I was in SFU admin for 7 years. It can be a very different world, like the 'World of the Upside Down' in the Stranger Things Netflix series.
The administrators I worked with often crafted their sense of identity by defining themselves against the faculty. E.g. faculty are spoiled and overpaid because we don't work Mon-Fri 9-5. At the same time, they called themselves 'researchers' and 'academics' because they were employed by a university.
They misadopted the concept of 'appreciative inquiry' to mean that they should lead their admin units by constantly telling positive stories about themselves.
I was flown across North America to administrator conferences, where I witnessed a sub-intellectual world where everything was always framed in terms of simple dichotomies, e.g. "Old teaching was content-centered, New Teaching is student-centered.'
They operate according to simple platitudes: "If you're not measuring, you're not managing."
It was a 7-year long apprenticeship in living inside a Kafka novel, what can I say? Faculty cede institutional power to all these managers at their own professional peril,
Michael Filimowicz, PhD
Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology
School of Interactive Arts and Technology
Simon Fraser University
Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2021 10:24 AM
To: Nicholas Blomley; academic-discussion (academic-discussion@sfu.ca)
Subject: Re: SFUFA Bargaining Bulletin - University Staffing
Indeed, it was very obvious to me since I arrived at SFU in 1990 that this was a bureaucratically-driven university. But the extent to which this has become so is really quite concerning. Imagine what will happen when we get a School of Medicine. Faculty positions for the rest of the university might become even scarcer, which may imply further precarization of university teaching in the form of sessional instructors, etc. What can SFUFA do to avert such scenario? Can the university ever become a faulty-and-student driven one?
Best, Gerardo
__
Professor Gerardo Otero
School for International Studies
Simon Fraser University
7200-515 West Hastings Street
Vancouver, BC Canada V6B 5K3
Tel. Off: +1-778-782-4508
Website: http://www.sfu.ca/people/otero.html
I thankfully acknowledge that I live and work in unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Kwikwetlem Nations.
From:
Nick Blomley <blomley@sfu.ca>
Date: Tuesday, November 9, 2021 at 6:44 PM
To: "academic-discussion (academic-discussion@sfu.ca)" <academic-discussion@sfu.ca>
Subject: Fwd: SFUFA Bargaining Bulletin - University Staffing
These SFUFA data are staggering!
