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MARCH/APRIL 2002 VOLUME 28.5 Tony Petric, EDITOR |
Ballot Results Jack Richardson Know Your Benefits Housing New Members Smile Recollections Salary Statistics Announcements |
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MARCH/APRIL 2002 VOLUME 28.5 Tony Petric, EDITOR |
Ballot Results Jack Richardson Know Your Benefits Housing New Members Smile Recollections Salary Statistics Announcements |
Faculty Approve 3-Year Agreement
Results: Ballot regarding Joint Committee Agreement We hereby confirm the ballots to the question: “I hereby approve the Remuneration Agreement for the period July 1, 2002 to June 30, 2005 reached in the Joint Administration/Faculty Association Committee on March 4, 2002.”RESPONSES YES 332 NO 4 SPOILED 3
TOTAL BALLOTS CAST 339
Richard A. Hoecht, CA
Hoecht Galvin Chartered Accountants
MUFA Librarians begin remuneration negotiations on April 11, 2002.
A Tribute To Jack Richardson
Department of Sociology, Retired
[Delivered at the memorial gathering on March 16, 2002]
I feel privileged to share with you my memories of Jack Richardson. I was fortunate to serve as Dean of Social Sciences during most of Jack’s career at McMaster. Early in our relationship I nicknamed him “Mr. Nice Guy”. This name clearly understated his remarkable good humour, positive attitude, generosity, modest demeanor and devotion to his family and to the McMaster community.After a short but successful period as a goalie in the Chicago Blackhawk organization, Jack began a fruitful 30-year career with Imperial Oil, where he rose from a junior employee to a senior executive. As he was ending his association with Imperial Oil he began his academic career at the University of Toronto. He received several major undergraduate and graduate awards during his student days and taught briefly at the University of Toronto and the University of Western Ontario before joining McMaster in 1985.Jack was a full-time faculty member at McMaster for nine years. What a superb appointment. He excelled in all three of our rating categories (teaching, research and service) and he also brought intangible qualities that served the University, and particularly the Department of Sociology, extremely well. One of the senior administrators who interviewed Jack stated: “He described his work to me in a manner that combined authority, clarity and good humour all at once. He seems to me a naturally gifted teacher, and his own background attests to tremendous commitment to his discipline and to hard work. I think we are lucky to have such a candidate.”Jack more than met these high expectations. He began his academic scholarship at an age when many faculty are winding down and contemplating retirement. In addition to his books with Lorne Tepperman, he published more than twenty articles in refereed journals and edited books. He also delivered more than fifteen invited and peer reviewed papers at conferences. He was highly respected in the Occupations and Organizations area of Sociology and especially for his work on interlocking corporate directorships.
Jack provided a high level of administrative service to McMaster during his relatively short career here. He served as Chair or acting Chair of Sociology four times, including one stint after retirement, often under trying circumstances. He also chaired the MA(T)-MSC(T) programme on two occasions, totalling six years, and the Faculty Undergraduate Committee in a crucial period when diplomacy and persistence were needed to successfully steer major curriculum changes through several approval bodies in the University.
Though Jack was a productive scholar and gifted administrator, his greatest satisfaction came from teaching. His warmth, command of his subject, well organized lectures and classes and appreciation of student needs made him a popular teacher and much sought after supervisor. It generally takes a few years to attract graduate student supervisees, but graduate students flocked to Jack quickly. In his short time here he supervised five PhD and two MA dissertations in Sociology and served as a member of fifteen more committees in the Department. Jack also supervised the work of more than fifteen students in the MA(T) programme. He was an extremely effective and popular undergraduate and graduate teacher. He was particularly dedicated to undergraduates, and often chose to teach a section of the large first year class. He received nominations for a McMaster Student Union teaching award in virtually every year he taught at McMaster and, on some occasions, for more than one course.
All of these factual indicators of his achievements significantly understate his contribution to McMaster. His quiet, positive, gracious and supportive nature is hard to express in words, but was certainly evident to all who knew him. He never had a bad word to say about anyone and although sympathetic to those who complained, he could almost always put a positive and constructive spin on events. He was always gracious and willing to help. He took on administrative responsibilities, not because he wanted them, but because he enjoyed the confidence of his colleagues and often was the only person who had the necessary support. After the appointments ended he would generally write a note thanking deans or others for aiding him and expressing more than complete satisfaction with the monetary compensation, even when it fell far short of his worth.
Jack’s devotion to his students was unparalleled. He wrote several hundred if not thousands of letters in support of students and he arranged private meetings with those who were struggling with his course or had personal problems. One recent example was the support he gave Mi-Kyoung Park, his former student who died of leukemia last September. He visited her frequently, helped her family and led the successful effort to secure extensive financial aid for her treatment.
