Northward ho! Visiting Boreal College in Sudbury, ON

In the afternoon on Thursday, September 26th I had the pleasure of meeting with the members of OPSEU Local 673 at Boreal College.  Boreal is located just outside of Sudbury, Ontario, and is surrounded by beautiful northern countryside.  It had been a few years since I'd been north of Barrie, and on the drive up I was captivated by the beautiful shield rock, birch trees, and early autumn colour.  Beautiful scenery makes a four and a half hour drive (almost) fly by.

Boreal was built relatively recently, in the late 1990s, and the main campus building at Sudbury looks modern and well maintained.  Against its natural backdrop, it looks picturesque.  According to Local 673 secretary Karl Aubry, the natural environment isn't just a beautiful frame for Boreal, but a very interactive part of the campus.  He told me stories of "campus bears" that are so tame and friendly that students and faculty hardly pay attention now when they amble into sight.

Boreal College - can you find the bear?

I met with the Boreal team at their 12:30pm Local Executive Committee meeting.  In attendance were President David Fasciano, VP Josée St-Jean, Chief Steward Jacques Babin, and Secretary Karl Aubry.  Stewards Hélène Coté and Michael Mainville were in attendance via speaker-phone.  Due to their work at Boreal's far northern satellite campuses, driving in to LECs is difficult for Michael and Hélène, necessitating trips of 4 to 6 hours.  This is one of the challenges faced by northern colleges, and in particular by Boreal.  As the sole francophone college in the north they service a vast area.  Although the number of full-time students is relatively low, with approximately 1,000 at the Sudbury campus, another 500 are spread throughout six satellite campuses and dozens of smaller "access centres".  

Local 673 President David Fasciano

Because of the distributed nature of Boreal's instruction, resources are constantly tight, and the pressures being felt by professors throughout the college system - to do more with less - are particularly acute.  The Local 673 executive explained that because providing post-secondary access to small francophone populations is more costly per-student than for the large city-based english-speaking colleges, the smaller communities lose out.  This is concerning given the original mandate of the colleges to ensure access, and to serve the unique employment and educational needs of their home communities.

Today's impoverished college funding model makes the normal challenges faced by a northern, francophone college especially difficult.  Under budget pressure Boreal has relied extensively on part-time professors to deliver its programs, with Local president David Fasciano noting that part-time faculty now outnumber full-time two to one.  Jacques noted that in programs that have been relying heavily on part-time faculty, that student complaints about the quality of education are rising.  The issue isn't that part-time teachers aren't qualified and committed.  The problem is that due to the refusal of management to offer them full-time jobs, or even better paid partial load work, part-time teachers tend to be transitory.  This high turnover rate, coupled with no time to develop, prepare, or evaluate the courses they are teaching,  makes it nearly impossible for part-time teachers to offer the same quality of instruction as full-time professors.  At the end of the day, as the Boreal Executive argue, it is students who are impacted the most.

VP Jose St.-Jean and Secretary Karl Aubry

Funding pressure has also led to challenges concerning academic freedom, and the ability of professors at Boreal to maintain the quality of education in the face of cost-cutting measures.  The executive related stories of professors who were told to use more multiple choice tests and cut out essays to deal with overwhelming workloads.  They also mentioned the difficult double-bind that full-time faculty are put in when managers direct them to hand over all of the course materials they have developed to part-time teachers.  In doing this, they are simply supporting management's refusal to hire full-time positions.  However, to not help our part-time teachers goes against the collegiality that the great majority of professors feel.   Academic freedom isn't an abstract concept - it means the ability to control the terms of our work, to own our intellectual property, and to pressure management into doing the right thing and hiring full-time professors.

In the end, my visit to Boreal was very enlightening.  As a professor at Mohawk College in Hamilton, I teach in a very different environment.  Mohawk has over 12,000 full-time students at a large central campus in a city four times the size of Sudbury.  While there are some similarities in terms of increasing part-time work, budget cuts, and the need for academic freedom, the particular context of Boreal as a northern, francophone college is substantially different.  Canada is an officially bilingual country, and our identity is powerfully shaped by the historical and present-day contribution of our francophone population.  Our college system should be supportive of this community, and of all of the diverse communities that make Canada what it is today.  Sadly, the corporate model being pushed by the provincial Ministry and college management is the antithesis of one that embraces local contexts, supports diverse communities, and ensures that all Canadians can access quality post-secondary education.

Thanks to Local 673 for the hospitality and very educational discussion!