News from April 22 Board meeting
Each director of Dawson College gave a brief report to the Board of Governors at a special April 22 meeting, which had full attendance.
Director General Richard Filion spoke about how everyone has worked hard to maintain essential services, such as admissions, staffing, and budget planning, while dealing with an evolving situation and sometimes contradictory information from the Ministry of Education.
Responding to ministerial requests
The College has been in frequent contact and meetings with the Fédération des cégeps and the Regroupement des collèges de Montréal to respond to ministerial requests.
A key achievement was “setting up ways for students and faculty to complete the Winter Semester through remote teaching while providing students and teachers with proper support and setting up the Dawson Virtual Campus,” he said.
Ensuring timely communications has been a priority to ensure that our community and our union representatives are kept abreast, he said.
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Academic Dean Diane Gauvin reported that most courses are being offered online.
There is a modification to ponderation in the Institutional Student Evaluation Policy (ISEP) to give greater flexibility to teachers and students.
Diane explained that ponderation refers to the time and weight given to learning activities. She gave the example of two hours of class time, one hour of lab time and three hours of homework for a total of six hours. “The Ministry has authorized a change as long as the total number of hours adds up,” she said.
Numerical grades are still preferred but if a teacher is unable to evaluate the level of mastering a competency, an equivalence is permitted.
“There has been no change to rules about academic integrity,” she said. “We are counting on students behaving with integrity.” Students have received instructions about using online platforms and about expectations.
Authorized absences
The Ministry has given the flexibility to CEGEPs to grant authorized absences more liberally. “We were not planning to be online and for some students, it is impossible,” she said.
Graduating students will be exempted from the English Exit Exam.
The College has taken a compassionate approach to students who were on probation. Usually, if they fail, they are expelled. “If they fail one course, they will be back on probation,” she said.
The R Score will not be calculated this semester. Recognizing achievements of students, especially graduates, is still under consideration.
Academic Calendar revision
The Academic Calendar has been revised. There will be a rolling end to classes, beginning May 19 and ending June 2. A seven-day exam schedule will take place May 27-June 4. June 11 is the deadline to submit grades and June 26 is the deadline to submit incomplete’s.
As for summer school, “we think it is important to maintain summer school. Some students need courses to graduate or to get into their program at university,” Diane explained.
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Student Services Director Monique Magnan spoke about the way her department has reorganized to deliver services remotely, through online meetings and the Virtual Campus.
Employees are working between 20-50% of their usual capacity, she said and added apossible explanation that students may have difficulty in adjusting to this new way of accessing services.
Library staff contacted 100 students who had not shown up for class to check in with them at the request of the Registrar’s Office. “The students who were contacted truly appreciated that employees from the College took the time to give them a call to see how they were doing. We would like to continue making these calls until the end of the semester,” she said.
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Human Resources Director Pascahl Scott said it has been a challenging time for all the services. “Recruitment is on-going for teaching. For non-teaching jobs, we are pursuing the process for urgent positions,” she said.
Vacation scheduling will be done beginning May 1 and employees will have two weeks to plan and managers will have two weeks to process.
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Finance Director Glenys Ronnie spoke about the financial impacts of the pandemic on the College: “The Fédération des cégeps requested the finance department of each college to submit a very preliminary high level summary of the potential financial impacts of the Colleges. These numbers were consolidated with all other CEGEPs and presented for discussion purposes by the Fédé to Ministry officials. The numbers included estimates for both 19-20 and 20-21 academic years.”
New budget centres have been set up under each directorate to accumulate the additional costs incurred due to the COVID crisis. “The costs so far have been mainly linked to the delivery of online education including IT equipment, peripherals, computer supplies and software. New codes have been set up to track overtime as well as absences,” she said. “While additional expenses will be apparent and identifiable, revenue decreases will be more challenging. We will track all refunds granted due to cancelled activities. We will estimate the loss of revenues that would have been anticipated in a normal academic year.”
There is a process to reimburse faculty for pre-approved purchases in cases where the College was unable to provide the necessary equipment and supplies to deliver online education. The process will be extended shortly to staff performing essential tasks remotely.
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Facilities Management Director Wai Bong Shum lauded the “fantastic job” that security, cleaning and HVAC services have been doing to keep things running smoothly at the building. He spoke about the challenges of going through a tendering process for renovations and providing site visits via a laptop computer.
“Priority has been given to the renovation of Human Resources, Diagnostic Imaging/Radio Oncology, AcessAbility, but there is a lot more renovation that will either be delayed, postponed or defered to next year.,” Wai said.
Wai also mentioned the process to secure a new building to address the space deficit: “For the upcoming weeks, the College will be working on the “Programme Fonctionnel” of the “Dossier d’opportunité” that we have been working on for the past few years. A meeting will be held with different stakeholders in the coming weeks.”
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Information Systems and Technology Director François Paradis reported that his department has been supporting all of the departments to deliver the semester and essential services.
“The big rush is over but requests to our department are steady,” he said. “The remote access has been impressive,” he said.
Some departments, such as 3D Animation and Radiation Oncology have quite an infrastructure to maintain in order to keep computers accessible, he said. IST personnel have had to come in to visit the server room.
The IST team has been counselling some teachers and staff about what kind of hardware they should buy.
“We are running a seven days a week service through our Help Desk, which is also open to students now,” he said.
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The Board also approved the graduation of 482 students from the Fall 2019 Semester and 64 students from AEC programs. Students from Nursing and Diagnostic Imaging were also approved as graduates from the Winter 2020 Semester.
