The following was sent by Jennifer Dekker, APUO President on February 9, 2017 to Jacques Frémont, uOttawa President regarding the selection committee for the new Vice-President Academic and Provost.
Dear President Frémont,
Last fall, I raised the issue of the composition of the selection committee for the new Vice- President Academic and Provost with you. The basis of my concern was that there was not a single non-administrative professor on the selection committee, thereby silencing the voices of APUO members in the selection process. In the context of the issues around decision-making and governance that the APUO Executive raised with you last summer, I found this very troubling. You were not able to rectify the composition of the selection committee at that time, but gave your word that you would add APUO professors in the selection process of all senior administrative positions going forward. It is important for APUO members to be represented on such selection committees because we have a very different perspective than administrators. We report to administrators and work under their leadership and direction. We are therefore subject to their decisions, management styles, resource allocation and sometimes their arbitrariness with respect to the above. This, combined with the fact that there are no APUO member professors on the committee should motivate the selection committee to conduct an impeccable assessment of the short listed candidates, taking care to ensure that the person who is selected will be acceptable to APUO members.
While APUO does not have an official voice on the selection committee, our members spoke loudly and clearly last year when we conducted our “Evaluation of Senior Administrators,” one of whom was the Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences. Although the APUO Executive outlined the issues when you met with us last summer, nothing has been done regarding the disturbing details that professors reported in our survey. In case you were not privy to these, I have attached the summary of the quantitative data and some of the qualitative data that we received to this email. I would strongly encourage you to take this feedback on the Dean’s performance if the selection committee for the V-P Academic and Provost is considering this Dean’s candidacy.
Please accept this letter of concern as a reflection of the anxiety that our members in Health Sciences and other faculties experience when they hear rumours that Dean Perrault is being considered for one of the most important roles in our university. The fact that the Dean has made herself inaccessible to most professors in her Faculty, is alleged to have unfairly deprived some of resources while enriching others, refuses to acknowledge the importance of bilingualism, and is said to have engaged in workplace harassment and bullying – which the administration, contrary to Ontario workplace law, has never investigated – is of grave concern.
With all due respect,
Jennifer Dekker
APUO President