By Michael Scoular (The Cascade) – Email
Three degrees — majors in agriculture, indigenous studies, and peace and conflict studies, with minor options for the latter two — passed the Degree Quality Assessment Board (DQAB) at its December meeting, VP academic Eric Davis announced last week.
“They’ve gone to the Minister [of Advanced Education], and we now await his decision on the status of those programs,” Davis said in his report to Senate. “I’m hopeful that he will see no reason to disagree with the DQAB.”
The minister, Andrew Wilkinson, would be the final stage of approval for UFV to begin offering these degree options.
This movement is the first sense of progress when it comes to new degree approval for UFV in a number of months. After being granted exempt status from the DQAB review process in 2013, Davis called it a major step for the university. “The exempt status is a milestone partly because our program reviews are recognized as excellent, meaning we need less oversight and we’re no different from any other university,” Davis said at the time, adding that the cost of each DQAB review can be high, estimated at $8,000.
But in October of last year, six UFV degree proposals were sent back to the DQAB from the minister’s office, where they had been said to be waiting for approval, with a request of contextual information in a new format. Davis alluded to this last week, saying, “A new step in the approval process has been introduced whereby all institutions must fill out a template.” This template covers four broad areas: how a degree fits with the province’s mandate, the social and economic needs of the region, whether there is any potential program duplication within the university, and how the degree would fit with student interest.
This new step has resulted in a delay: the three degrees that are moving ahead were all projected, in their proposals, to be ready for students by either the Fall 2015 or Winter 2016 semesters. The same is true of the proposed theatre major, while the bachelor of education and bachelor of media arts proposals aim for a Fall 2016 start date. Those three degrees are on the agenda for the DQAB’s January meeting, Davis said, with an update to potentially come at the next meeting of Senate, on February 12.
