’s contract faculty committee. Supported by OCUFA, the lunch was a unique and creative event that provided an opportunity to build solidarity leading up to bargaining in 2018. At […]

Are books a condition of our labour? Do we need libraries with stacks and physical collections? Recent discussions within libraries across the country have highlighted faculty anxiety and displeasure with the fate of university libraries, as cuts are made to purchasing and operating budgets, collections culled, and the very nature of acquisitions transformed by changes […]

The opportunity for improvements to labour law presented by the provincial government’s ongoing Changing Workplaces Review is bringing university workers together. Faculty are advocating for equal pay and access to benefits for contract workers , food service workers are fighting for a $15 minimum wage , and custodial staff want an end to the contracting out and contract flipping that erodes their working […]

On Wednesday, March 1, university faculty from across Ontario gathered in Toronto to participate in a day of advocacy at the Ontario Legislature. Twenty-three faculty ambassadors spent the day meeting with over 35 Members of Provincial Parliament who have universities in their region. These included the Minister of Advanced Education and Skills Development Deb Matthews, […]

The Algoma University Faculty Association has reached a tentative agreement with the university on behalf of its contract faculty. This good news comes after months of bargaining and just days before the union would have been in a legal position to strike. The agreement is the result of a principled position at the bargaining table […]