I want to conclude with a few personal comments. Since our retirements most of my contact with Jack has been at University Club lunches, where we were frequently jointed by Charlene and Dorothy and sometimes others. Lunch for Jack was water, soup, a small piece of bread and coffee. His example of good and disciplined eating made me follow the same routine, even though I certainly found that to be a meagre meal. We also knew that lunch would end at 12:55, regardless of when it started, because he would not want to be one minute late for his 1:00 p.m. scheduled office hour. During these lunches he and I discussed cottage issues, bridge playing, recent travels and of course, his classes. He was always enthusiastic and concerned about his 300 charges and in our conversation six weeks ago, expressed the hope that he would be able to teach again next year.
Jack was also extremely fond and proud of his family. He talked about their achievements and especially about the extensive trips he and Enid took with each of their three oldest grandchildren. His love, concern for and dedication to Enid were always evident.
We will miss Jack. I know that my effort to capture the kind of person Jack was by describing his many contributions and fine qualities is inadequate, because in Jack’s case the whole was so much more than the sum of its parts. But I also know that the Department, the University and society in general would be much enhanced if there were more individuals like Jack Richardson.
Jim Johnson
Professor Emeritus, EconomicsIf a period of three years passes between any claim for vision care, then the programme will provide a maximum of up to $200 towards the purchase. No change in prescription is required in this situation.
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Helen McDonald
Patricia McNivenFamily Medicine
Family Medicine
A college student in a philosophy class was taking his first examination.On the paper there was a single line which simply said: “Is this a question?” — Discuss.
After a short time he wrote: “If that is a question, then this is an answer.”
The student received an “A” on the exam.
Recollections of McMaster
from 1947 to 1952
Martin Johns,
Professor Emeritus, Physics and AstronomyFollowing is an article prepared by Martin Johns for MUFA’s First 50 Years: The Presidents Reminisce, a collection of essays by former MUFA Presidents about their terms of office.
Because I am one of the few faculty members still alive from the era when the Faculty Association was being created, my recollections of the University in the period from 1947 to 1952 may be of interest. These comments have nothing to do with the Faculty Association per se, but they may cast some light on why the association needed to be created.
The arrival of McMaster University in Hamilton in 1930 predated mine as a student by one year. It had a student body of about 400 and the departments were either one or two person departments. My father came from Brandon College to help Dr. Findlay in Mathematics in 1931. I registered in a third year pass program with a class that had already spent two years together in Toronto. I left for the University of Toronto three years later to work on my doctorate but McMaster still felt a bit like home.
When I joined the faculty in 1947 after nine years at Brandon College and a stint at Chalk River, the enrolment had risen to about seven hundred, and research, given the impetus of the war, was beginning to be important in the sciences. Dean Burke and his proteges, Harry Thode, Ron Graham, and Laurie Cragg were directing students to the M.Sc. level in chemistry and physics and there were serious beginnings in Biology and Geology. The Physics Department had spent the war years training naval recruits in radar and so had not developed any research activity. I was hired to start research in the department.
A new Head of Physics, Dr. Moon, from the Manhattan project had agreed to come to replace Dr. Dawes who was about to retire, and his projected arrival supplied one of the main reasons that I accepted an offer to come to McMaster. As it turned out, Moon never relocated on the campus, though he did buy a house in Ancaster, and I only met him once at a Saturday morning departmental meeting. We spent all morning discussing equipment that needed to be purchased and had allocated the afternoon to deal with teaching assignments for a term that was to be upon us in two weeks time. Moon never appeared at that afternoon session and I have never seen him since! It transpired that he had driven all night from Chicago to get to the meeting and that his post-prandial nap lasted until well into the evening. After patiently awaiting his arrival for two years, President Gilmour cancelled his appointment and the department grew without his input.
The faculty in 1947 could all meet comfortably in the tower room of University Hall. The meeting began with a welcome from President Gilmour and then a discourse on the nature of the University and the responsibility of the faculty in maintaining that nature. We always heard the words of the famous headmaster of Eton who reminded his gentlemen faculty that the school existed for the “young gentlemen”. (Gilmour did graciously admit that there were “ladies” both on the faculty and in the student body at McMaster.)
Then there were the inevitable directives concerning faculty attire. The requirement that all faculty should wear gowns was completely ignored by the science faculty who regarded them as dangerous appendages in a laboratory. We did however wear gowns when it became our turn to take chapel. The discourse on attire traditionally included a statement that gentlemen should wear belts rather than braces. This infuriated my father who had heard this admonition for well over a decade and he interrupted the President to ask “What does a faculty member do when a belt cannot prevent his trousers from falling down”. After the laughter had subsided, father suggested that he was quite willing to wear a belt if he were permitted to wear braces as well. I think that this was the last time that a discussion of braces appeared in the presidential welcome.
