.

TO: Senate

SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

Senate Committee on University Priorities ?

Memorandum

FROM:

John

Chair

Vice

DATE: ?

Marci

S.08-46

iveMed

Sea-e.

- 4 4proZ

RE: Department of Political Science

The Senate Committee on University Priorities (SCUP) has reviewed the External

Review Report on the Department of Political Science, together with responses from the

Chair and Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, and input from the Associate

Vice President, Academic.

Motion:

That Senate approve the recommendations from the Senate Committee on

University Priorities concerning advice to the Department of Political Science and the

Dean of Arts & Social Sciences on priority items resulting from the External Review.

•

The

submitted

report

in

of

March

the External

2007 following

Review

Team*

the review

for the

team's

Department

site visit.

of

The

Political

response

Science

from

was

the

Department of Political Science and the response from the Dean were received in

September and November 2007.

A number of recommendations were made by the Team which may further strengthen

the Department.

SCUP recommends to Senate that the Department of Political Science and the Dean of

Arts & Social Sciences be advised to pursue the following as priority items.

1. Undergraduate Programmes

• Revisit the decision not to act on the recommendation to remove the cap of

30 students on third year (300) courses.

• Develop an upper level course that examines non quantitative/qualitative

research methods.

2.

Graduate Programmes

• Inform prospective PhD students of the funding they can expect to receive

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through scholarships and Teaching Assistantships.

o

Seek ways to guarantee PhD students a minimum of four years of funding.

• Ensure PhD student funding packages do not include sessional teaching

earlier than the fourth year of study.

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• Consider limiting the number of areas of specialization, particularly at the PhD

level in order to better differentiate SFU Political Science programmes from

those at other universities.

• To assist students to be eligible for more scholarships.

• Consider requiring all graduate students to take POL 801 (Theoretical

Perspectives in Political Science) and POL 802 (Political research: Design

and Analysis).

• Ensure that POL 801 retains its broad objective of introducing students to

major epistemological Political Science debates.

• Pursue the development of a qualitative methods course for graduate

programmes.

• Reduce the number of cross-listed courses (POL 400/800) significantly.

recTal

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courses annually in the fall and spring.

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o

Make better usage of the Departmental website to provide information and

support for students.

3.

Faculty

• Develop a strategy which ensures equity in faculty teaching loads.

• Prioritize the securing of more external grants and research funding.

• Prioritize the publication of research in high profile journals and other quality

venues.

4.

Governance

o In recognition of the importance of ongoing departmental planning, create a

Priorities and Planning Committee and a Curriculum Committee to provide

advice to the chair on governance issues and recommend academic priorities

for the Department, including hiring.

5. Relationships within SFU

o With the involvement of the Dean, create a joint committee mandated to

develop a collegial and mutually beneficial relationship with the School of

International Studies.

* Review Team

Dr. Grace Skogstad - Review Team Chair (University of Toronto)

Dr. William Coleman (McMaster University)

Dr. Reeta Tremblay (Memorial University)

CC Lesley Cormack, Dean, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences

David Laycock, Chair, Dept of Political Science

FA

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.

External Review of the Department of Political Science

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Simon Fraser University

Report of the External Review Team:

William D. Coleman, McMaster University

Grace Skogstad, University of Toronto (Chair)

.

?

Reeta Tremblay, Memorial University

Site Visit: March 7— 9. 2007

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Report Submitted: March 22, 2007

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Introduction

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S

The members of the Department of Political Science external review team visited Simon

Fraser University March 7 - 9. 2007. The review was well organized. both in advance of

and during our site visit. Prior to our visit, we were sent ample documentation of the

Department's programs and faculty, as well as of the university's academic and strategic

plans. The on-site visit provided us with considerable opportunity to meet on an

individual basis with many faculty members, the officers of the Department, groups of

students and staff, and other individuals with responsibilities for ancillary programs.

We would like to thank all the individuals who met with us during our visit and whose

cooperation was invaluable in producing this report. We thank Bal Basi in the office of

the Academic Vice-President; Dr. Bob Anderson, who served as the fourth member of

the review committee but did not participate in the writing of this report; the faculty, staff

and students in Political Science who took time to meet with us; Dr. David Lavcock,

Chair of Political Science, who attended to all our requests for information and arranged

additional meetings for us; Dr. John Harris, Director of the School for International

Studies; Dr. Kennedy Stuart of the School of Public Policy; Dr. Karl Froschauer. director

of the Centre for Canadian Studies; Dr. Anthony Per!, director of Urban Studies: Dr. Eric

Hershberg, director of Latin American Studies; Gwen Bird and Colleen Aistad from the

SFU library; and Eva Lewis, Co-op Coordinator.

undergraduate

We address the

program;

questions

Part

that

II,

were

the

posed

graduate

for

programs;

the review

Part

in six

III,

parts.

the facultPart

I

y

reviews

: Part IV,

the

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5

governance and administration; Part V, the relatidns of Political Science with other units

in the university; and Part VI contains a summary of our recommendations.

