NEWSLETTER
APRIL/MAY 1998, VOLUME 24.6, Jeffery Donaldson, EDITOR
Executive Committee for 1998/99
for the members of the Executive Committee of the McMaster University Faculty Association for 1998/99. Their terms
of office began on April 29, 1998.
Richard A Brymer, 61, died on May 8, 1998 at the McMaster Health Science Centre following a brief illness. He retired as Associate Professor of Sociology in 1996. An informal funeral service held at Dodsworth Brown funeral home, Ancaster, on Wednesday, May 13 was attended by many friends, colleagues and family. A formal memorial service will be held later in the Spring.
Richard was a native Texan who never forgot his roots. His family was poor and moved many times during Richard's childhood in search of work. Richard described his parents' lives as "hard", and they both died early. I met Richard in 1959 when we were undergraduates at the University of Texas and he was on his way to becoming a professional sociologist. While he was often impatient with entrenched authority, he was compassionate toward and understanding of those labeled as deviant, and thus despised and discriminated against. He was deeply committed to social justice. Early in his life that commitment took the form of social and political activism as he participated in picketing restaurants and theatres during the integration movement in the American south in the 1960s.
Following completion of his doctoral work at Michigan State University in 1964, he began his career teaching at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas while doing
research with Hispanic youth street gangs. He joined the McMaster faculty in 1969. His sociological research -- his early work with mental hospital patients and Mexican-American gangs and later with subsistence poachers -- grew from his deep concerns with social justice and the need to understand and to explain those who, like his parents, lived 'hard lives' on the margins of society and who were often thought of as deviant.
He will be remembered by some only as a "character" in his boots and stetson, wearing western jeans and carrying a coke can as companion for his package of Beechnut chewing tobacco. Richard Brymer was a character, but he was much more than that. He loved to teach and felt great joy when the eyes of his undergraduate students lit with understanding: he called them his "babies". He was an innovative and dedicated teacher both for undergraduates and graduate students, and helped not only to direct, but to shape the careers of a number of leading sociologists who did their graduate work at McMaster.
For twenty nine years Richard Brymer was a friend and colleague of McMaster faculty and students. We will miss him.
David Counts,
Anthropology
Congratulations to P. K. RANGACHARI, Professor of Medicine, who will be honoured with a 1997 OCUFA Teaching Award at a special ceremony on Friday, May 22, 1998.
Presented annually by the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA), the awards honour professors and academic librarians at the post-secondary level who have demonstrated outstanding performance in their professions.
In announcing the 1997 Award winners, OCUFA President Deborah Flynn said, "These annual awards are of special significance to the province's 10,000 academics because they highlight extraordinary individual commitment to teaching and academic librarianship. The receipients of these awards are people who make a tremendous difference to their profession and in the lives of their students."
FOR RENT: Dundas House in quiet residential area. 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, fully furnished. Finished basement. 5 minutes drive from McMaster. Quiet cul-de-sac beside park. Easy access to schools. Suitable for visiting faculty member with family or shared between academic researchers. Monthly rent $1300. Available July 1/98. Contact Grace Ferracuti (ext. 23315 or ferracu@ece.eng.mcmaster.ca).
SUBLET: for 1 year, furnished 2-bedroom apartment available late summer or early fall (negotiable). $700 per month includes hydro, heat, underground parking, pool. 30 minutes from McMaster. For further information, call 519-752-0557.
CAUT MORTGAGE PROGRAM: CAUT has announced a new and better mortgage program. Details were in the April issue of the CAUT Bulletin. The new sponsor is The Mortgage Centre, a franchised mortgage brokerage system owned by CIBC/Firstline Trust. CAUT members will be able to call a toll-free number for assistance (1-888-216-7770, ask for Ray Lepage or Michael Bourget) or apply electronically through the CAUT Web page (www.caut.ca./mortgage_centre/).
Mc Master Fair
I enjoyed Professor Weingarten's review in the March Newsletter, but one misstatement must be
corrected. On p. 5 he includes the phrase "when tenure was technically elimina-ted from the Alberta
university system."
In fact, tenure was never eliminated, either technically nor substantively. The Minister of Advanced Education did write to the Boards of Governors that he expected clauses dealing with financial exigency and academic redundancy to be in all faculty agreements. Some agreements already had such articles in place. Some of us, including the AAS:UA [Association of Academic Staff, University of Alberta], added them in successful negotiations with our Boards.
Such clauses have been part of faculty agreements across Canada since the 1970s. CAUT recommends that they should be in all agreements.