Up until about 1950, the faculty reviewed all final undergraduate marks. This operation took the best part of a day and finally became an overwhelming task. Students who failed more than two courses were ineligible to play on University teams in the following year. I vividly recall the case of two football players whose failure was going to mean defeat at the hands of the Ontario Agricultural College during the next school year. Dr. New, who was both a distinguished scholar and an ardent sportsman quickly recognized the seriousness of the situation and asked the French Department if it would not take pity on these two fine young men and raise their grades from 48 to 50. The French Department would not oblige and suggested that New’s own department (history) might raise the grades of these students instead. History would not oblige and the football team was a disaster. Sports were never mentioned but everyone knew that football was really the topic on the agenda. In the following year the faculty introduced a rule that no mark between 45 and 50 could be sent to the registrar. That forced departments to make their own decisions before the faculty review occurred.
Chapel was an important feature of campus life during the Baptist era. The fact that there were no lectures scheduled between 10:15 and 11:00 a.m meant that chapel was available to all. Of course not all of the students who attended chapel were there for religious reasons. Chapel offered a wonderful opportunity to make social contacts and to keep abreast of the latest campus gossip. It was a strong integrating force for both students and faculty that we have lost in our growth to a large multi-Faculty University. Taking chapel was a formidable task for a young professor, given that President Gilmour and the heads of all the departments in the University were sitting in the front rows of the stage, right behind the chaplain of the day. The chaplain was required to follow a prescribed order of service — one or two hymns, a bible reading and a prayer. To create a unified service within that prescription was difficult and time consuming and it usually took me a full evening of sweating before I arrived at something that I felt could be offered in those august surroundings. I shall never forget the time that I arrived at the University fully prepared for chapel, and then got so involved in helping students after my first year class that I forgot to go to chapel. Gilmour, with his incomparable use of English and his knowledge of the Bible, turned to my father and said “This is the day that the sins of the son shall be visited on the father. You will have to take chapel”.
Many of the senior faculty had private sources of income or had married into money. For these, the matter of faculty salaries was not an important issue. We lived next door to Chester and Mildred New for many years and Mildred and my wife Margaret were close friends. They often discussed faculty salaries. Mildred admitted that they banked all of Chester’s salary and that she looked after all the housekeeping costs from her own funds. Margaret complained there was only one wage earner in her establishment and that after the taxes and food were looked after, there was not enough left to provide the four Johns children with shoes. It was only when a new breed of faculty drawn from a different stratum of society began to control the University that a strong faculty voice to raise salaries began to be heard.
Of course there was no pension fund in the University and it was accepted practice that the President would have a friendly discussion with a faculty member who had reached retirement age as to his financial ability to handle the retirement years. The President then determined the retirement gratuity on the basis of this interview. My father came to his meeting with President Gilmour in the early fifties and shocked the President when he refused to disclose his financial position. My father pointed out with some measure of fairness that he did not see why a person who had skimped all life to save for retirement should get a small gratuity while one who had spent to the limit should get a large one. Although President Gilmour was somewhat shocked by this approach, Dad never felt that he was treated unfairly.
When the Faculty Association was organized in 1951 with my father as its first president there was no agreement as to what the function of that body should be. Very few of those involved in developing it saw it as more than a body which could discuss matters such as salaries, pensions and conditions of work with the president of the University and there was very little of the militancy that later marked the CAUT in those early days. It took many years of evolution before the complex and comprehensive committee structure of the later years was in place. Our association started from a position of mutual trust between faculty and administration while others, such as the one at the University of Manitoba, started from one of mistrust and anger. During the eight years that I was on the faculty of Brandon College with its Manitoba affiliation, I had ample opportunity to witness the dislike that existed between controller Crawford of the University of Manitoba and the Manitoba faculty. The lack of mutual trust on that campus was in some measure transferred to the faculty of United College. The Crowe case at United College that rocked Canadian academia a few years later was almost destined to occur in Winnipeg!
McMaster Faculty Salary Statistics 2001/02
Don’t 
Forgetto return your completed
Pension Surplus Option Form by
April 30, 2002
For up-to-date information regarding the Pension Surplus Distribution, see MUFA’s web page at www.mcmaster.ca/mufa
MEETINGMUFA Annual General Meeting
Tuesday, April 23, 2:00 p.m.
MGD - 505Mark your Calendars Now!
MEETING
April 5, 2002
pdk
