UFV Senate votes to continue online schooling, shares enrolment stats
During its first meeting of the 2020-21 school year last Friday, the UFV Senate voted to continue delivering most courses via online learning into the Winter 2021 semester due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Joanne MacLean, university president, began the meeting with an acknowledgement that UFV sits upon the territory of the Stó:l? people, and welcomed several newly elected senators, including four students. Afterward, an update on the university’s COVID-19 response was presented by James Mandigo, provost and vice president academic.
After sharing some COVID-related information and guidelines with senators, Mandigo presented a motion that UFV’s Winter 2021 semester should continue in the same format as the Fall 2020 semester, with the majority of courses offered exclusively via remote learning, excluding courses and programs where face-to-face learning is deemed to be “essential” in order to achieve learning outcomes.
After several minutes of discussion and debate, including a failed vote to amend the motion to read “highly desirable” instead of “essential,” the motion was passed by a majority vote.
Also discussed during the meeting were changes to UFV’s enrolment numbers as a result of COVID-19. According to Mandigo’s presentation, enrolment of new students at UFV has declined by eight per cent from this time last year, but the number of returning students is up two per cent. Additionally, Mandigo said Indigenous student enrolment is up slightly from last year, though an exact figure was not given.
Photo: UFV Flickr, Joanne MacLean in photograph
