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, which are usually held once a month at either the Abbotsford or the CEP campus, but are currently hosted online via Zoom due to COVID-19. Senate makes decisions that impact the daily lives of both students and faculty.
Strategic planning update from the provost
An update on integrated strategic planning at UFV was presented by James Mandigo, provost and vice president academic.
The integrated strategic plan is a UFV initiative to determine the institution’s goals and plan to accomplish them, both through policy and through consultation with UFV’s staff, students, and community members.
Mandigo began by presenting graphics showing responses to the strategic planning survey that was sent out in August 2020. According to his presentation, more than 600 respondents were asked to select which of several imperatives they felt would be most impactful in helping UFV reach each of its three goals: “engaging learners,” “transforming lives,” and “building communities.”
Some noteworthy ideas among the most popular imperatives selected by respondents were commitments to providing “work-integrated learning opportunities” into all academic programs, and “[improving] the community’s ability to access university programs,” among many others.
Report and statistics on academic misconduct
David Johnston, university registrar, presented a brief report on academic misconduct at UFV over the past year.
The report showed a total of 241 cases of cheating, plagiarism, and resubmission of work that have been detected at UFV over the past year, with the vast majority occurring during the busier fall and winter semesters. The fall and winter semesters appeared to have near-parity, with only 11 more total cases in fall than winter.
Both health sciences and the faculty of applied and technical studies reported zero cases of academic misconduct during this time period, while the majority of cases occurred in professional studies and the College of Arts.
Notably, these statistics appear to only account for the time period between Fall 2019 and Summer 2020, only the latter of which was completely taught under remote conditions. As such, it is still difficult to measure whether the transition to remote learning has had a meaningful impact on UFV’s detection of academic misconduct.
