Chair

Nikita Reznik: academic@utgsu.ca

Meetings

When: Monthly meetings. Specific dates will be announced.

Meeting: Fri, Dec 2 at 11am.

Agenda:
- Faculty of Arts and Science academic plan.
- DCA Restructuring, and the particulars for monitoring the implementation of the new structure.
- Dedicated student space.
- Library advisory group.

Where: GSU Basement Lounge

How to sign up: e-mail academic@utgsu.ca

About the Committee

The elected representatives of the GSU strongly believe that in order for the timely completion of our degrees, the University must provide appropriate conditions and resources, such as effective academic supervision and universal graduate financial support. The work of the Academics and Funding Committee includes academic requirements, supervision, RA working conditions, space, intellectual property and access to information in regard to policy development.

The committee’s mandate includes gathering information on common practices in each department and then acting to improve your life as a graduate student. This is particularly important when looking how to develop policy as one department’s culture may vary widely from another.

The GSU, along with other members of the Canadian Federation of Students, continues to call upon post-secondary institutions and provincial governments to increase the levels of student funding. Most U of T graduate students receive funding packages that follow the principle of establishing minimum funding levels (tuition fees plus $13,000 annually, indexed to the cost-of-living). The funding package is only for doctoral stream students, meaning all students in professional stream programs and many students in terminal Master’s programs are excluded from guaranteed funding.

This year the sub-committee will:

• Work on monitoring the proposed Faculty of Arts and Science restructuring plan, and make sure it is revised in the best interests of the students.
• Advocate for a fair structure for the Doctoral Completion Award.
• Advocate for reduced post-residency fees.

Academics and Funding Committee News

Last update: Nov 17, 2011

Doctoral Completion Award

Based on the feedback received, the GSU provided an, in general, accepting recommendation on the proposed structure of the DCA for next year, with the departmental autonomy on how the money will be allocated. The GSU insists that the proposed structure will be revised next year, and further consultations will be in order.

In addition, UofT is launching a new fundraising campaign, with the aim of fund-matching whatever external scholarships the departments may obtain. There is a total of 6,000,000$ available as matching funds, for scholarships for PhD students.

Faculty of Arts and Science Academic Plan

Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science, Dr. Merrick Gertler has announced a new Academic Plan for the Faculty of Arts and Science. The plan concentrates at a broad scope of issues, however, is vague in regards to the specific issues such as departmental amalgamations. Academics and University Affairs subcommittees have discussed the proposed plan and are in the process of trying to clarify the ambiguous points presented.

Grading Practices Policy (GPP)

There is a new proposed draft on the Grading Policies Practices. The new draft attempts to combine the two separate documents – the general GPP, and the one for graduate students. The School of Graduate Studies is collecting feedback on the new draft. The exec have studied the new draft, and did not find any points that require immediate attention. However, wide feedback is encouraged. It is envisioned that the draft will go into the first governance cycles of 2012.

Along with the GPP draft, a new policy on Continuity and Academic Disruption is also proposed. The policy outlines the procedures and practices that will be In effect in the case of major disruptions to university operations. The draft gives the power to the Provost to declare a state of academic interruption and to declare when the interruption is over. We have brought this to the attention of the SGS. Wider feedback is encouraged in this case as well, both to the SGS and to the GSU exec.

Finally, the draft also contain a revised policy on transcript annotations, to centralize the annotations put on the transcripts, to prevent their overfilling.

New ROSI

We have been informed that works are in progress on a new student repository system which is going to be a successor for ROSI. The system is going to be far more advanced and much easier to use. The system will be gradually kicking in within the next few years.