Tag: Part-Time Faculty

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Student Life

The JMSB prof who does it all

Photo by Ana Hernandez

An insight into the eclectic life of Concordia Professor Robert Soroka

The rain flooded the streets, as the cold, damp air crept into the hollows of my bones. It felt like I was in the British capital instead of our beloved metropolis, for the rain made everything seem grey and melancholic.

On this dreary day in October, I was dodging puddles and pedestrians because I had an interview with a legendary figure at Concordia.

When it was first announced at  that we’d be starting a feature series on part-time professors, I looked at the list and randomly chose the name Robert Soroka. To be honest, I thought he had an interesting name, and I knew nothing about him.

After claiming him off the list, I soon discovered Mr. Soroka was quite popular at our offices. Several of my colleagues were jealous I beat them to the punch and landed Soroka. They told me he was “amazing” and “one of the best professors at Concordia.”

I won’t lie, I was nervous and felt utterly unprepared to meet him. “What if I screw this up?” I thought to myself, as I walked up the staircase. For a moment, I considered fleeing from the interview, but I pushed through the anxiety and knocked on his door.

Upon meeting the professor, my nerves calmed down. We sat down and, since I’m no good at small talk, we jumped right into the interview. We decided to start from the beginning and discuss his education.

“I did my bachelor’s of commerce at McGill in marketing and management information systems,” Soroka said, as he detailed his undergrad experience. He liked business and ended up getting his first degree at the age of 20. A rarity to say in my opinion, considering students these days take their time getting their undergrad.

Following his degree at McGill, Soroka started working as a marketing analyst at a large Eastern Canadian retailer. During this period, he started his MBA at Concordia, working during the day and studying at night. By the time Soroka was in his early 20s, he had his master’s in business administration and several years of work experience under his belt.

Following his master’s degree, Soroka saw an advertisement for a teaching position for a local college and decided to apply. Applying to be a teacher marked a turning point in his career, because Soroka began to actively pursue teaching positions while continuing to work full-time.

He eventually landed two teaching positions at two different local colleges in Montreal and began teaching part-time at both institutions. “I thought the interaction with students was invigorating, and being in an academic environment was stimulating,” said Soroka, as he recounts a time when he used to work during the day as an analyst, then teach in the evening, balancing what he described as a tough and jam-packed schedule.

But another shift would soon occur, as the man decided to switch gears and enter law. Yes, you read correctly, the man began his Doctor of Jurisprudence degree, which is essentially a graduate-level law degree, at the State University of New York. Following this degree, Soroka worked within the criminal law sector in New York state for some time before returning to Montreal.

It appears Soroka always had his eye on the education field. He had the opportunity to meet with the chair of the marketing department at the John Molson School of Business while he was working full-time. He said this individual trusted him and gave him a teaching position, based on the fact that Soroka had acquired a decent amount of experience in the business world.

This job kick-started Soroka’s university teaching career at Concordia. He currently teaches courses in marketing, management and finance at JMSB, while also working at Dawson College. He stressed that, even though he’s a part-time faculty member, he contributes immensely to the community at Concordia.

“I choose to contribute and to teach, and it’s a great feeling” he said, as I tried to jot down all his involvements at Concordia. I can see clearly on his office wall that he won the distinguished teaching award in 1997, demonstrating his capabilities as an educator.

He currently has a three-year appointment on senate, sits on the hiring committee for the JMSB marketing department and previously sat on the business school’s strategic planning committee. He’s also worked with students on case competitions, is a union representative for the university and worked on developing the credit programs for the School of Extended Learning. “As part-timers, especially with a business background, there many more lucrative ways of earning a living.” he said, “but we chose to teach and to contribute.”

Apart from dabbling in law, business and education, believe it or not Soroka is also a talented playwright and thespian. He’s acted in a few plays during his lifetime, stating that he loves to communicate with audience, whether it’s through education, the law or the arts. During one play in particular, he had a lot of downtime between between practicing for every scene and he thought he “could do a better job” in terms of writing the script. So he decided to write a play of his own and he turned out to be quite talented at it. He wrote a few more including Thesis of Life, which has been produced three times, according to his website.

