Thanks, Nilima.
I have been wondering 2 things about finances going forward.
1) SFU Doctor Factory: In the US medical school hospitals make a "profit" and dump a lot of money into their constituent universities. Is SFU Med going to have its own hospital (to make money!!) or are is SFU simply providing additional training spots to feed the existing UBC-related hospitals. I guess this is going to happen but its seems like the previous person in charge promised a Law School . . . and before that was the NCAA fame and glory scheme. Speaking of which . . .
2) What was the real financial impact of being in the NCAA? At the time of joining, we were all told this would bring in a tidal wave of revenue, not just in scholarships for students (whose lives have now been upended), but also in hard cash (I suppose from people paying to see games. . . ). Now that SFU had dumped that plan (which cost a lot of money in accreditation, etc.), where's the cash? Was SFU losing money?
I know that neither of these produces the money that Nilima has roughly estimated, but it seems to me that there are a lot of questions about how Leadership's pet projects' wheels hit the financial ground.
Dear Enda,
I also support increasing funding for the students, and I definitely agree with the goal at high level. Please add my name to the letter.
I suppose you are aware of this information on the SFU website
https://www.sfu.ca/students/financialaid/costs/international-students.html#graduate
It also suggest approximately 32K/year.
Having said that, I do have some questions.
1) I don't understand the funding model you are suggesting. How exactly are you proposing can we guarantee 32,000CAD to each students? I thought it is mainly the responsibility of the supervisors to fund our students using our grants, as well as offering them TAship.
At the university level, I am only aware of the BASS funding that GPS provides to the departments to support the grad students. But I did not see it anywhere in the letter. Are you suggesting SFU should increase the BASS funding?
2) The letter suggests it is a public letter from all (or many?) Grad Chairs at SFU. But reading the names of the people who signed the letter, I see that many grad chairs are missing and some people on the letter are not grad chairs.
- many schools not represented. For example, I don't see anyone from Faculty of Science or from Faculty of Applied Sciences. Is there a reason for that?
- Faculty of Education has 14 peoples. Are they all GPC chairs?
I think we should be a bit more precise about it, especially if that's the title of the document.
Best regards,
Igor ShinkarSchool of Computing Science
Chair of Graduate Program Committee
Very respected professor (if you believe these emails from prospective students)
https://www.cs.sfu.ca/~ishinkar/
From: Behraad Bahreyni <bba19@sfu.ca>
Sent: Friday, April 14, 2023 3:50:11 PM
To: Enda Brophy; academic-discussion (academic-discussion@sfu.ca)
Subject: RE: Grad Chair public letter on fundingDear Enda,
I fully support higher funding per student. However, I am unsure if we should ask the university responsible for the entirety of the funding situation.
As far as I know, with all due respect to the colleagues who have signed the petition, graduate chairs should represent the departments they are from when using the title. A request at this level certainly would have required some discussion within the departments so that the signature of grad chairs would imply consensus in that department rather than personal opinions.
Another factor I hope the grad chairs already have considered is the distribution of funding sources per department. For instance, could we collect data from all grad chairs on how many grad students are in each department and how much of the average funding per grad student comes from RA, TA, Fellowships, or other sources? We can then see if requesting the university to fix the funding problem makes sense or maybe we should be looking at other fixes.
Thanks
__________________
Behraad Bahreyni, PhD, PEng
Professor, School of Mechatronic Systems Engineering
Associate Member, School of Engineering Science
SFU Simon Fraser UniversityMSE 4176, 250-13450 102nd Ave
Surrey, BC, CANADA V3T 0A3
Tel: +1 (778) 782-8694 Fax: +1 (778) 782-7514 Web: http://sense.fas.sfu.ca/
From: Enda Brophy <ebrophy@sfu.ca>
Sent: Friday, April 14, 2023 2:12 PM
To: academic-discussion (academic-discussion@sfu.ca) <academic-discussion@sfu.ca>
Subject: Grad Chair public letter on funding
Dear colleagues, yesterday Graduate Chairs at SFU released a public letter calling on the university for a rapid and meaningful increase in real funding levels for graduate students across the university. Some of you will remember that the letter was initially discussed on this mailing list, and my thanks go to colleagues who offered input, helped craft the letter, and signed on. The letter can be found here, and we are still adding signatures as they come in so please do get in touch if you are a graduate chair and would like to sign.
Have a wonderful weekend,
Enda
Enda Brophy
Associate Professor and Graduate Chair | School of CommunicationAssociate | Labour Studies
Simon Fraser University | HC 3559
515 W Hastings St, Vancouver V6B 5K3
E: ebrophy@sfu.ca
Simon Fraser University lies on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) and Kwikwetlem (kʷikʷəƛ̓əm) Nations.