Read the Board Notes from December 12, 2018.
Read the Senate Notes from December 14, 2018.
BOARD NOTES: Board approves revisions to the policy regarding sexual violence and hears report from KnowledgeOne
President’s remarks
In his remarks at the Board of Governors meeting on December12, 2018, Concordia President Alan Shepard referred to his full report, presented in the Board materials, and provided further updates.
Shepard reported the good news that Concordia’s numbers of applications and registrations for winter 2019 are strong.
He thanked the team led by Roger Coté, vice-president of Services, for its successful handling of a recent water issue in the Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts Integrated Complex.
Shepard informed the Board that Bloomberg Businessweek recently ranked the John Molson School of Business as the fourth best business school in Canada and 95th in the world.
He announced that the university’s 2018 Centraide campaign raised more than $160,000, surpassing its goal. He thanked co-chairs Nadia Bhuiyan, vice-provost of Partnerships and Experiential Learning, and Philippe Beauregard, chief communications officer, and Suzanne Kaye, project coordinator for the Office of the President and Centraide campaign manager.
Shepard also advised governors to watch out for the public launch of Concordia’s 4TH SPACE, the university’s curated public space, on January 18, 2019.
Revisions to the policy regarding sexual violence
Lisa Ostiguy, special advisor to the provost on Campus Life, presented an overview of the revisions to the university’s Policy Regarding Sexual Violence, which required approval from the Board.
Ostiguy explained that the university had been addressing sexual violence and sexual misconduct beginning in 2013 with the establishment of the Sexual Assault Resource Centre. In 2014-15 the sexual assault working group was created to look at Concordia’s policies and practices related to sexual assault. This working group, including faculty, students and staff, made two recommendations to the university: create a policy dedicated to sexual violence along with a working group to develop guidelines around relationships with students and staff and faculty; and look into establishing a policy and appropriate guidelines dedicated to issues of sexual violence.
As a result of the working group recommendations, Concordia created a committee to develop a Sexual Violence Policy in 2016. “We were at the forefront of developing this type of policy,” Ostiguy said. In 2017, a committee of faculty, staff and students developed the Consensual Romantic or Sexual Relationships Guidelines.
In January 2018, the Task Force on Sexual Misconduct and Sexual Violence was created to gather feedback from the university on our policies and processes supporting survivors of sexual violence. The task force completed their work in June 2018 with a list of recommendations. In September 2018, a permanent standing committee chaired by Ostiguy was created to follow up on the recommendations of the task force and to review the requirements of Quebec’s Bill 151. The Standing Committee on Sexual Misconduct and Sexual Violence is comprised of Concordia staff, faculty and students. It updates the sexual violence policy, works on addressing processes and Bill 151 requirements, and continues conversations with the community.
The standing committee, chaired by Ostiguy, set out on an extensive process to update the policy. In addition to the task force consultation from January until June, summer 2018 was spent reviewing policies and best practices at other universities. The standing committee met weekly to discuss aspects of the policy and the requirements of the bill, and the committee also invited feedback from members of the community.
Melody Sullivan, senior legal counsel for the University Secretariat, presented several details on the proposed policy changes. Sullivan pointed out that the existing policy already fulfilled most of Bill 151’s requirements. She showed several examples of how the revised policy matched or differed from both the original and the bill.
For instance, the revised policy section on Education, Training and Communication commits to creating and providing mandatory annual training for certain members of the Concordia community, as required by Bill 151, in addition to the existing in-person training already in place for student leaders and students in residence. Sullivan added that this online training will be done together with KnowledgeOne, Concordia’s eLearning consulting provider.
“We are happy with the law and happy with the work done on the new policy,” Sullivan said. The standing committee will continue to seek input from the Concordia community. “It’s an ongoing process.”
The Board approved the revisions.
Report from KnowledgeOne
Robert Beauchemin, CEO of KnowledgeOne, delivered a report on Concordia’s eLearning consulting provider.
Beauchemin explained that when KnowledgeOne started out in 2001, it offered one online course that used a passive, lecture-based approach for 100 students. In 2018, it offers 74 mostly immersive, interactive courses and plans to get up to 110 courses by 2019-20.
Its 33,000 registered students place it among the top five eLearning programs in Canada.
Project manager Jesse Harris talked about some of KnowledgeOne’s award-winning courses, including Tolkien and Old English, which finished in second place in its category at the International e-Learning Association Awards in 2016, and Introduction to Astronomy, which placed fourth in its category at the European Conference on e-Learning in 2018.
Harris also reported that Concordia’s Master’s Degree in Music Therapy will become the first fully online program in Canada, and could lead to a collaboration with Soochow University in China.
She also pointed to the online sexual awareness training program organized in conjunction with Concordia’s Sexual Assault Resource Centre as part of the university’s revised sexual violence policy. “Concordia is at the forefront of offering this type of sexual awareness training,” Harris said.
Beauchemin talked about the exciting potential of KnowledgeOne’s academic and external partnerships, such as what is already being done with current partners Ubisoft and Honeywell.
“These partnerships offer us a chance to create exciting synergy between the academic and private sectors,” he said.
Report on compliance with environmental legislation and health and safety
Roger Coté gave a brief report on the university’s compliance with environmental legislation and health and safety. Coté said that in the third quarter of 2018, July through September, a number of internal and external inspections led to the discovery of a few deficiencies, which have since been addressed.
Pension plan funding policy update approved
The Board approved the updated Pension Plan Funding Policy, as recommended by the Employee Benefits Committee. “We have to update the funding policy to comply with the provincial requirement deadline,” explained Denis Cossette, Concordia’s chief financial officer.
The updated Supplemental Pension Plans Act of Quebec mandates the adoption of a funding policy for all defined benefit pension plans in Quebec by no later than January 4, 2019.
The revised version of the funding policy includes all the new legislation requirements and the new cost-sharing arrangements between the pension plan’s active members and the university, which took effect January 1, 2018.