“How do you deal with rejection?” I asked the multitalented professor, considering I’m just about to graduate and have a bit of anxiety about my professional future. Soroka told me that, in every professional situation, you’re bound to face some sort of rejection. For someone who’s experienced a lot of highs during his diverse career, I was surprised to hear those words. He then told me that, every time he’s faced some sort of rejection, he’s used it as a learning experience, and each experience has inevitably contributed to his learning.

As I began to wrap up the interview, another revelation came out. It turns out Soroka was also a local television personality in Montreal, appearing on both CTV and Global. In between all his other activities and commitments, he submitted a demo reel and a resume to the CTV studios. A producer immediately called him and set up a lunch. He offered Soroka a spot on Montreal Today, a morning show where Soroka would act as ‘the consumer cop,’ drawing upon his expertise to provide an business analysis on a variety of topics. He met a lot of professionals during this period and also got to do some investigative journalism after a few years on the show.

Professor, lawyer, business man, playwright and television personality. Give me my asthma pump, I’m about to pass out.

After concluding the interview with the multitalented professor, I felt rather inspired and uplifted by Soroka’s stories. He is an example for the entire Concordia students and staff alike, especially when it comes to being involved in several different projects and juggling many responsibilities.

If I could take anything away from this interview, it would be a stronger motivation to get involved in the Concordia community and the proof that it is possible to have it all.

Categories
Music

Wray Downes: Not just a music man

On Jan. 14, Downes performed at Upstairs Jazz Bar to celebrate his birthday. Photo by Alex Hutchins

Jazz pianist Downes talks about his many careers and his love of teaching

“It’s cold out there!” exclaims Wray Downes, as he settles into a chair in the music department’s large conference room, located in Concordia’s GM building.  “At least it’s not raining,” he adds, with genuine relief, as he takes off his cloth bucket hat and unzips his jacket.  On the table, he sets down the only item he is carrying: a copy of Ted Gioia’s book, History of Jazz.  Downes pulls a small parking ticket out of his big winter jacket. “Oh, we’ve got plenty of time,” he says, before tucking it safely back into his jacket pocket.

Looking across the table at one of the most famous Canadian jazz musicians of all time, it is charming and unnerving to see that, at the end of the day, Downes is just another 86-year-old man who will just as happily discuss the weather and parking as he will his career.

Downes, born Rupert Arnold Downes, is a celebrated jazz pianist, composer and conductor.  The musician was born in Toronto on Jan. 14, 1931. With racial discrimination present in Toronto in the 30s and 40s, Downes says life was hard growing up, but his character made it easier. “I had a big mouth, I could run fast and I also had a big fist. So, I could fight my way,” he says.

Downes recalls life was also hard because his parents didn’t have much money. He says they had to make a lot of sacrifices for him to take piano lessons for the first few years. His father was a porter. Downes says, back then, it was considered a good job at $125 to $150 a week. But with piano lessons costing $10 a week and the paycheck rolling in every two weeks, he says it wasn’t easy. So when Downes’ mother found out he could play in piano competitions for money and scholarships, the game started to change.

At 13, Downes started participating in music competitions. Quickly, he started winning… a lot. Downes recalls giving his father attitude when he would get scolded for not practicing. “When my father said… ‘Well you didn’t practice today!’ I’d say, ‘Yeah, but I just won 700 bucks for a scholarship, man!’” Downes said, leaning back in his chair theatrically and folding his hands behind his head. “I was mouthy and cheeky,” he says with a smile, and a glimmer of pride.

At just 18 years old, in 1949, Downes became the first Canadian to win the prestigious British Empire Scholarship to the Trinity College of Music in London. There, Downes recalls, there was “subtle prejudice,” which he first experienced while searching for a place to live.

He says he would see nice-looking rooms for board in the paper, give the owners a call and set up a time to visit. But then, when he arrived, the owners had magically found someone who better suited their needs. Downes started to understand what was going on. “I thought, ‘this crap is over here too.’” Luckily, he eventually found a room to call home, at Mrs. Stanley’s home.  He recalls the small elderly British lady giving him quite a different welcome than the other landlords had.

“She said, ‘oh you’re the first one! Come in!’ and she gave me a big hug.  And I just about swallowed my face.”