There were no changes to the tenure procedures. It can be argued as well that it was because of the tenure procedures that no faculty were laid off during our period of financial crisis.
Thank you for the opportunity to set the record straight.
Gordon Unger,
AAS:UA
David Alan Reid Kay Memorial Prize for Graduate Students in
Materials Science and Engineering at McMaster UniversityAs you may know, Dr. Alan Kay died this past November. Alan was an Emeritus Professor of Materials Science and Engineering who was deeply committed to the application of fundamental research to steelmaking practice, and still active in steelmaking research at the time of his death. He conducted extensive research into the physical chemistry of steelmaking, making outstanding contribu-tions to the field. To this end, his investigations resulted in numerous research publications and patents. Equally so, he was a passionate advocate for many worthy causes, serving as the President of the Metallurgical Society of the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, and as the Chair of the Ontario Chapter of the American Society for Metals. His service to McMaster University included terms as a member of the Senate and the Board of Governors, President of the Faculty Club and Executive member of the Faculty Association.
To honour Alan's exceptional contributions, the University has established the David Alan Reid Kay Memorial Prize for graduate students in Materials Science and Engineering at McMaster. The prize will be awarded to students who demonstrate both excellence in research, and leadership in service to the department, University, professional societies, or society-at-large.
We are asking for contributions to this prize that will support graduate students. Donations in Alan's memory should be sent to the Development Office, CNN 111. If at all possible please join us in honouring Alan in this way.
Ballot Results
I approve the revised Pension Text, dated July 1, 1997, and the associated Memorandum of Agreement re Payment of Administrative Expenses, dated March 26, 1998.
I approve the Tuition Bursary Proposal agreed to in the Joint Committee on March 26, 1998.
Richard A. Hoecht, CA
Hoecht Galvin Chartered Accountants
New Committee Assignments
Karen Bird (Political Science) has agreed to represent MUFA on the Committee to Review a Draft Undergraduate Policy for Students with Disabilities.
Les King will represent MUFA on a committee struck by the Provost to develop a policy regarding the assignment of part-time degree studies/overload teaching.
LOOKING FOR A MUFA REP ON UNIVERSITY'S DINING COMMITTEE. The purpose of this committee is to discuss and consult on food services issues. The committee will start meeting in September. For more information, call the MUFA Office (ext. 24682).
Research, in many fields, is very expensive, and it requires external support -- from governments, granting councils and, more and more, from the private sector. Some private sector entrepreneurs and corporations see value for themselves in funding university research and endow-ing chairs. They are interested not only in the ongoing supply of educated specialists, but also in scientific and technological research and development in a cost effective manner, including access to academic experts.
The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) Information Paper on University Business Relationships on Research and Development states:
From the time of their foundation, the universities have been involved in the practicalities of the world but have also been separate from them. This combination of practicality and contemplation explains their durability. However, the balance has never been easy to find or to maintain. On the one hand too close an identification with established power has led in the past and may lead in the future to the forfeiture of independence and the disappearance of creative scholarship. It may also lead to the transformation of universities into trade schools to serve particular interests. On the other hand a withdrawal from the world and an insistence on theorizing alone may well leave the universities with no students and no support. Universities are not monasteries. Each generation has to seek the balance anew because each epoch poses new problems.
In Canada, private sector investment in research has been notably weak. The federal government continues to play the major role in funding university research, despite the damaging cutbacks in recent years. Society at large needs to become more aware of how important it is for the federal government to begin reinvesting in basic research in our universities.
What universities most need to achieve -- and what has become more difficult -- is a really proper balance between basic and applied knowledge and research. Basic research is central to the role of a university. Private donor agreements with universities must ensure and support the goals, objectives and capacities of the institution itself and not undermine its academic freedom or autonomy.
Private sector funding of chairs is useful to the donor because the donor gets to pick the program area to be funded; useful to the university because the chair is normally funded in perpetuity. But the terms of such agreements must make clear that who is appointed to the chairs, what is taught and researched by the chairs, and how they are evaluated, is the responsibility of the academy alone, and not the role of the donor.
In some areas the creation of Advisory Boards which include external practical expertise may be desirable in achieving a balance between contemplation and practicality. Technical areas which are intrinsically linked to practice and which develop rapidly -- engineering, computer science, and management studies -- come to mind. Such Advisory Boards must be clearly removed from influence on appointments, promotion, tenure, choice of research by individual faculty members; and they must not interfere with academic freedom.
Contracts signed between universities and private donors should, in all their essentials, be open and public. The CAUT Information Paper says that "this should include the subject matter, titles, dates, money involved, principal investigators and the outside contractor." At the University of Toronto all such contracts should come before the Academic Board in open session.
