Brock University’s Senate gathered for its first meeting of the 2024-25 school term.
Responsible for the educational policy and expenditure of funds, Brock’s Senate consists of 72 members including 39 elected full-time teaching staff and professional librarians, two members of the Board of Trustees, 23 ex officio members of Senate, six undergraduate students and two graduate students.
The Senate makes many important decisions regarding the University, including the establishment and maintenance of faculties, schools, institutes, departments, chairs and courses at Brock. On Sept. 18, they held their first monthly meeting.
For new Senators, an hour-long Orientation session was held before the start of the actual meeting, in which Senate Chair Panagiota “Nota” Klentrou and Senate Secretary Yvonne Roussel guided the room through a variety of topics and instructions regarding Senate procedures.
Some highlights from this session included an explanation of the shared governance of Brock, wherein the Senate manages the academic side of the administration, and the Board of Trustees the financial side; a discussion on the distinction between voice and vote, in which Senators are required to provide their input and opinion to discuss every side of a topic, but ultimately vote in the best interest of the university however they see fit; and an overview of Robert’s Rules of Order, the manual of parliamentary procedure.
The Orientation session ended with some rounds of trivia to get Senators engaged and remind them what it’s like to be on the receiving end of a quiz.
Senate proper was called to order at 4 p.m. and the meeting began with a land acknowledgement. After preliminary actions, in which the agenda was slightly amended and approved, two reports and voting items were brought to the floor.
The first notable discussion was a presentation by President Lesley Rigg for the approval of the final draft of Brock’s Strategic Plan. After getting responses from hundreds of students, faculty, community members and more, the Planning, Priorities and Budget Advisory Committee (PPBAC) knew they needed a plan that was concise and focused on the future.
The committee decided on a purpose of “transforming people, reimagining the future through curiosity, creativity and courage.” The four Guiding Principles of this Strategic Plan are to “champion one another, break down barriers, lead by example and learn through curiosity.” Finally, the Strategic Directions and Priorities the committee decided on were to “shape tomorrow through research, discovery and knowledge; build sustainable futures; realize you matter; and bring the world to Brock, and Brock to the world.”
Rigg was especially proud of the community at Brock, and how the people here care for and support one another. She said this was a major part of the direction of this plan and mentioned that while this plan champions diversity and equity at Brock, these are ongoing processes that can never be truly completed — they take constant work.
Carleigh Charlton, BUSU’s VPUA and a member of the PPBAC, said that she was impressed at how well the plan embodies student voices: that it doesn’t just reflect student values, it is student values.
The motion to approve the final draft of the Strategic Plan passed unanimously.
After some other discussions including the approval of the fall 2024 convocation and an uncontroversial motion from the Governance Committee, President Rigg gave a brief report in which she thanked the Senate again for approving the Strategic Plan and welcomed the new Provost and Vice-President, Academic, Arja Vainio-Mattila.
Rigg also mentioned the third-party efficiency reviews that Brock will soon undergo through the Ontario government’s Efficiency and Accountability Fund, which was announced broadly in February to “target structural issues as well as operational policies to improve sustainability and student experiences,” but was only recently mandated for Brock. Currently, they don’t have much information, but Rigg promised more would become clear in the upcoming weeks.
Next, Vainio-Mattila gave her own report, which she began by describing how inviting the school has been as she’s met countless new people, including the folks at the library, which she described as the “heart of this institution.”
She also discussed the launching of the Curriculum Development Initiative and the first meeting Steering Committee which will direct the initiative. The written report provided in the minutes package outlines their purposes:
“The CDI will provide a critical opportunity for academic units to update their curriculum and better align it with the expectations of students. The Steering Committee is tasked with developing the framework that departments will employ in the coming months to complete this work.”
In a brief but significant announcement, Vainio-Mattila brought up the recently announced limits on international students in Canada. She was not certain of what implications these limits would have on Brock, but she knew this would be an issue further down the road.
Finally, to conclude her report, Vainio-Mattila congratulated Charlton on winning the 2024 Open Education Award for Excellence in the People in Open: Student Category.
Next on the agenda was a report from the Acting Vice President, Research, Michelle McGinn on the defunding of PPE coverage to get complete funding from outside agencies. After McGinn’s presentation, the Academic Colleague (AC) for Brock University, Don Cyr, gave a report.
Senator Cyr discussed the Council of Ontario Universities’ (COU) displeasure at the ongoing government constriction of universities while colleges are allowed and encouraged to expand, mainly due to the decreasing value of the university degree in the public eye. He pointed out that with colleges soon offering Master’s and Bachelor’s Degrees, it is now more important than ever to increase the positive perception of universities in the public to convince the government to put more funding into these institutions. Lobbying to the government isn’t useful, he said, if the public doesn’t grasp the value of the university.
He also provided a summary of his AC meeting with other Ontario universities, with updates on their goings on; notably, he did not summarize his own comments about Brock, which Senators were quick to request in Senator Cyr’s next report.
The meeting ended with an amendment to the minutes from the last Senate meeting to clarify the description of the Senate Chair nomination. This discussion raised another issue about the procedure of that meeting, in which a motion was erased once the Senate voted — without motioning to do so. Senate Chair Klentrou said that this would be a problem they would deal with later, but for the sake of the amendment, the explanation of what happened made sense. The motion to amend the minutes was passed unanimously, and the meeting was subsequently adjourned at 5:07 p.m.
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Brock’s Senate meets at least once a month, usually on Wednesday at 3 p.m. in the Sankey Chamber. A full schedule can be found here, but their next meeting will be held on Oct. 9. These meetings are open to the public, either in person or online on Teams, the link to which can be found on the meeting’s corresponding agenda, which can be found a week in advance in the online University Secretariat Document Library.
If students are interested in how policies and decisions are made at one of the highest levels of governance at Brock, they should pay attention to what’s being discussed by the university’s Senate.
