Category: Sessional

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Bargaining News Sessional

RQW Portal Launch

On Nov 7th, 2025, ECUAD Human Resources (HR) launched the new RQW Portal. The RQW system will be replacing the ROFR system for the next hiring round (Summer 2026 and onwards).

All Sessional and Lecturer Faculty need to have profiles in the RQW Portal that accurately reflect the courses they are qualified to teach.

While the initial deadline for RQW application requests was Nov 21, we recommend faculty continue to submit course requests as soon as possible. Your requests could include courses you taught before, or courses you haven’t taught but believe you have the qualifications to teach. See the current timeline as proposed by the RQWSteering Committee here. Please note: you do not need to reapply each term unless you’ve gained new qualifications you’d like to add.

Please reach out to the FA Executive with any questions or concerns, either to this email ecuadfa@gmail.com or to our FA President Ben Unterman (benjamin.unterman@gmail.com). We also recommend you regularly check your @ecuad email for updates. 

Some background information on the new RQW and QTT system: 


The RQW (Right to Qualified Work) system is intended to replace the ROFR system and enable a more transparent and stabilizing hiring process for our Continuing (Lecturers) and Sessional faculty. The transition to a RQW system was a key issue in our last bargaining round (see Appendix XIII of our 2022-2025 Collective Agreement). The RQW system is comprised of two lists: A Seniority List, and a Qualified to Teach (QTT) list. Together these lists will guide Non-Regular and Continuing Faculty hiring and course allocation. 


A brief summary of the work that has gone into the RQW portal so far: 

  • The RQW Portal was developed in-house by RQW Steering Committee, which is comprised of members from the ECUAD IT Team, HR, the Academic Provost, and the Deans. (Faculty were not included in RQW Steering Committee)
  • The first Seniority List was shared with Non-Regular Faculty for feedback in Spring 2024;
  • Regular Faculty have contributed a huge amount of labour populating the RQW Portal with with course-specific qualifications;
  • Last Spring a few faculty and the FA Bargaining Team were invited to test the portal and submit feedback and questions.

While the launch of the RQW system has been long awaited, we know our faculty still has many concerns about the new system, concerns the FA Bargaining Team shares. We welcome all questions and feedback. Ensuring the RQW system is working as intended – enabling more hiring transparency and stabilization for our Non-Regular Faculty – is a process we are dedicated to improving, whether through clarifying tweaks to this existing portal or larger process changes through bargaining.

In solidarity,

FA Executive and Bargaining Committee

Categories
News Regular Resources Sessional Solidarity

Decolonization and Indigenization Fund

It’s ready! We are pleased to announce the new Yearly Decolonization and Indigenizarion Fund! This joint Initiative of the Faculty Association and Emily Carr administration makes use of the Provincial Government’s Service Improvement Allocation for the intended benefit of all regular and non-regular faculty. Funds are available up to $250 per faculty member each fiscal year, and will be allocated to applications that fulfill the requirements on a first-come first-served basis. We have aimed to make this fund as accessible as possible. Please feel free to provide us with feedback on the process so that we can make improvements on it in the years to come.

Decolonization and Indigenization Fund

Proposals must demonstrate tangible benefits to students and must support decolonization and Indigenization within the university community.
Proposals that meet this requirement shall be granted. $250 per year for each faculty member (Non-Regular or Regular) is available.

Categories
News Regular Sessional

Students & fair labour at ECU: Talk by Terra Poirier

Tuesday Feb 11, 11:30am to 12:30pm The Working Studio, which is located in the atrium in the east end of the 2nd floor.  Emily Carr University Wheelchair accessible.  

In 2018, student Terra Poirier became concerned with the under compensation and lack of job security faced by most of her instructors and decided to make labour issues at Emily Carr University the focus of her graduation project.

She created a photographic installation outside the president’s office to draw attention to the lack of work space for sessional instructors (underpaid contract faculty), and she created the artist book “Non-Regular: Precarious academic labour at Emily Carr University of Art + Design” in collaboration with 26 instructors and other artists (published by UNIT/PITT Projects). The project earned local and national media attention and was launched to a standing-room-only audience.

Unfair labour practices continue to be a concern at ECU. Join Poirier for a talk on her process and motivations, and a discussion of what students can do to educate and mobilize on these issues.

The facebook event is here: https://www.facebook.com/events/489350455297849/  

Books will be available at a discounted rate for students.  

This talk is presented by the ECU Faculty Association as part of their The Work of the Work faculty exhibition which runs until February 14: https://www.facebook.com/events/1490533891104861/  

Emily Carr University is on unceded Coast Salish territories, specifically the lands belonging to the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.

