Shahroze Rauf | News Editor
Featured Image: The forum, open to York community members, was held by the Senate of York University. | Courtesy of Fatema Ali/Excalibur
The Academic Policy, Planning & Research Committee (APPRC) of the Senate at York held an open forum to discuss the upcoming University Academic Plan (UAP).
“The APPRC is the committee that is tasked with preparing a draft of the new academic plan to go forward to Senate after much consultation with the community here at York. This is our first public consultation,” said the Chair of the APPRC, Carl Ehrlich.
The new UAP, once implemented, will be in effect from 2020 to 2025. In a discussion led by Ehrlich, the process of how the new UAP will be established was revealed, showing how each draft in both the fall and winter terms of this year will be consulted with the York community.
“The university academic, or as we flippantly refer to it as our university’s ‘five-year plan,’ influences every aspect of our lives here at York. When it comes to complement planning, hiring, curricular decisions, and academic decisions,” said Ehrlich.
Ehrlich adds that the UAP is the guideline that the university follows for the next five years – it is basically a skeleton that the infrastructure of the campus and its people follow.
“If anything takes place in your experience of which you do not approve of in the next five years and someone says to you, ‘well this is according to the new academic plan,’ and if you have not provided your input then you really don’t have an excuse for complaining about the implications,” said Ehrlich.
One of the many significant items discussed during the forum was the variety of approaches the university wants to take with the new UAP, one of the most popular being the “Grand challenges/big questions approach” as per an anonymous poll held during the forum.
“Some have suggested that the need for change at universities, generally to serve a diverse population, is a grand challenge in itself,” said Provost and Vice-President Academic of York, Lisa Philipps.
Philipps said that the new UAP would allow faculties in general to re-examine their goals – some faculties have recently joined to pinpoint their academic pursuits, such as the recent motion to join together the Faculty of Environmental Studies and the Department of Geography, to be called the ‘Faculty of Urban and Environmental Change.’
“I could also imagine a faculty deciding they want to build a plan around a faculty-specific challenge,” said Philipps when discussing the UAP and its approach.
By the end of this fall term, the UAP’s progress report with community engagement will be complete, until they meet with community members again for the plan’s drafting. The final copy will be submitted by the Senate by the end of April 2020.
