Dean’s Advisory Council
Draft Minutes
Wednesday October 15th, 2008
5th Floor Boardroom, 5-103
Present:
David Docherty, Chair
Anne Brydon, Michel Desjardin, Carol Duncan, Patricia Elliot, Jonathan
Finn, Judith Fletcher, Jana Gordon, Michael Imort, Ute Lischke, Joyce
Lorimer, Chris Nighman, Herbert Pimlott, Bob Sharpe, Milo Sweedler,
Brian Tanguay, Eleanor Ty, Debora Van Nijnatten, Byron Williston,
Regrets:
Mary-Louise Byrne, Peter Urquhart, James Wong
Guests:
Janina Ganton - Alumni Relations; Stephanie Giddings – Development,
Julie Pong – FoA Dean’s Office
Minutes:
Ruth MacNeil
1. Approval of the Agenda:
 Change wording on item 5. Should read probation not petitions.
 Approved with change
2. Approval of September 5th, 2008 minutes:
 Change to page 2, point 5, and bullet 6.
 Replace the work efficiency with coverage so that the sentence will now
read:”Currently, the system is working at approximately 30% coverage”.
 Minutes accepted with change.
3. Faculty of Arts Alumni E-newsletter: Janina Ganton – Alumni Relations
 Alumni Relations is working towards faculty specific e-communication.
 Mock E-newsletter distributed to members of DAC for review.
 All Alumni communications goes through the Alumni Relations Office. As
a result, the data base of email contacts is very current and is updated on
a daily basis.
 Currently 26,000 email addresses on file.
 Alumni Relations sends out a general E-newsletter 6 times annually to all
alumni currently in the email database.
 Focus of the Faculty Newsletters will be to provide alumni with faculty
specific information.
 This publication will be distributed twice annually (October and April).
 Julie Pong has provided stories and images for the issue that will be
distributed this month.
 Faculty Newsletters are step 1 of the long term strategy of Alumni
Relations to engage Alumni.
 Alumni Relations would like to work with Departments to develop
newsletters that will coincide with the Faculty of Arts newsletter.
 Concern expressed by the Chairs that an October deadline date for
submission of articles may be difficult to meet given the pace of work at
the beginning of the semester and also that April may be too late to send
out a departmental newsletter.
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Would it be possible to establish a standard date for Departmental
newsletters?
Time line would be October and April for the Faculty of Arts, and
December or January for the Departments.
Janina indicated that this is a possibility but that all departments must
have their newsletters ready to go at the same time.
Question was raised asking if Departmental newsletters could be added
to a link on the Faculty of Arts newsletter.
Best practice has indicated that linked E-newsletters are not effective and
have a low viewer rate.
What is the primary focus of the newsletter? Faculty of Arts targets
Alumni, Departments target faculty and current students. Departmental
newsletters have a larger focus and target an audience larger than
Alumni.
Question was raised asking if the Departments were able to access the
email database to obtain addresses for alumni.
Janina indicated that there needs to be a central system for updating and
recording email addresses. I
Concern by Chairs that the current departmental newsletters will lose
their individuality if working with Alumni Relations. Janina assured chairs
that while there are some standard items, there are allowances for
individuality for the departments.
Janina will upload the information into a template and will forward to the
Departments.
4. Dean’s External Advisory Council (FoA): Jana Gordon – Development Office
 Jana and David would like to ask faculty member to consider volunteering
to assist with promoting the Faculty of Arts to the community.
 DAC members are asked to use their external links to expand the
presence of the Faculty of Arts to the community.
 External Advisory Council would consist of external representative (no
more than 12) and would represent a broad mix of individuals brought
forward by the departments.
 Any names for consideration may be forwarded to Jana Gordon.
 These individuals would be invited to campus events (i.e. Convocation,
FoA Awards Ceremonies, etc).
 Question: What would these individuals be advising on for the Faculty of
Arts?
 Individuals would be able to share expertise on projects, provide further
contacts for the Faculty of Arts. As a result, they would expand their own
network.
 David will be attending a 3 day development conference in November and
will report back to DAC at next meeting.
5. Weekly Wrap Up:
 Stephanie Giddings will be joining the Dean’s Office on October 20th as
the Administrative Assistant to the Dean.
 Convocation: afternoon of October 31st, 2008.
 Joyce Lorimer and Eleanor Ty will be reading graduate’s names.
