AMS VP Academic and University (VP AUA) Affairs Zarifa Nawar ran on a platform to advocate for affordability and funding, promote accessibility and inclusion and expand academic and professional support.
More than halfway through her term, she has delivered on a significant portion of her platform, securing millions in funding for educational and work opportunities, food security and student reimbursements while advocating for improvements to academic policy and the student experience.
Last November, upon the recommendation of the AMS Executive Performance and Accountability Committee, Nawar revised her executive goals for her term, making them more “feasible and realistic.”
“Effectively, 81.5 per cent of the work that I'm supposed to be doing in this office has been completed this year,” said Nawar.
Increasing affordability
A major focus of Nawar’s term has been securing financial support for students facing rising costs. According to Nawar, her key priorities have been increasing allocations for food security, Work Learn funding and graduate student funding.
Nawar told The Ubyssey her office has secured $800,000 for food security initiatives from the university for the upcoming year, ensuring continued funding for the AMS Food Bank, Sprouts — an affordable food co-op — and other student-run initiatives. This renewal follows the expiration of a previous three-year financial commitment of $800,000 per year, but is less than the $1.2 million that the AMS asked UBC to provide in September.
Nawar also said she launched “the biggest Textbook Broke campaign in AMS history,” reimbursing students more than $20,000 in textbook costs. The campaign has been run annually since 2015. This year, it used funding from various faculties to reduce the financial burden of course materials and raise awareness for Open Educational Resources. She also secured increases for the International Community Achievement award — an award that recognizes continuing international students who contribute to UBC’s campus and community — from $5,000 to $10,000.
In terms of graduate student funding, Nawar said she has been advocating for higher minimum stipends for both PhD and master’s students. Every year, the AMS submits a list of student priorities for the UBC operating budget. In the 2026-27 budget submission, she supported increasing PhD students’ four-year minimum funding to five years at $30,000 per year, eventually rising to $40,000 per year by 2030. She also pushed to introduce a two-year minimum funding package of $20,000 per year for master’s students.
However, Nawar has been unsuccessful in stopping tuition increases. Despite the AMS submitting statements to the VP Student’s Office and presenting recommendations to the Board of Governors, the Board still approved tuition increases by two per cent for domestic students and between two and four per cent for international students for the 2026-27 school year.
She is not the first VP AUA who could not stop tuition increases, though. For years, the Board of Governors has voted to increase tuition despite protests and opposition from student groups. As a result, Nawar has been committed to raising tuition transparency, initiating the creation of multi-year financial planning tools and revitalizing the tuition engagement survey for students.
“We realize that tuition is a hard thing for the university to say no to,” Nawar said. “What we want is for funds to be redirected towards these affordability initiatives for students: Food security, graduate student funding [and] Work Learn opportunities.”
Supporting professional development
A significant portion of Nawar’s term has focused on student research and employment. This past October, her office secured $2 million over the next four years in funding for undergraduate research opportunities. As part of that funding model, faculties match each dollar, meaning $4 million is going towards creating new undergraduate research opportunities for students.
Nawar is also advocating for $4 million in Work Learn funding over the next four to five years and the hiring of demographic-specific career advisors for students with disabilities, international students, Indigenous students and Black students. She has also worked toward improving the co-op program, hosting cross-faculty workshops and launching new co-op surveys, noting that “surveys [and] data are the backbone of student advocacy, [and] a key strategic priority of the AMS.”
Improving the academic experience
In the classroom, Nawar has concentrated on modernizing academic integrity policies, improving academic accessibility and overall quality of life. In January, in consultation with Nawar’s office, the Senate Academic Policy Committee passed a motion to make academic integrity and generative AI statements in syllabuses mandatory, lessening the chance of students accidentally committing academic misconduct.
Nawar is also concerned with improving the Centre for Accessibility (CfA). She has published a comprehensive list of available CfA accommodations, and is working on expanding the funding available for the CfA in order to increase the number of available advisors.
“Advisors are seeing upwards of 400 cases, and while we have seen exponential growth in the number of students registered with the CfA ... the advisor number has remained largely the same,” she said. “We’re looking to ensure that in the future, we create a CfA that is sustainable for the growth that is imminently coming.”
Her office is also working on a centralized exam database in collaboration with the Provost’s Office, with a proposal and pilot expected by the end of the year.
Going forward, Nawar has stated some of her key priorities for the rest of her term as VP AUA include creating an off-campus rental housing bursary, extending the course withdrawal deadline, providing staggered tuition refunds and advocating for Indigenous student representation.
Nawar also noted that with her multi-year goals — such as increased minimum PhD and master's student stipends and advocating for changes to Workday — progress is often invisible to students. However, she said that advocacy has been ongoing in the form of budget submissions, Board of Governors presentations and Academic Experience Survey recommendations.
One of these goals is prioritizing environmental, social and governance principles in UBC’s Responsible Investing Strategy, an initiative she says she is “building from the ground up” and for which her office is undertaking extensive research. She has also been pushing for the creation of a dedicated exam testing centre, which, despite receiving support from UBC, Nawar said, is a large capital project that will require years of long-term funding and planning.
