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Senate Agenda - EXHIBIT VIII - October 15, 1999

At the meetings of the Academic Colleagues and the Council of Ontario Universities in Toronto on October 7 and 8, 1999, several matters of interest to Senate were discussed:

• Dr. David Smith reported to Council that he is proceeding on schedule with his studies of "Quality Indicators and Quality Enhancement in Universities: Experiences in Other Jurisdictions" and "The Prospective Labour Market for University Faculty: Implications for Ontario" and expects to have both completed by the end of the calendar year. With regard to the former, he is attempting to answer two questions: what is meant by the quality of a university? and how is it measured? With regard to the latter, he is approaching the impending need for as many as 10,000 new faculty in Ontario by examining four issues: (i) the capacity of Ontario graduate programmes to meet the rising demand for faculty; (ii) the capability of Ontario universities to compete for faculty in the national and international markets; (iii) the possibility that the knowledge-based economy and contingent financial factors will make it difficult to attract talented people into the denuded groves of academia; and (iv) the question of whether faculty could be used with greater efficiency.
• Dr. Heather Munroe-Blum provided Council with an electronic tour through the preliminary draft of her forthcoming report to the Ontario government entitled "Strengthening Ontario's Innovation System: the Strategic Role of University Research." In answer to the question of how best to harness university research in the service of innovation and for the economic benefit of Ontario society, Dr. Munroe-Blum will make numerous recommendations, including the creation of an Ontario Science and Innovation Council and an Ontario Research Foundation, the establishment of a Research Performance Fund, the provision of start-up funds for new faculty, the endowment of distinguished research chairs, and the institution of prestigious and lucrative annual awards for outstanding researchers in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Ontario and its universities, she will argue in her report, must capitalize more aggressively on their position at the heart of a G7 nation, cultivate more effectively the synergy between teaching and research, and compete more concertedly for federal research funds. Guided by the principles of "competition, excellence, and academic autonomy," they must meet the challenges and seize the opportunities of "global connectedness" by defining and undertaking "flagship research" - that is, research at an international level of importance and recognition. Applications for resources from individual institutions should be related to that institution's overall research plan and include a statement of the benefit to students of the proposed research. All provincial research and scholarship programs should be open to all disciplines. In short, more resources should be allocated to a reconfigured university research enterprise in Ontario if the province is to be a leader in the development of new ideas, methods, and applications.
• As part of the consciousness-raising exercise that COU has been undertaking for some time, the Executive Heads held a well attended press conference at Queen's Park at 11.00 a.m. on October 8. They also sent a letter (attached) to the Minister of Training, Colleges, and Universities that broadly outlines the principles and financial needs of the Ontario university system in the context of increasing enrolments. Prompted (not to say provoked) by the COU press release and the letter of the Executive Heads, there was a good deal of discussion at the meeting of the Academic Colleagues and at Council of the ways and means of successfully bringing the views and needs of the universities to the attention of the government and the public.

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