 Ray Darling and Jennifer Casey presented information to
VPAAC concerning to the format for convocation.
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All convocation ceremonies will be held on campus.
Anticipated that this will save approximately $20,000 annually in
rental fees.
Graduates will only be allowed 2 tickets per family.
Convocation will expand to a week long activity (from 3 to 5
days).
Change will see alphabetical listing to accommodate all of the
students in the Faculty of Arts.
DAC members are asked to consider format for the Faculty of
Arts convocation. Chairs are encouraged to bring this item
forward to departments for discussion.
6. Probation: Julie Pong – Deans Office
 Julie attended a conference in Chicago for academic advisors. At this
event, it became evident that the Faculty of Arts is not doing enough to
assist students who are on probation.
 Summary of probation statistics:
Statistics
Total # on
probation
# of 1st Year
on probation
# on
probation
after winter
semester
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2008
%
167
2007
233
131
2006
%
195
186
96%
126
%
147
85%
159
96%
142
Starting in January, the Faculty of Arts will be notifying students via email
if their GPA is less than 2.0 or if their GPA is between 2.0 and 4.0.
Additional warning will be sent to student in an honours program who’s
GPA is between 4.0 and 5.0 indicating that they must raise their GPA to
remain in the honours program.
All students who are on probation after the winter semester will not be
allowed to register for fall courses until they have contacted the Faculty of
Arts. They will be required to meeting the Julie Pong or Michael Imort
before being allowed to register.
A letter will also be sent to their home address from the Dean (addressed
to the student) as a further reminder of their current status.
Julie will forward a list of those students on academic probation to the
undergraduate advisors and the admin assistants for each of the
departments.
Julie will also host a work shop for all undergraduate advisors regarding
probation status.
7. Special Initiatives:
 Due to the Dean’s office October 15th for review.
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8. Awards and Fellowships:
 Reminder to DAC of the awards that have been forwarded to their
attention which may be of interest to faculty members and students.
9. Other Business:
I. Emeritus Status: Carol Duncan
 Currently no information available on the web site pertaining to
retired and emeritus faculty members.
 Carol has contacted Jacqui Tam from Public Affairs concerning the
possibility of publicizing the continued work of retired faculty
members.
 Additional recommendation to include retired faculty members in
university events such as awards ceremony and the recognition of
newly tenured and retired faculty at an event hosted by the Faculty
of Arts.
II. Curriculum: Bob Sharpe
 Curriculum committee would like to be more pro-active and invite
departments to send representatives to meetings.
 Departmental representation will assist in the development of ideas
and proposals for new curriculum.
 Question was raised regarding the duplicity of work since
departments normally develop curriculum items that are brought
forward to the committee.
 Representation at Curriculum meetings would allow departments to
interact and may lead to innovations from other departments.
 Chairs to meet and discuss.
 Curriculum committee will present trends in curriculum development
at a future FoA Divisional Council meeting.
III. Multi-Campus Governance: David Docherty
 Report being presented to the Milton Academic Planning Committee
and then to Senate for review.
 If decision to expand into Milton is delayed or abandoned, the report
will be filed.
 If Milton campus proceeds, then the multi-campus governance
issues will need to be addressed. Report will indicate that faculties
will be non-geographically based.
 Report is unclear how this model will work as the size of the campus
grows.
 Possibility of splitting the Faculty of Arts. This will be discussed
further at the Chairs retreat on Friday October 24th.
 FoA must be prepared should multi-campus governance be put into
place.
 Chairs requested that in order to address the situation the size of
the campus must be established in addition to which disciplines will
be present at each campus.
 It is estimated that each campus will have a population of
approximately 15,000 students.
 Applied sciences will be located on the Milton campus.
IV. Registrar’s Report:
 Since Labour Day in 2010 is late in September, the fall examination
timetable must be adjusted.
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
Ray Darling is reviewing the possibility of scheduling 4 examinations
per day.
 This may be implemented in the fall of 2009.
 Complications include more student examination conflicts.
V. McLean’s Virtual Fair:
 October 22nd, 2008
 David will participate on line to answer questions from 5:00 until
9:00pm
 If others would like to volunteer, please contact David.
 Liaison will also be online to assist with questions.
10. Meeting adjourned at 3:15 pm.
 Next Meeting: Friday November 21st. 1:30 – 3:00pm, 5th floor
DAWB
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