General Faculties Council

Each year the Graduate Students' Association (GSA) and the Students' Union (for undergrads) nominates students to sit on various boards and councils at the university.  I applied to be a graduate student-at-large on the General Faculties Council (GFC), and my first meeting was yesterday, June 1st.

I heard someone at the meeting say there were around 150+ people on the council, but that normally only around 130 show up to meetings.  In addition, yesterday's meeting was the 399th meeting of the GFC at the University of Alberta.  The GFC executive was really excited because we get to use a new council chambers for the 400th meeting in September (as opposed to the lecture hall we were in yesterday).  Apparently they completely renovated the council chambers in University Hall to make it more effective for large meetings.  (Who knew.)

I think because it was the only summer meeting of the GFC, it was rather low key.  The Chancellor made a presentation about the Senate, the President talked about the 'visiting committee,' we approved the appointment of new members, and they talked about the new council chambers.  It was also our president's last GFC meeting, as the new president takes over in ... September (I think).

It was an overall interesting meeting, but I didn't hear anything new and exciting.  The only new (but not so exciting) thing I heard is that Rachel Notley did call our president after she won the election, and after the new provincial cabinet was formed, the new minister also called.  While both politicians promised that post-secondary education was a high priority to the government, neither actually committed to anything.

The part of the meeting that gave me the most to think about was the Chancellor's presentation about the Senate.  I knew very little about the Senate before yesterday, and have a very interesting view (which I'll save for another post) now.

=^..^=