Contact your UW Senator today.
The Senate Graduate & Research Council has proposed removing the right of teaching stream faculty to sole-supervise graduate students (see p.218). This motion will be ‘debated’ at the upcoming Senate meeting on April 8th, 2024. Lecturers have no representation on the Senate Graduate & Research Council which is comprised of 74% administrators and six graduate students.
The proposed change seems oblivious to the fact that 15% of lecturers currently have research/scholarship as part of their contract weighting while even more of us are engaged in research even if it is not part of our contract. This change follows efforts by the administration during Policy 76/77 negotiations to separate research and teaching duties in new teaching stream contracts, even while making scholarship an increasing requirement for evaluation and promotion.
Below is a letter by UW Senate member James Nugent requesting the motion be rescinded so there can be proper consultation with teaching stream faculty. Please contact your UW Senator today to voice your opposition to this motion. …
April 2, 2024
Dear Jeff Casello, Charmaine Dean, and the Senate Graduate & Research Council:
I am writing to you as a member of UW Senate.
I have finished reviewing your proposed agenda item 9(c) for the upcoming Senate meeting on April 8th (Report – Senate Graduate & Research Council: Regulation Revisions - Approved Doctoral Dissertation Supervisors). The proposal will create three tiers of Sole-Supervisory Privilege Status, or SSPS, governing the supervision of both master’s and PhD students: no SSPS, SSPS level 1, and SSPS level 2. I have several concerns about this proposal and would request it return to SGRC following more extensive consultation with teaching stream faculty.
We can all appreciate the desire to ensure that graduate supervisors are well-trained and well-suited to undertake this vital role. Nevertheless, the rationale you have provided for these changes as part of your motion in the Senate agenda package (p.63-64) is left wanting, and fails to consider the negative effect this policy change would have for teaching stream faculty and the university more generally. The current ADDS policy already stipulates a number of requirements before a faculty member can sole-supervise a PhD student (e.g., hold a PhD, demonstrate scholarly competence, successful supervision of at least one master’s thesis; etc.). Teaching stream faculty (i.e., lecturers) cannot currently sole-supervise PhD students according to policy.
The current ADDS policy does not cover supervision of master’s students, and teaching stream faculty have long been successfully supervising master’s students, and some have been co-supervising or (despite the policy) sole-supervising PhD students.
The first stated rationale for the proposed policy change is that “the university had no oversight on the sole-supervision of Master’s students which motivates the creation of the disaggregate permission structure.” This is not by itself a strong rationale, because it argues circuitously that the new regulation is required simply because no regulation existed. While I appreciate everyone’s concern for ensuring that a framework of effective supervision for all graduate students exists, in fact, these guidelines do already exist and already cover master’s student supervision—see Roles and responsibilities of supervisors. As far as I am aware, there has been no report or analysis done to examine whether there are any problems with the current system of master’s supervision, and the supervision undertaken by teaching stream faculty in particular; at least no study is mentioned in the rationale or governance path.
The second rationale given for the new policy is that having a category of faculty who do not have permission to supervise graduate students “is necessary because if a faculty colleague has their SSPS2 revoked, and are therefore without SSPS, they may be permitted to work towards regaining SSPS2 status by co-supervising.” While I appreciate this scenario, it does not justify excluding teaching stream from having SSPS. We could create a simple policy line that, e.g., requires a faculty member who had their supervisory privilege revoked to get permission from the Associate Dean Graduate Studies to supervise again.
A major problem with the proposed changes to the policy is that it assumes that teaching stream faculty are not well-suited to supervising master’s students (hence, “Teaching stream Faculty may not normally sole-supervise Master’s students”). This will come as a shock to lecturers who for years have been supervising master’s students with great success under the current policy. The proposed policy change would grant immediate eligibility for newly hired assistant professors in the tenure stream to sole-supervise master’s students (granting them “SPSS1”). At the same time, it assumes that professors in the teaching stream are unqualified or less qualified to supervise graduate students. This assumption is problematic for the following reasons:
a) as mentioned, teaching stream faculty (lecturers) have long been supervising master’s students and, in some cases, PhD students; there is no apparent report/analysis that raises any concerns with the quality of this supervision;
b) indeed, teaching stream faculty may supervise fewer graduate students which could potentially allow them to have more time to spend with each of their students;
c) graduate supervision is considered as much a teaching activity as it is a research activity; teaching stream faculty are hired because they have an explicit concern and enthusiasm for pedagogy which can be especially beneficial when training young scholars such as master’s students;
d) incoming assistant professors hired into the tenure and teaching streams both have the same core qualification at the time of hire --i.e., a PhD; this is especially true in today’s competitive academic job market where to secure a teaching stream position candidates require a terminal degree as well as demonstrated excellence in both research and teaching;
e) workload is a serious concern for all faculty, and a common concern for graduate students and faculty alike is that supervisors have sufficient time to spend training their graduate students; policy language should be encouraging and enabling of teaching stream faculty to supervise master’s students to release some of the workload burden facing tenure stream in terms of graduate supervision;
f) we just concluded nine years of negotiations on Policy 76/77 between the administration and FAUW which culminated in a desire to create greater equality between tenure and new “permanent” teaching streams; the language of this proposed policy change goes in the opposite direction.
It is patronizing to see that teaching stream faculty (which will now include the rank as high as full professor), would only be automatically granted the right to co-supervise a master’s student with the support of another faculty member in the tenure stream. While the policy does allow teaching stream faculty to get permission from their Associate Dean Graduate Studies, this creates unnecessary administrative paperwork and treats teaching stream faculty as second-class citizens—devaluing the effective role we have been playing at UW as graduate student supervisors. Moreover, barring teaching stream faculty from graduate studies committees not only denies our ability to contribute to these discussions based on our experiences supervising students, but again fails to consider the workload burden facing several departments that have seen the proportion of tenure stream hires decrease relative to teaching stream.
In the governance path I do see that this proposal went through Faculty Relations Committee where I am assuming FAUW gave input. If so, this was never communicated to FAUW members. In any case, I do not see any targeted consultation with teaching stream faculty—for example, through the FAUW Lecturers Committee.
I would like to request that this proposal be returned back to Senate Graduate & Research Council for reconsideration, and that proper consultation be carried out with teaching stream faculty, including the Lecturers Committee.
Thank you for your consideration,
James Nugent, PhD
Continuing Lecturer
School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability
University of Waterloo
Cc. Members of the Senate Graduate & Research Council
David Porreca, FAUW President
FAUW Lecturers Committee
N.B. Typos corrected.
Below is the proposed change to the sole-supervision policy, with implications for teaching stream highlighted.
Source: Senate Graduate & Research Council March 4th meeting minutes. https://uwaterloo.ca/secretariat/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/sgrc-2024-03-04-agenda-package.pdf (p.226).
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