Alastair Summerlee meets misconceptions and fears head on
On Oct. 10, an Open Community Forum on the Program Prioritization Process (PPP) welcomed students, staff, and faculty to Peter Clark Hall to discuss the implications of the PPP with senior administrators and University of Guelph President Alastair Summerlee. Peter Clark Hall was filled to capacity and the audience appeared anxious to see how the executive would react under pressure. Since the PPP report was unveiled on Oct. 2, speculation about its consequences has been rampant.
“I want to underscore for you the challenging environment in which we’re in,” said President Summerlee at the outset, referring directly to flatlining government funding and the projected $32.4 million budget gap. “The government is moving to performance-based allocation of resources; if we are not positioned to respond to that, we will get zero – or less.”
President Summerlee was most keen to stress that being in the top quintile of the PPP rankings does not mean more money, and that being in the bottom quintile does not mean less. In fact, it might be the case that programs in the bottom quintile are highly valuable and are deserving of more resources. “Cutting is not the only thing we need to do. We need to identify the things in the university that are under-resourced and resource them,” said Summerlee.
And, as the president would repeat throughout the afternoon: “The PPP is not designed to determine the quality of a program.”
“Each year, we are forced to think about how do we continue to do the things we’re doing with either the same, or in fact less, money,” the president added. This will result in a situation where the university is compelled to differentiate based on its strengths. That will mean becoming “better in fewer activities.”
Maureen Mancuso, Provost and VP (Academic), helped facilitate the forum (a podcast of which is available on the university’s homepage along with the relevant PowerPoint presentation) and reviewed how the PPP was conducted, what key recommendations resulted from the report, and spoke of how the process will be used in the upcoming Integrated Planning (IP) cycle.
“The PPP was not and is not the sole determinant of any program’s or service’s future,” said Mancuso. The provost further noted that when the time comes to reallocate resources and reduce the budget, the PPP will account for only 18 per cent (or $4.4 million) of the colleges’ share of the budget reduction – considerably less than other integrated planning metrics.
This information often seemed lost on the audience, whose skepticism was perhaps more deeply seated than the administration had anticipated. When it came time for questions, President Summerlee fielded a host of comments from faculty, students and at least five representatives of the Central Student Association (CSA).
President Summerlee’s frequently impassioned responses suggested an earnest desire to show that he wants, perhaps more strongly than most, to do what is best for the university. By the end, he appeared visibly disappointed that the audience was not responding to the administration’s perception of the severity of the budget gap, the modesty of the PPP, or the university’s consequent need for difficult action.
At one point, a group of seven International Development (IDEV) students attracted the president’s attention with their “I Support IDEV” t-shirts. The PPP report had singled out the IDEV program and made some strong recommendations for its future, calling it an “an orphaned and fragmented unit” among other things. The president spoke to these students directly and said that, by wearing the T-shirts, the students were fundamentally “misunderstanding the purpose” of the recommendations.
When a student from the group attempted to counter this indictment, the president responded saying that IDEV was “a real jewel for this institution” and, from the way report reads, the intent is to focus, create a home for, and invest more heavily in the program.
Tom Heeman, a senior International Development student who was in the audience, but not affiliated with the T-shirt group, said that these dramas are partly the result of the PPP’s complexity.
“The PPP is an incredibly complex document,” said Heeman. “As such it’s difficult to communicate all the internal logic behind the innumerable decisions that constitute it. Unfortunately, the simplified narrative that arose form this deeply complicated process was one of fear driven by the threat of cuts. In this environment, I consider the group of IDEV students to be completely rational; they were showing concern for the program they come to campus for every day.”
That being said, according to Heeman, students have an obligation to contribute to the debate by informing themselves of the facts.
“The university’s financial restrictions are real and will not go away anytime soon…The most proactive strategy in this scenario is to work creatively and collaboratively within the report’s recommendations…All parties entered into the process in good faith over a year ago, and by entering into petty squabbles, we as students will miss out on a seat at the table and the opportunity to ask the questions that really matter to our educational experience, and the fate of our institution.”