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 21, 2024 Senate meeting.
Enrolment report and targets
Senate is one of the bodies responsible for approving annual targets for student enrolment. Some highlights from last year’s Enrolment Report include:
- UBC Vancouver has a headcount of 60,863 students in 2023/24, comprising 48,149 undergraduate and 11,139 graduate students
- 2023 saw new direct entry UBC students coming from 102 countries and territories, with the most common countries including China, the United States and India
- The mean entering grade range for UBC Vancouver is 89-91 per cent
- 2.6 per cent of all students at UBC Vancouver, constituting 3.7 per cent of all domestic student, self-identify as Indigenous
- 93 per cent of the 2022/23 first-year cohort of UBC Vancouver were retained for 2023/24, consisting of 94 per cent domestic first-year students and 91 per cent international first-year students
Senate will also be voting on the 2024-25 Enrolment Targets for the upcoming year. While individual faculties will be making different individual adjustments to their proposed intake of new undergraduate students, all in all, it will represent a 1.9 per cent target increase for domestic students and a 3.2 per cent decrease in international students compared to the previous academic year (2023-24).
New global health and migration studies programs
New UBC programs and courses. Two brand new programs, as well as numerous courses, are up for Senate approval. A new Master's of Global Health is being proposed through the School of Population and Public Health and has support from industry professionals. This program will meets increasing demand in the public health sector and is the third of its kind nationwide.
The proposed Graduate Certificate in Migration Studies comes as a result of increased student demand and is targeted to graduate students interested in looking at mobilities and migration from an interdisciplinary perspective. The Faculty of Arts is also launching a new minor in Asian Language and Culture (Persian, Persianate and Iranian).
Some interesting new courses include Topics in Indigenous Asia (ASIA 553), Applied Machine Learning for Construction and Facility Management (CIVL 427), Oceanic Geographies: Movement, Materiality, and Mobility (GEOG 492) and History Through Video Games (HIST 204).
New course standings
The docket also includes a motion to approve new transcript designations for students for the 2024/25 academic year.
Some examples include course in progress (CIP), transfer credit (TR), and no grade required (NGR). If approved, the full list of designations will be available on the academic calendar and on official student transcripts.
The next Senate meeting will be on March 20, 2024.
If you have questions for the Student Senate Caucus, you can email co-chairs Kareem Hassib at kareem.hassib@ubc.ca and Kamil Kanji at vpacademic@ams.ubc.ca.