Secrecy is never a good idea in relation to private donations except in very specific circumstances and for very limited periods, restricted to such things as patent applications and product design. The CAUT Information Paper adds, "The private sector sponsor of university research may want the university to include secrecy provisions in the contract. This is not surprising since the private corporation is interested in maximizing its own profits. Nevertheless the university should refuse general provisions of this nature...the reputation of the university in research, which attracted industry in the first place, was created by the free publication of research results."
Making donor agreements public allows the academic community to openly and transparently assess and debate the steering effects which large private and corporate donations have on the university's budget priorities, future academic planning and research infrastructure.
Furthermore, private donations usually produce tax advantages for their donors while the university, for tax purposes, continues to be a public institution: another reason to maintain the openness of donor agreements. But this has not been the history of such agreements at the University of Toronto. Most are drafted privately and are taken through the minimum number of governance bodies, and are often marked "Confidential". When such agreements have become public -- as several have recently -- there is public embarrassment. And the whistle blowers aren't the ones to blame. The lessons we can learn from the painful recent disclosures can be summed up as:
(1) Make sure all such agreements, in their essentials are public; (2) Place all such agreements before the Academic Board in open session; (3) Establish boiler plate language for all such contracts which unequivocally protects academic freedom and the University's Policies on Appointments, Promotion, Tenure, etc. Not to do this is to continue to threaten the careful balance needed to deal with large sums of money and correspondingly large-scale possibilities for influence.
Private and Corporate donors should not be expected to understand how a public institution such as the University of Toronto differs from a private corporation if we -- the University -- do not make this crystal clear from the outset, before the talks get underway.
There is a significant difference of values between the two worlds, public and private. For entrepreneurs and private corporations the measure of value is "value for money". Universities should measure value in quite different ways. One of the features of the present politics of universities is that many of those who work at and manage our universi-ties don't seem to be very clear about these differences.
[Several pages have been omitted here, in which Bill Graham outlines the details of several actual agreements with private donors, including arrangements with the Joseph L. Rotman Charitable Foundation, Peter Munk's Barrick Gold and Horsham corporations, Northern Telecom, and the Toronto Stock Exchange. Graham argues that these agreements variously compromise or blur university autonomy. Ed.]
There are other agreements, not addressed here, which compromise academic freedom and raise serious questions about the University's own business acumen with respect to risks it appears willing to run in case the donors are not satisfied witH the progress of what their money is enabling.
How many private and corporate donor agreements has the University signed on to? What do they commit our University to? We do not know. The vast majority remain swathed in secrecy. The language in the Rotman, Nortel and Munk agreements raises fears and concerns about what other secret agreements may, in fact, say.
Since the University wants and needs such donations, it is all the more important that the agreements be executed with greater care and concern for academic freedom and our academic policies than in the past, and that they be open to the University community. The administration should, forthwith, reveal all past agreements, and should establish clear and unambiguous boiler-plate language for all future agreements. The integrity of the University of Toronto depends on such things.
Bill Graham
President, UTFA
His friendship with Crane had been a strange one. Out in the world they would almost certainly have kept clear of each other; but in the university they had fought together in a common cause. Both, with all their might, had resisted the new commercialism, the aim to "show results" that was undermining and vulgarizing education. The State Legislature and the board of regents seemed determined to make a trade school of the university. Candidates for the degree of Bachelor of Arts were allowed credits for commercial studies; courses in book-keeping, experimental farming, domestic science, dress-making, and what not. Every year the regeots tried to dimioish the number of credits required in science and the humanities. The liberal appropriations, the promotions and increases in salary, all went to the professors who worked with the regents to abolish the purely cultural studies. Out of a faculty of sixty, there were perhaps twenty men who made any serious stand for scholarship, and Robert Crane was one of the staunchest. He had lost the Deanship of the College of Science because of his uncompromising opposition to the degrading influence of politicians in university affairs. The honour went, instead, to a much younger man, head of the department of chemistry, who was willing "to give the taxpayers what they wanted."
an excerpt from
Willa Cather's The Professor's House, 1925
Given past experience with illegitimate use of computer accounts by "hackers", it is recognized that for management purposes it might be necessary to require retired faculty to renew the e-mail computer account from time to time, or for CIS to remove accounts that are inactive over a long period of time.
This policy shall be reviewed no later than five years after its implementation.
Approved by Joint Committee
December 9, 1996
TERMINATION OPTION: During the fall of 1996, the Joint Committee recommended and the President agreed that those faculty who at the time of retirement elect the Pension Plan's Termination Option, should continue to qualify for the normal retirement benefits.
