The "Real Education for a Real World" motto perfectly reflects the academic environment and outcomes that I associate with Concordia University... and one that I would very much like to see maintained. It is a motto that people in and outside the Concordia community, whether they be other universities, potential/ current students, professionals, businesses, parents, etc. can understand and relate to.

As an alumni I would very much like to see Concordia continue its efforts to bridge the philosophy-policy-practice gap by striving to operationalize this very appropriate motto. Creating a learning community with philosophies, policies and practices that help the students... and staff successfully prepare for and take leadership roles in the "real world" is much preffered (in my academic experience) to filling ivory towers with disengaged minds and bodies.

An excellent question was raised at the Loyola Open Consultation. The question was how do we reconcile an open door with academic excellence. I think that we have to allow students, especially those we consider as Mature Students, to enter our programs but be more selective in who continues in the programs. That is, we should be willing to fail students who do not perform well academically. At one time we tried to implement a super fail program where students could not come back to school immediately after having failed. This was not maintained to my knowledge, and we seemed at one point to be bending over backwards to allow failed students to continue in order to bolster our numbers. When weak students enter more advanced courses they can impede the progress of the better students. It is very frustrating for professors to have to review introductory material
and still have students who don't understand much.

We have a good Counselling and Development department and over the years I have tried to inform my introductory level students about them. They have various workshops and can provide career counselling etc.

In addition, we have excellent workshops offered by the Concordia
Libraries on a wide range of topics dealing with finding and evaluating information.

How do we get students to avail themselves of the resources
available on campus? One is to make sure they are informed in classes, on MyConcordia, and by tables during the term. Also, we could identify students who are in academic jeopardy after their first term and ensure that they seek help.


If students do not benefit from counselling, having some time to
adjusting to university life, a new language etc and have a string of R's, F's and D's on their transcripts after 30 credits we should tell them goodbye.

Lets also continue to celebrate our good students--Dean's Lists,
awards, etc.

Dear President Woodsworth,

Thank you very much for this personalized invitation, which was wonderful to receive. I attended part but not all of the open meeting on the 27th, and my decision to write to you today is sparked both by what I heard and by what I did not hear during the time I was able to stay.

My first comment pertains to the relation of teaching to research. While it is clear that these two aspects of our mandate are in tension for some faculty members, I wish to express a different view. From semester to semester, or year to year, it is doubtless true that teaching or research may take priority for me, but over the long term my experience is that good research cannot help but to make for more up-to-date and alive teaching, while good teaching
contributes meaningfully to my ability to clearly communicate my ideas to my peers. My experience on hiring committees within the Art History department suggests that I am not alone in seeing these two pursuits as mutually enriching rather than mutually exclusive. Our recent hires all have wonderfully active research profiles, and I hear equally good things about their teaching from their students. In keeping with recent directions in the University, I am convinced that Concordia can and must excel at both of these crucial facets of education. There are different ways to accomplish this goal; we have some ETA appointments who only teach, and some research chairs who teach comparatively very little. Such
flexibility is undoubtedly important, for there is no one royal road to success. I believe, however, that it should be fostered against the general background of a professorial corps that aims to excel in both spheres of our profession.

To build this joint excellence, it is not enough to have good professors, however. We must also have good students, and most especially good graduate students, for its is in our graduate programs that research and teaching come together most fully. As you deliberate about the best way to focus our limited resources I would like to take this opportunity to express my conviction that increasing the entrance scholarships available to our graduate students would be one of the most effective ways of enhancing the standard of academic excellence at Concordia AND of improving the quality of our students' experience. As such, I believe that it
should be an integral part of our strategic research plan.

In our most recent internal performance appraisal in Art History, lack of graduate funding was identified as the major challenge facing the department. Each year more and more highly qualified students apply to our MA and PhD programs -- an indication of the strong national reputation of our graduate programs. Yet the majority of the students we accept into the MA program go elsewhere. As a past Graduate Program Director, I know that this is primarily because of the substantially lower level of funding we provide compared to other Universities. In 2004 our average entry award was only 29% of the average award offered by our major competitor; since then the situation has worsened considerably. It is frequently the most qualified and talented students that we
lose, and many of the equally capable students whom we do accept need to work during the school year, posing an added burden to the pursuit of their studies. From my perspective, lack of student scholarship funding (particularly in the Humanities, which lacks a tradition of scholarship funding through professorial research grants) is one of the biggest impediments to academic excellence at Concordia.

Overall, I find Concordia to be a wonderful place to be an academic:
vibrant, flexible and humane. I have wonderful colleagues and have experienced a tremendous degree of institutional support. On the rare occasions when I do consider incentives to change institutions, the promise of more uniformly talented graduate students is always a chief consideration.

