Dear Faculty of Arts,

With Reading Week just around the corner,  we hope you can find a few moments to breathe, relax, enjoy the outdoors, and smell the flowers. It’s been a challenging semester, marked both by shifting climates, resplendent sunshine, and beautiful buds breaking through everywhere. Spring is in the air… The snowdrops are afoot, the crocuses are in bloom, and the cherry blossoms are beginning to bud. And if you listen carefully, you can already hear – even if only faintly -some early birdsong.

Priority Items

Curious about COIL? This past fall semester, Jennifer Hardwick (ENGL) and Conrad King (POLI) undertook COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) collaborations with faculty at Nottingham Trent University in the UK.  Join them, POLI student Arshneet Soda, Ada Lee (Office of Global Engagement), and Leeann Waddington and Chris Ryan (from Teaching and Learning) on March 2 from 9:00 – 10:00 AM to learn more about COIL and the virtual international opportunities it affords for faculty and students!  Arts will be sending a Teams link for this event in the coming days.

Computers in Classrooms: During the Summer 2022 semester, computers will be removed from the classrooms. This means that instructors need to bring their KPU issued laptop (or find a way to use their personal laptop with KPU’s equipment).  All regular faculty members have been issued a KPU laptop to use for work.  All non-regular faculty members have the option to request a loaner laptop from the library.  Some faculty members have not responded to IT’s offer of a laptop so I could see this being an issue in Summer 2022.

Upcoming Events and Opportunities

Task Force on Anti-Racism Survey: To create an institutional environment that fosters diversity and inclusion, data needs to be collected to help data to gain a better understanding of the nature of the challenges at the institution. KPU’s Task Force on Anti-Racism (TFA) is employing a survey tool to canvass the broader KPU community and collect information about the experiences, stories, ideas, and insights resident in the broader KPU community. This data will help arrive at a deeper understanding of race, racism, and anti-racism at KPU. It will help to identify where barriers exist for Black, Indigenous, People of Colour/People of the Global Majority communities; and help to determine pathways towards a more just and inclusive university by informing both the Task Force’s recommendations and the development of anti-racism policies. The survey was developed through a great deal of consultation with multiple groups and individuals across KPU. Responses are anonymous and protected under privacy legislation. Personally identifiable information will be removed. Data will be aggregated to identify trends, not individuals. Responses to this survey will help us better understand the experiences and needs of KPU employees and develop a plan that will help us further the institution’s anti-racism goals. If you have questions, please email tfa@kpu.ca. To take the survey, click here: Take the survey.

KPU’s Task Force on Anti-Racism is proud to present: Fundamentals of Anti-Racism – a TFA Workshop for Employees: March 21 2022, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. PST. To register, please email tfa@kpu.ca with subject line: “Please register me for March 21 workshop with Shanique Kelly.” Please use your KPU email ID to register. Please email as early as possible, but no later than March 17th. A Zoom link will be forwarded to all registered participants 24 hours prior to the workshop. For cyber safety reasons, the link will be sent to KPU email IDs only. Please do not share the link with anyone outside of KPU. Fundamentals of Anti-Racism is an immersive and in-depth workshop that exposes our complicity in racist power structures that exist all around us. This workshop is both personal and political: an exploration into bias, systemic oppression, language, cultural appropriation, and intersectionality. Participants gain a deeper understanding of the manifestations of racism from systems of power to workplace microaggressions and most importantly gain the skills to speak up and combat racism in their communities.

Employment Opportunities for students:  Statistics Canada’s annual Analyst Recruitment and Development Program – Social Statistics and Economics (EC) is underway. If you could pass this message on to your students, it would be greatly appreciated. Contact Sharon Nevins at Statistics Canada in the Economic Statistics Field for more information.

EN: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/statcan_job-activity-6893630146860175361-dEEu

FR: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/statcan_emploi-activity-6893629043875680256-CRXd

Future Arts Speaker Series: The next iteration of the Arts Speaker series is fast approaching. Each Arts Speaker Series talk showcases innovative and original creative endeavors, research, and scholarship activities is one hour-long (30 minutes for presentation and the rest of the time for discussion/questions) and will either take place online or in a blended version. Proposals for the 2022-2023 Arts Speaker Series should be 250 words long and be sent to Nancy Norman at: nancy.norman@kpu.ca and before March 31st, 2022.

Arts Undergraduate Research Courses: If you have an idea for research or have a scholarly endeavor underway, we invite you to engage students in your work! Involving students in these projects is a great way to deepen the quality of the educational experience of our students! Contact Wade.Deisman@kpu.ca or Anne Lin@kpu.ca for more information. The deadline is March 29, 2021.

Moving the Needle on Research

Join The Network: The Arts Research, Scholarship, and Creativity Network is growing, and is open for enrollment for faculty and for requested enrollment for students! Currently, there are already 60 Network members! This inclusive Network aims to support faculty, students, and staff who are engaged in or wish to become engaged in, research, scholarship, and creativity.  The Network aims to provide a clearinghouse of resources; to facilitate mentorship connections; to promote collaborations and encourage synergies; to stimulate innovative thinking; to foster collegiality; and to raise awareness about the ways that research, scholarship, and creativity contribute to educational excellence. Email ArtsNetwork@kpu.ca for instructions on how to join.

Resources for Faculty, Students, and Staff

BC Campus has Created a Series of Indigenization Resources and Guides: These guides are the result of a collaboration between BC campus and the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Training. The project was led by a steering committee of Indigenous education leaders from BC universities, colleges, and institutes, the First Nations Education Steering Committee, the Indigenous Adult and Higher Learning Association, and Métis Nation BC. We thank them for their guidance, support, and generosity. The content in these guides is authored by teams of Indigenous and ally writers from across BC. We thank them for sharing their knowledge and wisdom with others. We invite you to click on the links under the images below to learn more. These are the first three. We will share the next three subsequently.

Last Call

UNIVERSITY WIDE- THE JEDI Awards: The nomination period is open for KPU’s JEDI awards. This link provides more information: Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Awards | KPU.ca – Kwantlen Polytechnic University .

We hope that you can find some time to chirp, crow and coo with loved ones, to discover new neighborhood vistas, and scout out some local restaurants and eateries for a fine repast to conclude your day.  

Greg, Billeh, Shelley, and Wade

Pictured at the top: FINA’s fourth-year studio course with Robert Gelineau and Liz Toohey-Wiese