People & Places

UBC Arts is home to a community of outstanding and vibrant people that seek to advance collaboration, innovation, and community development.

Our strategies

Goal: Invest in faculty and staff resources to increase excellence, enhance research and teaching, build a diverse and inclusive community, and nurture a culture of respect.

  • Hire 70 new full-time, tenure-track faculty positions to accommodate enrolment growth.
  • Increase recruitment of diverse faculty members to better reflect our student body and community.
  • Reduce sessional teaching to the minimum required for flexibility in course assignment, while maintaining opportunities for graduate student teaching and employing appropriate adjunct faculty for professional expertise.
  • Implement evidence-based strategies and programs to support student diversity.
  • Increase Arts equity training for Heads & Directors and search committees.
  • Explore and remedy barriers to equity among racialized and Indigenous faculty and conduct Early Years Faculty Experience Survey to improve pre-tenure experiences.
  • Participate in the UBC pilot study on gender and faculty workload.
  • Support staff wellness and work-life-balance initiatives, paying attention to concerns that emerged in the Workplace Survey.

Goal: Make degrees affordable for all who qualify for and desire a university education, and support the academic experience and the health and wellbeing of our students.

  • Commit $1 million in Arts funding to match Blue & Gold Campaign bursaries for our students.
  • Work with the Arts Undergraduate Society and the Vice-President Students office to improve support for student mental health and wellbeing, especially to reduce wait times and expand counselling services.
  • Increase Arts funding for graduate students to $2.5 million per year and consider additional support.
  • Increase graduate Teaching Assistant support by adding 27 two-term positions.
  • Increase support for graduate students from faculty research grants, working with departments to fund doctoral students for five years at competitive levels.
  • Advocate to convert Excellence Awards to 4-Year Fellowship awards to increase the number of awards available to graduate students.
  • Revise the system of allocating graduate funding to departments to enhance equity.
  • Fundraise for and establish new graduate awards, and seek private philanthropy to match and leverage Provincial Graduate Fellowships.
  • Work with the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies to align new awards with graduate program needs.

Goal: Increase space for expanded programs and a growing student body, and transform current spaces into inspiring facilities to learn, teach, and research.

  • Secure additional space for departments, schools, institutes, and centres to fulfill their missions, alleviating the space shortage faced by many units.
  • Contribute $3 million to help the Arts Undergraduate Society build an Arts Student Centre.
  • Complete the transformation of the Buchanan Tower as a home for humanities units.
  • Aggressively pursue university, provincial, and philanthropic support to renovate or replace buildings facing significant seismic risks.
  • Consolidate Arts student services in the future Brock Commons.
  • Work with Classroom Services to renovate classrooms into flexible learning spaces.
  • Fundraise for and build a Museum of Anthropology Theatre & Education Centre and a possible Asian Art Wing.
  • Renovate the Linguistics Totem Studios building, the fourth floor of Kenney building for Psychology, and provide a new home for the Cognitive Systems program in the Iona building.

Goal: Demonstrate national leadership in administrative design to provide the highest level of operational and service delivery.

  • Review and renew all administrative procedures including Academic Planning & Budget; Promotion & Tenure; Promotion Through the Ranks; Peer Review of Teaching; and the Departmental Allocation Budgets to streamline processes, delegate more authority to departments, reduce duplicate and erroneous data entry, and create efficiencies.
  • Support the Integrated Renewal Program (IRP) through key secondments, financial support, and committee service.
  • Renew staffing and work processes to integrate with IRP/Workday in advance of the Workday implementation.
  • Review the relationship between Arts Instructional Support and Information Technology and UBC IT and the Center for Teaching and Learning Technology, working with units to enhance collaboration and strike an appropriate balance of integrated and distributed service.
  • Cluster key supports, for example, Finance, Human Resources, and Communications, to improve service to our units and prepare for the implementation of Workday.

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