McMaster University Administration, according to CUPE 3906 is encouraging all academic departments to eradicate Unit Two (i.e. sessional) faculty members from their budgets. This is not the first time that this issue has been brought forward, but this is the first time that such a huge layoff has been mentioned. Over the past five years, more and more sessional professors have been denied tenure, and most are now only hired for an academic year.
In addition to this, individual course with low enrolment will be elimated, “under-valued” programs may be shut down, and course sections are to be merged. The majority of McMaster faculty is considered to be sessional, which means that we, the students, will be facing huge problems in the 2009-2010 academic year.
If this layoff occurs, students will be forced into large classes with little interaction from teaching staff. If you are considering post-graduate studies, you need a minimum of two references to vouch for your scholarly abilities. If you are going to be in large classes, it is very difficult to have a relationship with a professor. There is also the looming possibility of some classes no longer being offered; or (at best) being offered every other year or every two years. This is problematic when you have specific course requirements and a very finite opportunity to take certain classes.
As Juliette Merritt, a professor in the English Department laments in an editorial piece: “I have been teaching at McMaster for over 10 years, and am facing for the first time the possibility that there may be no teaching for me in the 2009/2010 year. Many of you may be facing the same loss of employment as the Employer forges ahead with plans to expand class sizes for full-time faculty who, having no Collective Agreement that can deal with the problem of burgeoning class sizes, are helpless to halt the rush towards larger and larger classes and greater workloads, at the expense of quality in education and fairness in employment relations”. This proposed mass layoff is making the sessional professors at McMaster quite nervous, and for just cause. I don’t think any of us at this point in our lives can imagine having the same job for ten years and then worrying that you may not be employed in the next three months. Pretty scary stuff.
It seems that there is a lot of question as to who exactly these sessional professors are, and aren’t. Sessional profs are anyone who is not considered tenured, or tenure-stream. This translates to a large number of the faculty at McMaster, and this affects every single program currently offered. Ironically, many of these professors are renowned and praised by students for their teaching abilities and their classes; and some even more so than their tenured counterparts.
One of the professors who is affected by this proposal is Cultural Studies professor Marc Ouellette. We mentioned Dr. Ouellette recently at MacInsiders when he was involved in McMaster’s first Civic Engagement Week, by providing the Introduction at the film screening of Michael Moore’s Slacker Uprising. We also wrote about Dr. Ouellette as one of this year’s Humanities Teaching Awards recipients. It turns out that Dr. Ouellette is one of the profs who may be let go, and the course for which he was nominated for the award may also be cut.
So what can YOU as the student do to try and prevent the loss of excellent professors like Dr. Ouellette? There is an online petition available for you to sign, which will be sent to McMaster’s Provost, Ilene Busch-Vishniac. Check it out and sign it here. Please do something about this: it will not only affect students, but it will also have a huge affect on those who lose their jobs and the families they support.
I am the 298th signature, and I recognize the names of several of my peers who have already signed, in addition to several profs I have had in the past. Please add your name and any comments you can think of, and pass along the petition using email and other forms of social networking media.
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