After his time in London, Downes would go on to study at other prestigious music schools, including the Paris Conservatory and, eventually, Oscar Peterson’s Advanced School of Contemporary Music in Toronto. Peterson, one of Downes’ many mentors, was the one who suggested Downes try out jazz. Downes recalls the switch to jazz first happening when a London recruiting agency refused him because he was black. “He said, ‘I don’t think we can do anything for a black person.’ And I looked at him and said, ‘I don’t quite understand.’  And he just said, ‘What I am going to do with you?’”

Downes’ and Dave Young’s Juno award-winning album, Au Privave. Press Photo

While Downes had to deal with similar situations throughout his life and career, he said he eventually learned not to give into anger. “Anger doesn’t do anything. Anger only affects you, because the other person doesn’t know that you’re angry, you know? Don’t let [yourself] do this to yourself. I learned that lesson a long time ago,” he says.

Downes’ jazz career kicked off in the mid-50s, when he toured all over France and Spain with Bill Coleman, a world renowned jazz trumpeter.  He would go on to work with other big jazz musicians like Buck Clayton, Annie Ross, Milt Jackson, Coleman Jackson and Lester Young, to name a few. He would eventually lead his own trios and quartets and release albums. In 1982, Downes won the Juno award for Best Jazz Album for his and Dave Young’s album, Au Privave.

Although music was always an important part of Downes’ life and career, it was never the only part.

On top of being a jazz pianist, Downes took breaks from piano to be a short-order chef, a chauffeur and a drapery installer. He finally turned to teaching in 1990. “I always did want to teach. I always did want to give back somehow, somewhere. And then, Concordia came calling.”  Downes says he enjoys teaching and mentoring students, and is joyful in helping them find their own style and success.

Downes says he likes to reinforce to his students that, as a musician, it is always important to keep the audience in mind. “I say this to my students: you got to get out there and understand the people that you’re playing to. Because, no people in the club, and you’re out of work.”  Downes says he learnt this lesson a long time ago, when he was told he couldn’t just play his bebop, because some want to hear the standards.

Downes’s 1995 album, For You, E.
Press Photo

“You’re playing for those folks, because they’re the ones who put the money in your pocket and the bread and butter on your table. And, if you adhere to that, then success, hopefully, will come your way. But don’t look down on those people,” says Downes, his tone serious, and his respect for his audience apparent.

Downes is an extremely respected figure in the Canadian jazz scene. However, he is equally respected within academia. “Wray represents a vital link to the past,” says Joshua Ranger, an assistant professor in Concordia’s department of jazz studies. “It’s said that jazz music advances while standing on the shoulders of giants—and Wray is one of our giants.”  He says that Downes teaches jazz in the way of Oscar Peterson and Phineas Newborn Jr.—two jazz moguls. “Sadly, Wray is one of the last such teachers, and the fact that he is still at it after so many years really is a testament to his energy and tenacity.”

These days, Downes contents himself with teaching, cooking, spending time with his wife and kids and playing piano when he wants to. “Been there, done that,” says Downes with a laugh about his jet-setting and musically-busy past.

As he gets up to leave, Downes zips up his winter coat and secures his cloth bucket hat back on his head.  He tucks his book back under his arm before walking out the door to go house to play with his dog, play some piano or maybe cook.

Categories
Student Life

From the heart of the newsroom to the front of the classroom

Last semester, Donna Nebenzahl worked alongside her journalism graduate diploma class to create the first edition of the online magazine about journalism, Jour News. Photo by Alex Hutchins

A part-time journalism professor with a full-time commitment to crafting journalists

With nothing but her bachelor’s degree in Canadian history and a few years of copy editing experience at Reader’s Digest, Concordia part-time professor Donna Nebenzahl pushed her way into the journalism world like the big bad wolf.

Photo provided by Donna Nebenzahl

“I huffed and I puffed and I refused to [give up],” she said. Editors didn’t want to talk to her—they claimed she knew nothing about newspapers. “But I just kept trying and trying and finally I got a job at The Montreal Star.”

Although the newspaper was only months away from folding, it was in that newsroom, on the streets of the Old Port, that Nebenzahl found her place.

“In that newsroom, I felt like ‘Oh my god, here I am, this is where I want to be,’” she recalled. “Everything about it, the pace of it—I loved it, I just really loved it.”

