The following is an abridged version of the ECUAD FA Executive Working Committee Report 2025. Please find the complete version here.
April 25, 2025
I would like to start out this (my final report) with a huge thank you to Brendan Tang, who served as our Faculty Show coordinator and to all the faculty who participated in the exhibition, readings, and events during this amazing celebration of our community. I would also like to thank the entire team at the Libby Leshgold Gallery, who offered support, guidance, installation expertise, reception support, and great good will for the entire endeavour. This exhibition really was a celebration of our faculty history and our creative community.
The exhibition marked the mid-way point of a year that has been filled with advances and struggles. On the positive side, this year saw the continuation of a series of successful hires across the various Faculties, particularly in Foundation, and we saw many of our non-regular faculty move over to regular faculty positions and welcomed new faculty from as host of other institutions outside of ECU.
Also, the majority of our membership had the opportunity to fully experience the physical, emotional, and mental relief of 4/4 studio faculty workload. This significant shift has allowed faculty to have more of a work-life balance, and to give greater attention in the classroom and outside the institution in the multiple forms of creative practice, research, and professional development. I am sure our families also appreciated having just a bit more of us present as well.
This year brought change again in the Ministry of Post Secondary Education and Future Skills with a cabinet shuffle visit and the return of Minister Anne Kang as Minister Lisa Beare was moved over to Education and Child Care. Minister Kang came to visit ECU in January and I had an opportunity to meet with her briefly and champion the value of studio-based education. This work continues through our membership in the Federation of Post-Secondary Education (FPSE) – see the FPSE Presidents’ Council report further down.
The big Collective Agreement challenges of the year have revolved around the areas we negotiated to try and improve working conditions for our Lecturers and Non-regular faculty. As part of bargaining, we secured an agreement for new hiring processes that promised to be more transparent and fairer for all involved. These changes included the development of a seniority list (reviewable by members) and a shift from Right of First Refusal (ROFR) to Qualified to Teach (QTT). One of the goals of QTT is to allow Lecturers and Non-Regular faculty to be more readily considered not just for courses they have taught in the past, but also courses that they are qualified to teach.
The seniority list was pretty straightforward for HR to produce and members had an extended period to review the list and query their position on the list. QTT has proved to be much more challenging.
Despite bringing the urgency of developing the QTT to every meeting of the Joint Consultation Committee (JCC) with HR and the Provost’s office, this project has struggled. There was little guidance from administration in terms of structure, but our regular faculty members rallied to develop QTT lists for their areas. A special shout-out to Alla Gadassik, who developed the initial framework for Media Studies, which was an early model for other faculties to consider. In every JCC meeting we were told that the QTT process would be ready for the 2025-26 hiring cycle. We were cautiously optimistic, but as the months wore on, we pressed to see samples of the QTT frameworks and the system that IT argued needed to be built from scratch. We offered volunteers to beta test the system (thank you to all who put their names forward) and were told that the system would be ready for testing “soon”. It was only at our mid-March JCC meeting that the administration finally admitted that the QTT system would not be ready until the 2026-27 hiring cycle. So, for now, ROFR is still in play, however summer courses do count towards ROFR and seniority which was not the case prior to the last bargaining round.
So, moving into 2025-26, one of the focuses of the bargaining team will be on cleaning up the collective agreement language in relation to the gains made in the last round. There is more work to be done on the actual delivery of gains, ever clearer language, and administrative accountability. You can imagine the team faces some resistance at the bargaining table when it comes to accountability and every grievance we might file to push back can be a long process in itself. But the bargaining team is a seriously committed group, as evident from the successes of the last round.
Most of you will have read the email I sent out to the membership on April 11 regarding the impact of the deficit budget voted on by our University Board of Governors. Here again are the specific impacts for 2025-26:
- An increase in 400 level studio class sizes from 17 students to 20 students. This will result in fewer sections of 400 level classes on offer.
- Class sizes at 200/300 level are not being changed for Fall 2025 and Spring 2026.
- HUMN100/101 seminar sizes are increasing from 22 to 25 students (including intensives). Markers will be offered for assignments related to the HUMN lecture. While the final enrolment numbers are still in flux, it is anticipated that the shift could result in six less sections in HUMN 100 and six less in HUMN101. Again, this is still to be determined. Many of our faculty who teach in HUMN are already aware of this as the Interim Dean of Culture + Community has informed impacted faculty and it was also discussed in this week’s meeting for Critical Studies.
- ROFR still applies this year, and lecturers maintain at least 50% teaching load as per our collective agreement.
- We have four regular faculty members who will have retired this year and only two of those faculty positions will be filled. Administration is still determining in which program areas these positions might be most needed.
- In the longer term, the administration will be taking a deeper look at the course release system. There will be tighter control on “banking” releases, so that people are taking releases when they are being earned. Supervision of graduate students is also being re-examined.
You will read ahead all the FPSE committee reports and summaries and we want to thank all the faculty who served on the broad range of committees, within the university and outside of our institution, that are needed for us to support collegial governance at Emily Carr University. We are immensely grateful for your efforts, time, dedication, and thoughtful consideration.
As I am writing this report, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention all the uncertainty being created by the current President of the United States. I could write reams of what feels like freeform craziness south of the border, but instead, I would like to turn my attention to the strength, compassion, dedication, and much-needed goodwill and humour that I have seen every day from our members inside and outside of this campus. I am continually humbled by your ability to keep showing up – in meetings, workshops, seminars, gallery openings, and countless other events. I have seen you in endless Zoom and Team rooms (as we grimaced as ever-changing platforms) and in-person committees and planning meetings. You keep showing up, not just for the school, but for each other. As I step down as your FA President for early retirement, I would just like to say that it has truly been an honour to serve with you and on behalf of you. Our membership is a community of incredible people.
I will always be in solidarity with this amazing Faculty.
– Cameron
The FA Executive for 2024-2025 included:
President: Cameron Cartiere
Vice Presidents: Lindsay McIntyre and Alex Hass
Members at Large: Rubén Möller, Valérie D. Walker, Hillary Webb, Sue Shon, Sarah Samash, Magnolia Pauker, Pat Vera
Co-Stewards: Rita Wong, Nick Conbere
Secretary: Gabe Wong
Treasurer: Sunny Nestler
The Joint Consultation Committee (JCC) continued to meet monthly. Its purpose is “to promote the cooperative resolution of workplace issues” (according to our Collective Agreement 5.03). The committee includes the FA President, the FA Vice-Presidents, a Steward, our FA coordinator, the Provost, the VP of HR, the Director of HR, and HR staff. The FA team continued to pursue issues such as the impacts of ambiguous university policies on faculty, scheduling and hiring, and fair representation on committees. The FA President also has a standing meeting with the ECU President every month to discuss university issues beyond the JCC.
Our stewards continued to note an ongoing increase in requests for accommodation by faculty and also complex and lengthy grievances, many of which are resulting from University policies that are not clearly written and procedures that have escalated situations into multi-level grievance processes. We are deeply grateful to our stewards, Rita Wong and Nick Conbere. Our stewards are champions for the membership. Remember, you have support and if you find yourself in a position where you are asked to meet with HR or other areas of administration, you have the right to have steward support with you.