Notice of Intent for Major Capital Expansion - Analysis (1 September 2014) | Carleton University Boa

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Carleton’s plans for major capital expansion were done without any meaningful consultation with either Carleton’s Senate or Board of Governors. With the strategic mandate agreement, both the Board of Governors and Senate were foreclosed from consultation by the administration speciously rationalizing that supposedly short provincially-imposed timelines precluded consultation. However, given the forewarning by the province and the date of the final directive by the province in November 2013 (see provincial directive here), there clearly was time for consultation. While not consulted, at least both the Board of Governors and Senate were apprised of Carleton’s strategic mandate document prior to its submission to the Ministry of Training Colleges and Universities. By contrast, not only did Carleton’s upper administration fail to consult with the Board of Governors and Senate about the proposed intent for major capital expansion, but the upper administration failed to report the 27 June 2014 proposal to both the Board of Governors and Senate. Senate met the following day, 28 June 2014, but has never been provided with this major capital expansion document. It seems unbelievable that I had to unearth and provide the link to this capital expansion document to the Carleton community, a document that all members of the Board of Governors and members of Senate should have received - but never received - directly from Carleton’s administration. And even after my 12 August 2014 blog posting, Carleton’s administration has still not come clean and disseminated that publicly available capital expansion document, which should be of interest to the entire university community.

The province asked (here) that the strategic mandate proposal and the proposed major capital expansion be based on the strengths of each university. Carleton somehow recast one of our true weaknesses, health science, using Orwellian doublespeak to egregiously and repeatedly call health science one of our strengths. Until June 2014, the health science department had one faculty member. Supposedly three new faculty members were hired in health science during summer 2014. However, as of today, there is no record of these people on the official health science website nor is health science even listed as a department on Carleton’s official phonebook. Even if Kim Matheson takes over the helm of health science, which I suspect she will eventually do, health science will still not be a huge strength for Carleton, especially compared with many superb home-grown departments that have existed for decades. At least, in the major capital expansion document, Carleton admits that our health science bachelors program is not intended for ‘pre-med’ students…although I wonder whether anybody is telling that to high school students we are recruiting...
Notice of Intent for Major Capital Expansion - Analysis (1 September 2014) | Carleton University Board of Governors