Nebenzahl eventually wound up in the newsroom of The Montreal Star’s old competitor: The Montreal Gazette. She spearheaded the newspaper’s Trends magazine, launched the award-winning Woman News section and worked as an editor for various lifestyle and feature sections.

Yet, as newspapers corporatized, the bottom line was the big bad wolf that huffed and puffed and swept Nebenzahl away in one of The Montreal Gazette’s rounds of buyouts. Six years ago, she joined the many journalists squeezed out of ever-shrinking newsrooms.

Since leaving her full-time job, Nebenzahl said she’s become much more invested in her teaching career. When you have a lot of experience in the field, it’s important to give back, she said. Leaving the newsroom is just one more experience she brings to the table for her students to learn from.

“It became about the shareholder, and the shareholder is really not the reason you should be doing journalism,” she said. “You should be doing journalism because you believe that these stories need to be told, that people need to investigate and understand, that the public has the right to know.”

She said many of her students have caught the journalism bug, and she wants to keep them focused on the value of their work, rather than on how to please their future bosses. She said it’s one of the main reasons she teaches.

“I think that, seeing the challenges in journalism today, it’s important to try to convey this notion of what this business is really about,” Nebenzahl said. “I mean certainly, if I had my way, there would be no media company that is owned for profit.”

Outside of Concordia, Nebenzahl has been developing a series of writing workshops called “Digging.” Her inspiration came from a poem by Nobel Prize-winner Seamus Heaney in which he compares his ancestors’ digging of the land to the digging he does with his pen.

“All the writing exercises are designed to unearth things, to dig up memories or relationships or interactions or inspirations,” Nebenzahl explained. “I think it’s worth it for everybody to find those things. You put them aside, you stick them in a corner in your memory, and this allows you a chance to really look at them. It gives you a sense of understanding about yourself.”

Nebenzahl said she’s enthralled with the idea of “writing your life,” and even with her graduate students last semester, she spent a lot of time exploring their writing skills.

“There are things that you do occasionally where you forget the time, you lose track of time because you’re so immersed in it—well that’s what writing is like for me,” she said.

Stepping out of the newsroom has been liberating for Nebenzahl in a sense, as she said it has allowed her to focus on writing and, as a freelancer, she has more freedom to explore topics that interest her.

“You work at a newspaper for many years before you’re able to make choices about what you want to write. You’re usually told what to do,” she said. When she began working as an editor for The Montreal Gazette, her job involved managing her section—only 15 years later was she able to start writing again, as a columnist for the Woman News section she’d helped create. “As a freelancer, choosing makes life very interesting because it’s much more about what moves you or what you feel passionate about.”

One topic Nebenzahl has been particularly passionate about in the last few years is micro-farming. She has written several articles for The Montreal Gazette about small farming and urban agriculture in Quebec, and the new generation of young farmers leading the movement.

Traditionally, students who studied agriculture at McGill’s Macdonald campus were the sons and daughters of farmers, taking on the family business, Nebenzahl explained. Now, however, many of the students coming out of McGill’s agriculture program are new to farming but are pursuing it because they are passionate about it.

“They’re very well educated, they’re pretty hip, they create networks, they really talk to each other a lot and they’re doing farming in a very interesting way,” she said.

The idea behind micro-farming, Nebenzahl explained, is that farmers use very small acreage and sophisticated hand-held tools rather than try to mass produce on huge fields with tractors. In addition to local markets, many of these organic farmers connect with their customers through Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) networks.

“They’re not like the back-to-the-land hippies of my era who didn’t know anything,” she said. “I’m very hopeful that this is a real movement, a movement that’s going to have a lasting effect… To me, this is the future of food.”

It is a subject Nebenzahl said she would love to explore as a documentary. While she hasn’t created a documentary since her 2009 Twice Upon A Garden, which looked at the history of the Reford Gardens in Grand-Métis, Nebenzahl believes the medium would give people a sense of the hard work and value of these farming practices.

Nebenzahl is part of a CSA herself, and spent part of last spring and summer volunteering once a week on an organic farm.

“I’m sitting there in these plastic ‘tunnels’ and there’s all this straw on the ground and you’re planting little basil plants in between the tomatoes and, as you’re doing it all by hand, you realize in the end… this is going to grow into these awesome things and you’re going to be able to harvest it all,” she said. “It’s just beautiful… To me, there’s no downside here, if we can only believe in the importance of good farmland and supporting farmers.”

