Community Development
"Considering the importance of a strong academic advocacy network, we need to ensure we are having meaningful conversations around the academic experience with key stakeholders across the Western and HBK community."
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how will we do it?
Restructuring the Academic Advocacy Roundtables
Upon consulting with key stakeholders in academic advocacy across campus, feedback heard was that the current structure for roundtables does not properly allow smaller faculties and affiliates to properly share in the conversation. I want to maintain the integrity of the roundtable by accomplishing its goals of:
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Allowing for meaningful discourse surrounding academics to take place
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Information gathering to bring concerns to the administration
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Bridging the faculties and affiliates to a broader community
Complementary groupings
The proposed restructuring involves two meetings a month, the first meeting in a smaller pod of groups with similar needs and size. In each pod, each faculty/affiliate will be able to highlight one academic concern with the goal to meet with communities that share that same need at the second meeting at the end of each month.
The proposed groupings for the pods are as follows:
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Huron, Brescia, King’s
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Science, Social Science, Health Science
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FIMS, Arts, Music
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Ivey, Engineering and the Professional Schools (Dentistry, Law, Education, Medicine)
Maintaining the MOU with the Western Student Senators
The Senate and Western Student Senators are very important to the integrity of academic advocacy. To ensure academic advocacy is optimized, the USC needs to be working in tandem with the WSS to achieve collective goals. Historically, the USC and the WSS have not been collaborative bodies; this year, the WSS and the USC have had a very strong working relationship. In order to continue this work, it is important to formalize the relationship. I would like to amend the memorandum of understanding to mandate that the AVP Academic be present at WSS meetings as a resource member, acting as a liaison between the two institutions. This will connect the WSS and its working groups to the necessary USC resources for data collection and analysis.