Our graduate programs bring research and teaching together. As such, they occupy a special place at the heart of the University project.

In recent years Concordia has made a dramatic move to renew and enhance the professorial corps of the University; perhaps it is time now to turn some of that attention to our graduate student population.

Thank you, President Woodsworth, for this opportunity to express my concerns.

As this article says (http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2008/12/09/turn-general-motors-into-a-public-school/), public schools are like GM. If you compare Concordia with GM, there isn't a whole lot that is different.

- we have a product that isn’t competitive internationally
- union labor force
- costly pension and health care obligations
- management promoted and rewarded despite decades of failure

Instead of cutting costs, we must start doing things differently. Firing people to save money just results in less people doing the same amount of work. We're still heading in the wrong direction.

How much money do we spend in print ads, and other media spots? Can we see the return on investment on this? Is this money spent wisely? How much money can we save by outsources most of IITS' services?

Refocusing where we advertise (I suggest the web), and outsourcing IT spending is a logical thing to do. Rather than cutting the staffing for senseless operations.

Let's shake things up. Out with the old, forward with the new.

Hi,

I completed my undergraduate degree at Concordia in 2004, and have been working in student recruitment for the university for the last 2 years.

I attended the public consultation held yesterday at SGW, and feel compelled to comment on an issue that has overshadowed my time here:

We have one of the strongest Communications departments in the country. We also have one of the strongest business schools, and the same can be said of our Faculty of Fine Arts. Students, parents & school staff from across the country come to me to comment on this and applaud our programs.

It has, however, become evident to me that one of our biggest problems in terms of recruitment/image branding is our poor communication & marketing. How is this possible when we have leaders in those fields within our own walls? Individuals who know what Concordia is about.

Why do we have numerous repetitive publications? And why is feedback and input from recruiters/students not taken into consideration when producing these publications? Why are marketing, recruitment, and admissions not seen as a holy trinity needing to communicate, move & react together? What is the message being perpetuated in our publications? Do they really capture the essence of who & what Concordia University is? And what of the posters & banners, peppered with images that in no way represent my experience as a Concordia student?

These are the tools used to recruit, and if they fail to communicate our mission & values, then we will fail to attract the students we claim to be so in touch with. We fail to promote ourselves.

In my opinion, we are doing a poor job of showcasing our strengths and uniqueness, and have attempted to brand ourselves as something we are not: a competitor to McGill's world class academia/research. We have our own horn to toot, on aspects that many like myself appreciate far more than "international world class reputations". Let's focus on that, get the great minds we already have on campus together (in terms of design, marketing, communications), use the student experience to our advantage (engage student leaders in the process), and produce marketing/recruitment tools that will stand out in the way Concordia does.

That being said, I commend this effort and hope that it will bring along positive change. Concordia is a place I am proud of and believe in. I just wish to believe in the image it is giving off.

Im an undergraduate in Biochem(Spec). In order to excel the university's academic excellence and integrity the admission standards need to be higher. We have very competitive science programs, therefore make competitive standards (not cote R's of 20.00). Students should have to show that they can handle the weight of the program. By doing so, more students will actively choose either Con U or McGill if they are faced with equal standards! Our academia will benefit.

A Real Education for a Real World. Plan your strategic plan around that motto and you will attract exactly the needed this university. Planning all your actions around this one motto will avoid having faculty memebers feel that they should "look elsewhere for a more rewarding university". What makes students in the community come to this university is the idea that Concordia is different than McGill or UdM. You will attract unique faculty and students by focusing all your actions around that single motto.

What made me come to concordia is exactly what is said in the Strategic Plan - students are attracted based of the department's reputation. It is the department that educates students, not the Concordia administration. Therefore focus resources on maintaining and improving your departments. Creating and upgrading facilities is an excellent first step which Concordia is doing. Congrats!

Lean Management - Student:Staff ratio

The ideas mentioned for providing an outstanding student experience emphasis the need for a lower student:staff ratio. While the current ratio of 27:1 is better than the high of 33:1 only a few years ago, it is much higher than the figure of 22:1 from the mid 1990's, and the figure of 20:1 from the early 1990's. This compares to a ratio of 15:1 to 17:1 for McGill, Montreal, and Laval today. These figures simply highlight the need to recruit and retain more faculty; that is, to spend more on core activities, and hence to reduce administration costs if any of the strategic aims are to be achieved.