Getting close to the action when it comes to social movements is not new for Nebenzahl. In 2003, she and photojournalist Nance Ackerman published Womankind: Faces of Change Around the World. The book was the result of months of travelling to dozens of countries across five continents, capturing the stories of activist women, both in writing and in photographs.

“The theme was that women really are the face of activism around the world,” Nebenzahl said. “They are the people who are there on the ground, they see what happens to children, they see what happens to the environment.”

Photo by Katya Teague

Womankind features the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, fighting to bring back the grandchildren who were stolen from them during a government crackdown in Argentina. It sheds light on women in Kenya fighting to give their daughters an education. It showcases mothers in Moscow, working to get supplies to their sons, who were sent to fight in Chechnya without proper clothing or food.

Despite the tragedies experienced by many of these women, Nebenzahl said there was something very inspiring and hopeful about these women.

“When they woke up in the morning, they had a task. They were not sad, morose, unhappy people—they were very active people who really believed that what they were doing meant something,” she said.

While Nebenzahl spends less time out in the field and more time in the classroom than she used to, she believes this “boots-on-the-ground” experience is what makes Concordia’s part-time faculty so valuable.

“A lot of people are doing a lot of very original work,” she said, both in journalism and other fields. “This is what makes part-time faculty interesting in this department, because you need a lot of people who are in the field now.”

Nebenzahl said she is involved with a few of the Concordia University Part-Time Faculty Association committees because she wants to give the part-time faculty a stronger voice within the university. It’s an issue of inclusion, she said, and recognizing that these professors are an important part of the process. It’s a philosophy Nebenzahl said should come naturally to Concordia, as it is part of the university’s roots.

“It’s interesting to me because Concordia is kind of a university of the streets. It originated in downtown Montreal where people who couldn’t afford to go to McGill or couldn’t afford to go to school during the day started going to school at night,” she said. “It really developed out of that kind of idea of giving opportunities to people who were doing other things.”

Categories
Sports

Healing athletes one injury at a time

John Boulay is an exercise science teacher at Concordia University. Photos by Alex Hutchins.

Part-time exercise science teacher John Boulay has worked at events like the Olympics and the Francophone Games

Just a few blocks away from Dawson College is the office of Concordia University part-time faculty professor John Boulay. Upon walking in, you are immediately greeted by a plastic spine in the corner of the room and the helmet of former Montreal Canadiens player Bob Gainey hanging on a coat rack by the door with a laser pointer attached to it.

The combination may be odd but it’s all part of his work. When Boulay isn’t teaching, he works as an osteopath and an athletic therapist at Osteo Med-Sport in Montreal, a clinic that specializes in injury rehabilitation and health maintenance.

Boulay said, while holding his Bob Gainey helmet with pride, that the helmet and the laser pointer are used on patients who are recovering from concussions. Essentially, the patient puts on the helmet and has to keep the laser pointer within a small circle. It’s a test to see if the patient is regaining their balance.

In terms of his teaching career, Boulay said he teaches what he knows. For the last 20 years, he has been a part-time exercise science teacher at Concordia, the same school he got his degree from.

“I was taking my classes at Loyola in the brand new exercise science program,” Boulay said. “Before I got there, the program was called biophysical education.”

Boulay knew he wanted to get into athletic therapy after injuring his knee in high school. He was a football player at the time and the athletic therapist for the team was one of his grade 10 classmates. Boulay said he thought his classmate’s skillset was interesting, and kept the profession in the back of his mind.

“I was thinking of getting into medicine at the time,” Boulay said. “I applied for medicine and didn’t get in so I figured I would do an undergraduate in something that would be fun. So I picked the new exercise science program at Concordia, did it in three years and never went back.”

After graduating from Concordia, Boulay said there were only about two or three athletic therapists in the province at the time. This lack of therapists led Boulay and some friends he graduated with to open up their own clinic near the Olympic Stadium. However, as Boulay described it, politics and paperwork kept the clinic from opening.

Despite not opening the clinic at the stadium, Boulay was able to open one at Concordia, where he spent nearly a decade. The clinic at Concordia was called the Concordia University Sports Medicine Clinic and was open to the entire population of Montreal.

