LFA Elections
Congratulations to Lynn Carter and Julia Denholm who have been acclaimed as President and Vice-President respectively for the coming year. Board nominations will open this week, closing on Wednesday April 18. New members are always welcome!
AGM and Retiree Social
Our Annual General Meeting will be held Friday May 11 at 1pm (not the 10th as previously announced). It will be followed by our Retirees’ Social at 2pm. Current retirees so far confirmed to be attendingare:
Jose Aguirre – Physics
Neil Graham – Journalism
Ros Oberlyn - Journalism
Audrey Tolhurst – Nursing
FPSE AGM and Convention
Cranbrook, May 15-18
This is a chance for interested faculty members to find out more about the workings of the provincial organization in which we participate. We have 11 delegate spaces and not all are yet spoken for. Please contact Amy or Alan if you are interested.
Salary Payment Frequency
A number of faculty have expressed interest in moving to a more frequent payment schedule. Please contact Susan Weber (5533) if you would like to see this issue raised in a future bargaining round.
New Salary Grid
Vision Care Improvement
Collective Agreement Printing
The first of the three annual 2.1% increases negotiated last spring will come into effect this month. These will be augmented at top-of-scale by a further “Labour Market Adjustment” amount which raises the top step increase to about 2.9% per year.
The resulting grid will be as follows:
Step / 2007/08 / 2008/09 / 2009/101 / 80304 / 82591 / 84896
2 / 76291 / 77893 / 79529
3 / 71064 / 72557 / 74081
4 / 68155 / 69587 / 71048
5 / 65659 / 67803 / 68446
6 / 63164 / 64490 / 65844
7 / 60667 / 61941 / 63242
8 / 58171 / 59393 / 60639
9 / 55675 / 56844 / 58037
10 / 53178 / 54295 / 55435
11 / 50682 / 51746 / 52833
The Vision Care benefit has also been increased to a maximum of $500 every two years per covered person.
Now that the details have been finalized, the new Collective Agreements are expected to be printed and distributed early next month.
Medical Disability Advisor
The LFA office has now acquired a copy of the "The Medical Disability Advisor" (MDA). If you have a medical situation which may require accommodation, sick leave, or Short or Long Term disability, then you may wish to spend some time in the LFA office reading through the MDA.
Research Funds Available
The Langara Research Committee (LRC) assists with costs associated with research by faculty. Applications for funding for research to be carried out in the Fall 2008 semester are due by June 1st.
Forms are available from Cheryl McKeeman (5429) and on the LFA website at is a link in the LRC story on the homepage.)
PDSF Meeting This Week
The next PDSF meeting will be held Wednesday, April 11, 2007 at 1pm in Room A218. Any faculty who wish to apply for PDS funding, please submit requests to Lynn Carter (5354) before the meeting.
Disability Services – Voice Article
The following was sent in response to a Voice article which attributed disparaging comments about faculty to our Disability Services Manager.
Dear Editors,
Your issue of Wednesday March 28
includes a report in which the College's Disability Services Manager, Tara-Jean Wenc, is alleged to have made some false statements concerning faculty.
The article describes Ms. Wenc as having said that college faculty are hired for their knowledge of specific academic content not their ability to teach, and that many have no previous teaching experience. While these assertions might be true of some universities and other institutions, I can assure you that they do not apply at Langara. Every instructional selection process at Langara identifies evidence of excellence in prior instructional experience as a primary criterion, and instructional faculty, once hired, are subject to a multi-year evaluation
process involving both student feedback and observation and mentoring by more
experienced instructors.
With regard to the identification and diagnosis of disabilities, we must and do respect that the onus rests with the individual and disability specialist respectively. Once a disability has been appropriately identified and brought to the instructor's attention, the instructor can work with Disability Services to find accommodations that are appropriate both to the disability and to the specific requirements of what is being taught. All faculty welcome the assistance provided by the College in that regard and general disability awareness workshops can also be helpful, but to aim for all faculty to have a professional level of expertise in that area would probably not be useful.
Sincerely,
Alan Cooper, President
Langara Faculty Association
Ms Wenc also wrote to the Voice expressing concern about the article but neither letter was published.
Communications & Marketing
For some time faculty members have been expressing concern about problems with promoting the college’s university transfer and career programs. Last May, the Division Chairs brought these concerns to Linda Holmes, and last week, delegations from the LFA Board met with Linda. We will continue to monitor the situation.