PARKING:
1. Faculty and Staff who have retired but have a post-retirement appointment for which they receive remuneration from the University shall pay for parking (effective July 1, 1992).
2. Faculty and staff who have retired on or before June 30, 1992 shall continue to receive free parking; in the case of those who are under 65 the free parking shall be provided on West Campus. Any who have already reached 65 and are parking on West Campus should receive a Central Campus sticker immediately.
3. Faculty and staff who retire after June 30, 1992 may obtain a permit which allows (i) free parking on West Campus at all times and (ii) free parking on Central Campus for the period May to August and after 12:30 p.m. on days when classes are held between September and April; alternatively such individuals may purchase, at the Central Campus rate for eight months, a permit for Central Campus.
Approved by Joint Committee
December 3, 1991
CAUT SERVICES: Individuals who were eligible for membership in CAUT before retirement, are eligible for membership as CAUT retirees. Individual retired members may join CAUT as Retired Associate Members for an annual fee of $10 (This may go up to $25). For this fee they receive a subscription to the CAUT Bulletin, and may join a number of group plans offered for Life Insurance, Personal Accident Insurance, Family Life Insurance, Professional Property Insurance, Group Home Insurance, Travel Insurance, and other financial services. Retired members can also take advantage of discounted travel rates offered by Finlay Travel.
Dear MUFA,
I hear that the only place on campus where you can get a Pepsi is in the Divinity School. They are not, of course, offering a straight Pepsi but rather a Coke with a dash of Pepsi. It is called an Oecumenical. The faculty of the Divinity School have the intellectual advantage over mere fund-raising technicians for they know that the Vatican serves nothing but Coke!
I guess in a similar spirit of optimism we should all hope that the new Sterling Street entrance will be through a golden arch.
Sed libera nos a malo.
Geo. Wallace, Victoria B.C.
In celebration of the recent decision to preserve Alumni Memorial Hall, the Faculty Club will offer a FREE MEMBERSHIP to all faculty, staff or alumni of McMaster University who are not currently members of the Club. For a three-month period, commencing April 6, the Club invites you to experience all the benefits of membership without paying a membership fee.
For over thirty years, the Faculty Club has been the focal point of intellectual, cultural and social interaction on campus. The amenities of the Club include the historic Great Hall, off which is the deck patio, with its unmatched view of the Faculty Hollow. Also on the main floor, the Bar offers a relaxing atmosphere, and the West Room houses rotating art exhibitions -- a popular location for members to book meetings or social gatherings.
Dining at the Faculty Club offers a wide range of choice, from light meals at the Bar and take-out options, to large scale banquets and regionally inspired fine dining. Our kitchen maintains a perfect balance of traditional favourites and current food trends. Our wine list is unmatched in this area in terms of both selection and value.
The Faculty Club can be used in many different ways. As a Member, you will be able to:
sample our extensive range of wines, beers, teas, coffees, fresh squeezed fruit juices and other beverages, available throughout the day...
get a salad and hamburger for lunch from our popular patio (as soon as the weather is warm enough)...
celebrate that special personal event or entertain a group of friends with exceptional fine dining at a very reasonable price...
eat a quick, nutritious lunch in the elegant surroundings of the Great Hall.
If you are employed on campus, all you need to do is send an e-mail to the Club (facclub@mcmaster.ca) or telephone (ext. 24520) and ask for a FREE TRIAL MEMBERSHIP by giving your name, department and ID number. We'll take it from there, and give you a membership number straight away. THE FACULTY CLUB LOOKS FORWARD TO WELCOMING YOU AS A MEMBER.
2. Faculty of Farming and Fun
(by combining agriculture with physical education and recreation studies)
3. Faculty of Sex, Lies and Videotapes
(by combining family studies, political studies and communications)
4. Faculty of Planes, Trains and Tractors
(by combining aeronautical engineering transportation institute and agricultural
engineering)
5. Faculty of Confusion and Confucianism
(by combining central administration with philosophy and Asian studies)
6. Faculty of Choral Chemistry
(by combining music with chemistry)
7. Faculty of Lies, Statistics and Lawyers
(by combining political studies and statistics with law)
8. Faculty of Thinkers and Doers
(by combining arts and engineering)
9. Faculty of Witch Doctors and Druggies
(by combining medicine and pharmacy)
10. Faculty of Voodoo and Star Gazing
(by combining religion with physics and astronomy)
© 1997 Michael Eskin. Michael Eskin, a professor at the University of Manitoba, is also a satirist as well as a contributor to Sesame Street Canada.