Categories
News Regular Sessional

The Work of the Work

The theme of this exhibition—which features work by Emily Carr University of Art and Design instructors—focuses on the relationship between labour and creative practice, inspired by “the challenging working conditions faculty face at this institution.”

  • January 31–February 14, 2020
  • Opening: Thursday, January 30th 4:00 – 7:00
  • Emily Carr University, 2nd Floor

Organizers are still looking for more faculty contributors to include images of your studio and projects that you are working on. There will also be a working studio where you can create work in person for any duration while the show is up. Get in touch with Alex Phillips <bphillips@ecuad.ca> for more info and to participate. 

The Work of the Work

https://thetyee.ca/News/2020/02/04/Emily-Carr-Faculty-Art-Zing-Employer/

Categories
Pedagogy Regular Sessional

Reconciliation: Challenges and Opportunities

The City of Vancouver, located on unceded Coast Salish territory–the traditional homelands of the Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil Waututh and Sto:lo people, has declared 2013 – 2014 to be a Year of Reconciliation. As educators, we are part of a larger, historic moment of reckoning, an opportunity to face Canada’s painful history of colonization with honesty and courage. It has been said that South Africa’s apartheid system was based on Canada’s Indian reserve system. Canada’s residential schools, which attempted to destroy Indigenous cultures, are part of a colonial system that continues, as we see more Indigenous children being apprehended from their families today than even at the height of the residential schools.

At the same time that systemic colonial violence continues, many efforts at healing and resilience are growing and deepening. An excellent example of this is the CBC show, Eighth Fire.  As Eighth Fire shows, the arts have a key role to play in healing and reconciliation. The project, From the Heart: Enter into the Journey of Reconciliation, is another great example. In her book, Unsettling the Settler Within, Paulette Regan writes:

Unless we who are non-Indigenous undertake to turn over the rocks in our colonial garden, we will never achieve what we claim to want so badly— to transform and reconcile our relationship with Indigenous people. Rather we will remain benevolent peacemakers, colonizer-perpetrators bearing the false gift of a cheap and meaningless reconciliation that costs us so little and Indigenous people so much. But what if we were to offer the gift of humility as we come to the work of truth telling and reconciliation? Bearing this gift would entail working through our own discomfort and vulnerability, opening ourselves to the kind of experiential learning that engages our whole being— our heads, our hearts, our spirits.

In the spirit of this deep, experiential learning, UBC and Emily Carr are both suspending classes for a day so that students and faculty can participate in the activities organized in conjunction with the arrival of the national Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Vancouver from Sept 18 to 21. Members of the Emily Carr community will be drumming to welcome the All Nations Canoe Gathering in Senak’w Staulk (False Creek) on Sept 17, and classes will be suspended on Sept 20 so that everyone can participate in reconciliation and resilience activities at Emily Carr. On Sunday, Sept 22, there will be a 4 km walk for reconciliation, starting at 10 am at Queen Elizabeth Plaza (near the central library) downtown. We invite you to come walk with us, or start your own team of walkers.

Rita Wong

Categories
Bargaining Regular Sessional

Contexts: Collective Agreements and Universities

Notwithstanding the gorgeous sunny weather this long weekend, it’s also one of the most intense times of the year for studio and academic faculty. After the crunch eventually subsides, it may be healthy to take a step back to reflect on how post-secondary education is evolving, as well as our responsibilities to protect the quality of education in this province. While we each have our individual strengths and challenges, we’re also in this arts, media & design education community together, and it’s through mindful coordination that we’ll achieve more.

If you’d like to compare the collective agreements of post-secondary institutions that are members of FPSE (Federation of Post-Secondary Educators), they can be found online at http://www.fpse.ca/agreements/collective.

Also, for more context and discussion, the latest issue of Canadian cultural studies journal Topia, entitled Out of the Ruins, the University to Come, can be found in our library: http://pi.library.yorku.ca/ojs/index.php/topia/issue/current.

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Sessional

Sessionals, Up Close

Sessional instructors are now a crucial part of the teaching equation at most Canadian universities. Some say it’s time to include them more fully in the life of the institution:

http://www.universityaffairs.ca/sessionals-up-close.aspx

Categories
Pedagogy Regular Sessional

Reflecting on Teaching

As 2012 comes to a close, this may be a good time to reflect on your teaching style. The Teaching Perspectives Inventory offers some ways of describing and identifying different approaches to teaching. It’s free, quick to do, and helpful to consider: http://teachingperspectives.com/drupal/