| Like Jenn I signed on behalf of the School of Communication. In fact, the idea for the letter emerged out of discussions in our GPC as we parsed the figures on grad student funding released in the fall.
I must admit I’m surprised that some colleagues seem to be more troubled by the process through which this letter was created than by the news that many graduate students at SFU are forced to live on less than 14k a year. My sense is that the reason so many grad chairs were happy to sign on is that the content of the letter is simply not controversial in their units.
There has been zero misrepresentation of the degree of support this letter has. If colleagues wish to argue against increased funding for graduate students, or to adopt a different position than that advocated in the letter, then they are free to do so through any number of initiatives, including securing support from their GPCs.
Best,
Enda
Enda Brophy
Associate Professor and Graduate Chair | School of Communication Associate | 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.
On Apr 17, 2023, at 10:34 AM, Jennifer Wang <jwa265@sfu.ca> wrote:
I signed the letter as Grad Chair on behalf of the philosophy department. Just to be clear, this is the position of our department, and in fact we sent a separate letter of support for our students endorsed by all regular faculty members.
Best
Jenn
Sent from my iPad
On Apr 17, 2023, at 9:46 AM, Derek Bingham <dbingham@sfu.ca> wrote:
Hi,
Signing as a Graduate Chair might indicate that this is the position of your department or Graduate Program Committee unless there was some disclaimer stating otherwise. Each department is different, but there would need to be some sort of vote in my department
for that to be acceptable.
On another note, I think Nilima has some pertinent thoughts. It boils down to money and who pays. When I was a graduate student here in the 90's, one could afford lodging in Hamilton Hall, board, and tuition with a few bucks
left over for fun on 5-ish base units per semester, or equivalent. That certainly is not the case these days, and it all boils down to the stipend.
In my opinion, both the University and the TSSU are complicit in the situation we are in today. The TSSU spent the last two decades growing its business (many more members who are not grad students), but not striking for better wages for the majority of
their membership. The University has been able to hide the lack of salary growth behind more, and larger, grants obtained by (many new) faculty in the 2000's. That momentum has run out.
So here we are now. I suspect that the solution will be a few more dollars for Grad students from the Uni, and a minimum stipend requirement. Departments will then take fewer students since the minimum stipend will largely be paid for by stagnant grant monies,
there will be less HQP for faculty on their grant applications/renewals, thereby reducing funding for successful future grants that require HQP, and even less money for future Grad students... so even fewer future students. This does not bode well for the
institution.
Any sustainable solution happens above the Uni. It is really up to the provincial government to increase the funding for students, and the federal government to invest more in research grants. Alas, this is unlikely to happen.
Derek
Derek Bingham Professor Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science Simon Fraser University
From: Lyn Bartram <lyn@sfu.ca>
Sent: Monday, April 17, 2023 8:36:42 AM
To: Nancy Hedberg
Cc: Ronda Arab; Igor Shinkar; Kirsten Zickfeld; Behraad Bahreyni; Enda Brophy; academic-discussion (academic-discussion@sfu.ca)
Subject: Re: Grad Chair public letter on funding
Because Rutgers is a private US university and the funding model is completely different. Also tuition fees are 21K for NJ residents and 34K for everyone else.
Lyn Bartram, Professor
SIAT
Simon Fraser University
On Apr 17, 2023, at 4:26 AM, Nancy Hedberg <nancy_hedberg@sfu.ca> wrote:
Hello, Here is some information re significant gains just negotiated for graduate student support (and sessionals) at Rutgers University:
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/labor-unionization/2023/04/17/rutgers-unions-suspend-strike-after-big-gains?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=4e713b2f4f-DNU_2021_COPY_04&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-4e713b2f4f-236946850&mc_cid=4e713b2f4f&mc_eid=826e5bc595#
Full-time graduate student going up from US $ 30,160 for academic year to $ 40,000 (for 10 months). Calendar yearsslary (12 months) had been $ 34,000.
