The Senate meets monthly to discuss and vote on UBC academic matters. But, Senate can often be hard to understand for the average student and the agenda docket can be super long and dull to read.
Senate Recentred is written by members of the Student Senate Caucus to demystify Senate by giving students a snapshot of what Senate is doing this month.
Here’s what to expect at the February 15 Senate meeting.
Provost report on Enrolment and Teaching and Learning Funding
Two items for information are being presented by the Provost’s office this meeting.
The first is an enrolment report for this academic year, which reveals information regarding admissions, enrollment and retention and completion rates for both UBC campuses.
The report said that applications to UBC in 2022/23 compared to 2021/22, and is described as a “normalization of applications received" given a spike in applications during the COVID-19 pandemic.
2022/23 is also the first year that students applied to UBC through EducationPlannerBC.
The office is also reporting on the scale and impact of Teaching and Learning Funding Programs at the university, with a focus on the 2021/22 academic session.
The summary discusses programs like Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund, the Open Educational Resources Fund, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Seed Program, the Students as Partners Fund and more. These programs allocate $3.5 million a year to advance teaching and learning goals at the university.
Senate to set 2023/24 enrolment targets
The Senate Admissions Committee is looking to approve 2023/24 Winter Session intake targets.
The agenda item includes the total full-time equivalent (FTE) enrolment for UBC Vancouver 2022/23, which is projected to be 53,332 across the 2022 summer session and 2022/23 winter session. This includes 31,395 domestic undergraduate FTEs, 11,072 Internationall undergraduate FTEs, 9,302 graduate FTEs and 1,563 residence FTEs in Medicine, Dentistry, and Pharmacy.
For 2023/24, Bhushan Gopallluni, the vice-provost and associate vice-president faculty planning pro tem, is proposing an enrolment target of 8,597 domestic students and 3,278 for international students.
This is an increase of 1.7 per cent of domestic students and a decrease of 0.6 per cent of international students.
Senate to approve policies regarding diploma and certificate programs
The Senate Curriculum Committee is bringing forward two policies regarding non-degree programs for approval this Wednesday, which revolve around Diploma Programs and Academic-Credit Certificate Programs. A working group was originally established by the committee in 2019 to review existing policies on diplomas and certificates, which the Senate currently has jurisdiction over based on the University Act, which does not distinguish between credit and non-credit programs.
These policies will indicate categories of diploma and certificate programs and their associated establishment criteria, approval processes and relationships with degree programs, among other aspects.
There is also a supplemental policy still under development that will aid in defining non-credit credentials.
Hajidazeh is a third-year international relations student, senator at-large and Student Senate Caucus co-chair. Kanji is a third-year honours political science and international relations student, and senator-at-large.
If you have questions for the Student Senate Caucus, you can email co-chairs Laia Shpeller at laia.shpeller@ubc.ca and Romina Hajizadeh at romihajizadeh@gmail.com.
Senate Recentred is a column written by members of the Student Senate Caucus to demystify senate from the inside, out.