Right-to-be-Different Clause

A strategic plan at a university is a construct of a collective. It provides direction and guidance to the collective, but at a university it should never be seen as an imperative to be followed by all without question. It is essential that a university clearly endorses academic freedom in its strategic plan even to the extent of condoning and supporting those who choose not to follow the strategic plan.

Hence, I believe a university strategic plan should have a clause, which I have dubbed the "Right-to-be-Different Clause", clearly stating that everyone has the right not to follow the plan: that is, the academic freedom to set one's own direction, priorities, and plan; the academic freedom to speak out against the strategic plan; and the right and expectation not to be discriminated against because of their stance.

It is this that sets a university apart from a corporation, or a government department, or a military unit. We expect people to challenge the status quo, the conventional wisdom, the majority opinion, and it is our duty to defend their right to do so.

Primary Role of Faculty and Staff

I believe absolutely that any strategic plan for any university must state categorically that faculty and staff play the primary role in shaping the university. This is so obvious that it is often taken as a given, and therefore left unsaid. It should be stated loud and clear.

This is not meant to exclude students from having a role, but to recognize the long term commitment and impact of faculty and staff compared to the much shorter time that students spend at Concordia, and the differences in roles and responsibilities.

Faculty and staff create the programmes, curricula, course contents, teaching materials, teaching methods and approaches, research directions, research facilities, teaching facilities --- everything that impacts the experience of students, staff, and faculty in the university.

It is their intellectual engagement, debate, determination that is the basis of all plans and activities that shape the academic environment. It is their role in hiring and promotion that sets academic standards, shapes the membership of the department, and hence its future directions.

There is no academic quality without the faculty and staff creating it, nurturing it, recognizing it.

There is no outstanding student experience and engagement without an outstanding
faculty and staff experience. It is the engagement of the faculty and staff that is the other side of the coin of student engagement. It is the faculty and staff who create the intellectual environment for students.

There is no community engagement and social responsibility without the engagement of faculty and staff and without faculty and staff being the role models for social
responsibility.

I can only stand in awe of the author of today's article on the strategic planning initiative found on page 4 of today's Concordia Journal. Of all the possible comments that could have been quoted -- the constructive and well thought out comments offered at strategic planning open consultations to date -- what could have motivated the article's author to quote two of the *least* supportive comments made to date! I am totally disgusted.

In her interview in the Gazette on Oct. 31, Dr. Woodsworth, is presumably referring to open meetings called to discuss the strategic plan when she regrets that members of the university community are ‘slow to share their concerns’.

Consultation is not asking colleagues to throw ideas up to mostly silent administrators on a dais. If the president wishes to know what the community thinks, she should start by visiting the academic departments. Here is where the wisdom of the organization resides, where strengths and weaknesses can be identified. She should then insist that the regular structures – departments, faculty councils and senate – develop the plan. It is here that academic policy is set and where the strategic plan must be crafted.

The plan is just one of many problems Concordia must resolve which must be done through the structure and with goodwill, not with websites, ‘speed-dating roundtables’ and ‘scribbling on paper tablecloths.’

Charles Draimin
President, Concordia University Faculty Association

Concordia's uniqueness is that we are not an obtuse University like McGill. We are in addition to our research, an institution that offers an applied knowledge. It is what has made us marketable. While there are a few who detest our motto "A Real Education for a Real World", the fact remains it works "out there" in the community and resonates with young people and maintains our competitive edge.

No need to fix things that are not broken.

This looks very good. However, we have already done a lot of long-time planning. It seems to me that we should spend more time executing plans.
Something that has to become a clear priority with very transparent immediate steps is professor's salaries. It is becoming public information that our salaries are well below average (in comparison to both Canada's and Quebec's averages). As a recently tenured faculty member with a very active research agenda, external grants, and a strong publication record, this obviously makes me think that perhaps I should leave Concordia. When I hear that while our salaries keep falling behind the admistrators' compensations kept increasing ,well, I feel I am being taken for granted and exploited. This is really depressing. I love Concordia's students and openness to innovative research and teaching, but I feel that I should start looking elsewhere for a more rewarding university.

As a new faculty hire, I am very optimistic for Concordia's future. I read with interest the Strategic plan. I think that the administration at Concordia, like at every University understands that the most important part of University's future is its faculty members. If Concordia wishes to continue to develop into a serious research University, it will have to continue to recruit and retain top quality faculty. In this light I am very perplexed and puzzled by the current situation with the ongoing CUFA union salary negotiation. The offer made by Concordia is even short of modest, and verges on ridiculous. In all honesty, much catch up has to be done in terms of salary for me to consider that Concordia is serious about wanting to keep me onboard for the long term.

Respectfully yours.