3-credit course by sessional (“part-time lecturer) going up from $5,800 to $8,330 base pay over the 4-year contract. ($10,000 sought by union, which some will achieve due to seniority).
Postdocs up by 28% to $64,000 ($70,000 sought by union).
If at Rutgers, why not at SFU?
Cheers, Nancy Hedberg Professor of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, SFU
From:
Ronda Arab <ronda_arab@sfu.ca>
Date: Sunday, April 16, 2023 at 11:32 PM
To: Igor Shinkar <igor_shinkar@sfu.ca>
Cc: Kirsten Zickfeld <kzickfel@sfu.ca>, lyn <lyn@sfu.ca>, Behraad Bahreyni <bba19@sfu.ca>, Enda Brophy <enda_brophy@sfu.ca>, "academic-discussion (academic-discussion@sfu.ca)" <academic-discussion@sfu.ca>
Subject: Re: Grad Chair public letter on funding
I admire your efforts to get such information from the administration, Igor. More transparency on this and many other issues would certainly be helpful and appreciated but the current administration seems less willing than ever to share
information.
Ronda
On Apr 16, 2023, at 12:40 PM, Igor Shinkar <igor_shinkar@sfu.ca> wrote:
Dear Kirsten,
All these are great ideas, I would support them all.
About the BASS funding, I've been asking the GPS for information about the BASS funding since December last year. I wanted to understand how the BASS funding is distributed between the departments. I was not able
to get any answer for 4 months now.
If we want a change in the BASS model, we can start by understanding the current model. For now, even this seems to be a huge secret.
The only publicly available information I'm aware of is here https://www.sfu.ca/gradstudies/faculty-staff/resources/funding-ga3/bass.html.
But I don't know how to read these "models" and "formulas", and I don't understand how they are translated into actual numbers.
Best, Igor
From: KirstenZickfeld <kzickfel@sfu.ca>
Sent: Sunday, April 16, 2023 11:43:50 AM
To: Lyn Bartram; Behraad Bahreyni
Cc: Enda Brophy; academic-discussion (academic-discussion@sfu.ca)
Subject: Re: Grad Chair public letter on funding
We need advocacy at different levels to be able offer graduate students a dignified level of income, none of which mutually exclusive:
- Call on SFU to increase BASS funding and/or and/or waive graduate tuition.
- Call on SFU to have graduate student needs front and centre in their Advancement efforts and in conversations with government to increase revenue for graduate programming.
- Call on research councils to increase the values of graduate scholarships and awards (currently wholly inadequate), and of research grants (e.g. NSERC Discovery grants) to allow PIs to pay research assistants a decent salary.
Kirsten Zickfeld
Professor and Graduate Program Chair, Geography
On 2023-04-15 4:03 p.m., Lyn Bartram wrote:
I fully concur with Prof. Bahreyni’s concerns. In our school the professors fund the RAs of their students, and that funding is in no way provided by nor dependent on the university. Are we discussing pooling these funds to equitably
support students across other disciplines? This would not be acceptable to the funding councils. In fact, we should be advocating strongly for better graduate student funding to those councils, and at the same time warning the uni that we cannot sustain current
graduate student counts in this finding climate. V
Again, we need to be careful about claiming this letter represents the position of the Graduate Program Committees in each department if it has not gone to a vote in each.
Dear 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 University MSE 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/
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 Brophy
Associate Professor and Graduate Chair | School of Communication
Associate | 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.
--
Dr. Kirsten Zickfeld (pronouns: she/her/hers)
Distinguished SFU Professor of Climate Science
Chair, Graduate Program
Department of Geography
Simon Fraser University
8888 University Drive
Burnaby BC Canada V5A 1S6
Phone: 778-7829047
Web: https://www.sfu.ca/geography/about/our-people/profiles/Kirsten-Zickfeld.html
I respectfully acknowledge SFU is on unceded and traditional territories of the Tsleil-Waututh (səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ), Kwikwetlem (kʷikʷəƛ̓əm), Squamish (Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw) and Musqueam (xʷməθkʷəy̓əm) Nations.
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