“We were asked to open the clinic but we were also asked to teach some undergraduate courses,” Boulay said. “We were just fresh out of our bachelors with no teaching degree. I was teaching kids the same age as me so I told them, ‘You don’t have to call me Mr. Boulay. You better call me John.’”

When Boulay and his partners opened the clinic, there were six national Olympic teams stationed in Montreal at the time, including the judo team, the wrestling team and the diving team. Since their clinic was the only clinic in Montreal, they became the go-to place for any national team athletes who were injured or needed care.

Of all of the teams, Boulay worked with the judo team the most and ended up working with them full-time for 22 years. During those 22 years, he was the Chair of the Sports Medicine and Science Committee for Judo Canada from 1985 to 2008.

“I went from provincial to national to international tournaments,” Boulay said. “I also went to the Olympics and the Pan Am Games. It was just a case of right place, right time and right opportunity.”

Boulay’s first experience with international competition was at the first-ever Francophone Games in Casablanca, Morocco in 1989. He explained that, at the time, the judo team’s budget was low, which meant he was the last line of defence if an athlete got injured.

“We were in the middle of the desert half the time,” Boulay said. “Honestly, it was quite rural and very backwards.”

After having gone to so many international competitions, Boulay said his favourite was by far the 2000 Olympic games in Sydney, Australia. He said he and his colleagues “had a ton of fun” over the 13 days, as they got to experience a new culture and exchange therapy techniques with trainers from other countries.

Boulay said the 2000 Olympics were also different from more recent ones because there wasn’t as much security present.

“It was a very innocent time,” Boulay said. “We’re talking about pre-9/11 so there was less security and everyone wanted to have fun and embrace the world. Everything was really open and friendly and we could visit the other mission houses.”

Aside from working with national teams, Boulay has collaborated with NHL and CFL teams. While he hasn’t treated the athletes directly, he has worked with the therapists who help rehabilitate the athletes.

According to Boulay, the teams don’t want their players to visit private clinics. However, some doctors are always looking for better ways to treat athletes and he has been able to give advice when doctors come knocking on his door.

“Usually, we get called in to consult when something bad happens,” Boulay said. “The first time I was called in to work with the NHL was when Richard Zednik of the Montreal Canadiens suffered a spinal injury. We’ve been helping the Montreal Canadiens’ guys for a few years now.”

Boulay’s career in athletic therapy led him to become the founding president of the Quebec Sports Medicine Council. He said his goal in creating the council was to bring athletic therapists together so that they could work as a team instead of as competition.

The council discusses ways to improve how athletic therapists perform their jobs. One issue they have all come together on is concussions and how to better treat athletes who suffer from them.

“Go back to the 1990s—concussions weren’t on anybody’s radar,” Boulay said. “[Athletic therapists] used to pull athletes out of competitions when they got concussions. The coaches would hate us, and it took three deaths for them to finally start listening to us.”

For the last 14 years, Boulay has been teaching the Advanced Emergency Care in Sport course, which teaches students how to react and take care of athletes who have sustained an injury.

He and one of his colleagues have collaborated on the course, with Boulay taking care of the theory aspect and his partner working on the more practical side of the course.

This year, however, Boulay found out he would not be teaching the course. According to Boulay, the exercise science program decided to take three courses from the curriculum and assign them to a teacher undergoing a limited-term appointment (LTA), which is a term that usually lasts three years.

“They decided to take a recent graduate who just finished their master’s and dumped our three courses on this poor person,” Boulay said. “I wish them well but it took me 13 years to figure out how to teach one course and I’ve been in the business 30 years. It’s a hard assignment.”

Boulay explained that, as a part-time faculty teacher, he realizes there are campus politics, especially when it comes to issues like LTAs. He said it can be frustrating when part-time faculty members have their courses taken away because by the time the replacement’s term has ended, the old teachers are off doing something else.

Despite losing his class this year, Boulay still teaches. However, he has to travel a bit farther as he now works at the Univsersité de Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR) and the Université de Sherbrooke. At UQTR, Boulay teaches two courses in their new exercise science program, and at Sherbrooke, he teaches sports care and first response.

