Senate is the academic governing body of UFV, with the university president and vice chancellor Joanne MacLean as the chair. They are responsible for making decisions on everything academic: approving new courses and programs, approving changes to programs, setting entrance requirements, and setting the academic calendar. The Board of Governors, which looks at the business side of the university, is advised by Senate on matters of mutual interest.
All at the university are welcome to attend Senate’s public meetings, held once a month at either the Abbotsford or the CEP campus, but most do not. Regardless, Senate makes decisions that impact the daily lives of both students and faculty.
Full approval for permanent orientation day
After a two year trial period, Senate unanimously approved a permanent dedicated orientation day for the university. The day extends the academic calendar by one day, allowing UFV to run orientation programming during the first day of the academic semester.
Student Life presented on the Fall 2019 New Student Orientation (NSO) programming. Although the trial day was originally granted to the Student Union Society (SUS), Student Life was granted leadership over the NSO this fall.
There was a 225 per cent increase in attendance in Fall 2019 compared to the NSO SUS ran in 2018, with 1,300 students attending compared to the previous 400. Of students registered for the Fall 2019 semester, 64 per cent of them attended this semester’s NSO, according to Student Life.
The day was a collaborative effort between many areas of the university. Student Life introduced the first-ever Invocation Ceremony, which they plan to continue on all future NSO days. Students were welcomed to the university with speeches from faculty, administrators, and students, including UFV president Joanne MacLean and SUS president Tripat Sandhu.
During the day there were a number of activities, including a personalized faculty welcome sesion where students could meet their program deans and a midway fair where students learned about resources available to them through games and activities.
Student Life said that in the future they plan to expand orientation programming to the Chilliwack campus and Trades and Technology campus.
Themes and concentrations on transcripts
Themes and concentrations will now be displayed on the official transcript for the Bachelor of Integrated Studies (BIS), previously the Bachelor of General Studies.
Themes are student-constructed learning programs, while concentrations are university-approved programs within the BIS. Previously there had been no official recognition of the student-chosen themes, but according to a memo to Senate, the College of Arts indicated it was a significant component of the program.
Discussion on the Health and Social Innovation Hub Research Centre
The Health and Social Innovation Hub Research Centre, which was approved at the last meeting, returned to Senate for a discussion. The hub was approved without full documentation in order to be eligible for a $300,000 grant, which it received.
There are plans to turn the centre into a full institute once it has permanent funding. For now, the positions within the institute are unpaid.
There was some discussion in Senate concerning the use of “innovation” in the title, which one senator argued should be used strictly regarding the development of technology.