Boulay said he’s able to balance his workload between Osteo-Med Sport and teaching because he has a passion for it.

“During the semester, I’ll take two mornings off of my clinic and actually lose money because my practice makes more money than teaching classes,” Boulay said. “But I do it because I love it. It’s not about money, it’s about giving back.”

He also added that what he teaches can help people in life or death situations which, for him, is important.

“Rule number one in my classes is that you’re going to encounter some deaths and my second rule is that you can’t change rule number one,” Boulay said. “Then there’s rule number three, which is that if we do our jobs right, we can lessen the amount of deaths we encounter and that’s really what it’s all about.”

Watch our extended video interview with John Boulay below.

Categories
News

CUPFA launches Campus Equity Week

A kiosk is currently available at the EV building. Part-time professors Scott Chlopan and Lorraine Oades are there to answer the public's questions.

Concordia’s part-time faculty association invites students to learn about their cause

The Concordia University Part-time Faculty Association (CUPFA) just launched this year’s Campus Equity Week, which will be going on from Oct. 24 to 27, to shed some light on the unequal treatment of the university’s part-time faculty.

Lorraine Oades, the association’s vice president of professional development, said this week is about acknowledging part-time faculty members and the value they bring to the university. CUPFA is asking the university to allow part-time faculty to be paid for doing supervisory and administrative work at Concordia, in addition to their teaching duties.

“We want to create a system that is fair for this part of the faculty,” said Oades. “We are not asking for a huge amount of money, we just want to fill in some gaps.”

Oades, a part-time studio arts professor, is deeply concerned with the work of part-time faculty members that goes unacknowledged and unpaid for. “For example, students will ask us if we can supervise independent studies,” she explained. “We will say most of the time no because this is a full-time faculty job which is a reason [full-time professors] get a higher pay.” She added, however, that there are some part-time professors who agree to offer this help to students but are not rewarded for it.

In past years, Campus Equity Week was only a low-key, one-day event. This year, however, CUPFA is setting up a kiosk for four days, rotating in different buildings on the Sir George Williams campus. To promote the event, the association released a few video profiles created by part-time faculty member, Monique Moumblow, to showcase the hard work of these teachers. “This is the first year that everything falls into place,” said Oades.

Another issue CUPFA will be sharing with students during the eventful week is their concern with limited-term appointments (LTAs). Professors with LTAs are limited to teaching 18 to 21 credits per year. “The LTAs replace the full-time faculty but they don’t know the students as well,” said Oades. “It is very difficult for them, for example, to write a quality letter of reference if they know very little of the students.”

CUPFA’s voice is gaining strength, and members will continue negotiating with the university for their demands after Campus Equity Week. According to Oades, many full-time teachers already support the cause, and some deans are also very enthusiastic about it. “It’s the upper administration that needs to be convinced, and that’s what we’re trying to do with this campaign,” Oades said.

CUPFA’s kiosk is currently set up  in the EV building. They will also be present on Tuesday in the Hall building, Wednesday in the MB building and Thursday in the VA building, between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. Students and staff can speak with members of the association, get a free coffee card and pick up a flyer for more information on CUPFA.

Note: Two changes have been made to this article after publication to ensure accuracy of the information. The Concordian regrets the errors.

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Short on time, but full of contribution

2014 MicroTalks fit Concordia professors’ contributions in 6-minute talks

The second annual Concordia MicroTalks event is about to get underway and bring together a whole array of Concordia’s part-time faculty to discuss their research by way of short, individual 6-minute presentations.

Run by the Concordia’s University Part-time Faculty Association (CUPFA), MicroTalks will once again draw from the the PechaKucha method. Developed in Japan, PechaKucha is a presentation style where 20 slides are shown for 20 seconds each, leading to a concise, purposeful experience that avoids the perils of lengthy powerpoint presentations. The brevity of the talks encourages fast-paced and energetic discussion periods.

“It’s good for speaking to a non-specialist community,” said Alison Reiko Loader, a presenter at this year’s event with a project using forest tent caterpillars  to create living paintings, and one of last year’s organizers. “If you get ten people talking in a row, you can cover this huge diverse area where [you’re] much more likely for someone to find something they’re interested in.”

This year’s theme, Equity and Engagement, was chosen to coincide with Campus Equity Week, which seeks to highlight part-time faculty contributions. As CUPFA Vice President and MicroTalks organizer Lorraine Oades explains, part-time or not, members are heavily involved in making the university what it is. This is one way of getting the word out there.

“Everything the association does essentially helps to create greater visibility for our members in order to have our voices heard at every level of the university,” said Oades.

Though part-time faculty operates under a reduced load, they represent Concordia nationally and internationally at all manner of conferences, exhibitions, performance events, and workshops.

“We hold positions on administrative committees, on every hiring committee, on the Board of Governors, Senate, on faculty councils and departmental councils,” she continued.

There will be 10 lecturers at this year’s event, with such titles as “Cinderella and Chinese Foot-binding” and “Real-time Motion-Based Graphics on Stage with the ISS.”

“Part-time faculty teach in every area of the university, so this means there is a lot of ground to cover in terms of ideas. While six minutes doesn’t seem like a lot, you’d be surprised at just how much can be done in such a short period of time,” said Oades. “Being integrated into the fabric of the university allows us to share our ideas and experiences, which overlap but are also distinct from full-time faculty.”

Concordia’s 2014 MicroTalks will be held on Wednesday, Oct. 29, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at 1515 Ste. Catherine St. West, EV 6.720. The event is free.

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A majority vote for strike

CUPFA voted in favour of striking at a special general assembly Sunday. Photo by
CUPFA  members met at a special general assembly on Sunday. Photo by Madelayne Hajek

The Concordia University Part-Time Faculty Association voted 95 per cent in favour of an unlimited strike mandate should collective bargaining negotiations fail.

CUPFA held a special general assembly Sunday to discuss options to pressure the administration at Concordia to forego amendments to the collective agreement.

The most recent contract expired Aug. 31 and part-time faculty members are not content with the proposal offered by the university.

“I’m urging all members to stand with the union behind the strike mandate,” said Robert Campbell, a part-time professor in accounting at the John Molson School of Business. “When I saw what they were offering us, I said ‘I can’t believe this’ and it’s just unacceptable.”

In March, the association requested that Concordia issue a protocol in order to agree on how to proceed and sign a new collective agreement. Following nine separate meetings between administration and CUPFA, a protocol was signed on July 8.

Negotiations were supposed to continue in August, however, Concordia decided to restructure the terms of the current collective agreement much to the dismay of CUPFA. The restructuring was unanimously rejected but the university is still pushing forward with the plan.

“What they want is to rewrite every article in our collective agreement,” said Patrice Blais, vice president of the collective agreement and grievance. “They want to continue to fix things that aren’t broken.”

Concordia’s deal proposed to isolate and de-link salary rates from other post-secondary institutions like Université de Montréal and Université du Québec à Montréal which means their salaries would not change despite what is happening at sister universities. Furthermore, the university wants to impose restrictions on retirement and leaves, as well as having control over the hiring process of applicants vying for a part-time position, benefits and course evaluations. The university also wants to restructure seniority standing with a point system that would see current senior positions devalued.

One of the concerns emphasized by CUPFA was the volume of grievances filed by professors during the last collective agreement. The negotiating team argued that the massive increase in grievances is due to Concordia not respecting aspects of the agreement since 2009.

According to David Douglas, chair of communications, 21 grievances were filed this year so far and he expects as many as 30 complaints to be submitted by the end of 2012.

Douglas believes the time to pressure the university’s collective bargaining committee is now. CUPFA is not willing to head to the bargaining table for an extended period as they did for their last contract. It took seven years, from 2002 to 2009, for two parties to reach a settlement and sign a contract.

“Our experience has been one of delay with the university. Last time around we were very polite, they asked can we put you off for a period of time and we said yes,” Douglas told The Concordian. “We don’t have faith in the approach that the university is taking.”

If the university and the union are unable to achieve a negotiation in the near future, CUPFA’s mandate to strike has the potential to paralyze Concordia with over 800 part-time professors teaching at Concordia now. For the time being, however, the impending strike remains a pressure tactic only.

“What we are focusing on is to keep negotiating. CUPFA has every right to take a strike mandate if they want and this does not mean they are on strike,” said university spokesperson Chris Mota. “We want to keep working towards a contract that can be done sooner rather than later and continue to negotiate.”

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