I. Undergraduate Program

The Terms of Reference for the External Review Committee ask for an evaluation of the

quality of the undergraduate programs with respect to structure, breadth, orientation.

inte g

ration, and management of enrolment: the adequacy of teaching resources and the

balance of undergraduate and graduate courses; and 'strategies necessary to attract

students in a competitive market, including the possible creation of a direct entry option

for Political Science majors and perhaps an enhanced Honors program.' The Review

Committee is also asked to determine whether the Department has measures in place to

ensure programs are evaluated and revised.

The External Review Committee finds the Political Science undergraduate programs

Major. Minor. and Honours—to he well structured. Programs strike a judicious balance

between required courses and breadth requirements, on the one hand, and latitude for

students to choose course options in keeping with their interests. on the other hand.

Requiring Major and Honours students to take compulsory courses in political theory.

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is

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Canadian politics and statistics, as well as meeting breadth requirements across the sub-

fields of the discipline, is consistent with the best programs in Political Science in

Canada. At the same time, the removal of a number of prerequisites to upper level

courses has provided students with flexibility in course selection.

Although students are not always able to access the courses they need (see below), the

Department has made a very good effort to offer a full range of courses and to expose

students to the major sub-fields of Political Science. The one possible gap is the absence

of an upper level course that examines non-quantitative /qualitative methods. Many

undergraduate programs now list such a course as a counterpart to courses in quantitative

methods (Statistics). The 'Undergraduate Report for External Review 2007' indicates that

the Department is proposing a fourth year course on 'Qualitative Methodology for

Comparative Politics, and we support this initiative.

Management of enrolment, however, has proven to be difficult as enrolment in Political

Science courses and programs has risen sharply since the last review. The Department

has not been able to service the necessary range of undergraduate courses with its

existing complement of tenure-stream/tenured faculty and has had to rely extensively on

sessional or limited term instructors (hereafter, we refer to these instructors as simply

sessional appointments). In addition, students are being 'turned away' from courses. with

the consequence of students being denied entry to courses of their choice and

experiencing a delay in completing their program.

Political Science at SFU is not alone in experiencing the problem of a large amount of

undergraduate sessional teaching. It has occurred elsewhere in Canada as the full time

faculty complement has lagged behind undergraduate enrolment increases. However,

extensive teaching by sessionals is not ideal for students, no matter how effective the

sessional instructor. As the Department points out, when sessionals are teaching upper

level courses, students have less interaction with full time faculty, lose important

mentorship, and often find it difficult to obtain letters of recommendation from reputable

and well known faculty to support their applications for post undergraduate training.

Individual faculty members have recognized how students are disadvantaged by this

situation and have offered directed readings courses. This strategy is not an efficient one,

however, and can only deal with the needs of a handful of students at best.

Recent new appointments, including those of facult

y

who will join the Department in

September 2007 and .Eanuary 2008, should help to alleviate some of the need to rely on

sessional appointments. However, without additional growth in the faculty complement

(beyond replacements for retiring faculty), servicing the needs of undergraduate (and

(Yraduate) students. without relying on stipend or limited term appointments will Continue

to prove difficult.

One initiative that we believe could alleviate the proportion of undergraduate sessional

teaching is to terminate the current enrolment cap of 30 students on third year courses.

•

This practice is now working against the students' best interests, and indeed, the

Department has had to abandon this goal in recent years with respect to certain third year

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courses. We recommend that the cap on third year courses be lifted to-60-80 students. A

higher cap should allow more students to access a given third year course, and free up

faculty to offer lower level or upper level courses more frequently. If this change is made

at the third year level, then it should still be possible to retain the seminar experience at

the fourth year level. We agree with the Department that a small seminar experience at

the fourth year level is highly desirable and consistent with best practices in

undergraduate training in Canada.

The Department seeks advice about its Honours program. We recommend it be

eliminated. As the Department notes, four year undergraduate programs are now the

norm, and we think little is added to the undergraduate experience by having students do

more courses.

Eliminating the Honours program need not mean eliminating the opportunity for

undergraduate students to write a thesis. It could be retained as one

option among two others that we recommend. These other options are for fourth year

Major students to complete an internship (for example, with a governmental or non-

governmental agency) or a Research Opportunity Course wherein students conduct their

own research or work with a faculty member on his/her research project. Course

requirements for both the internship and the Research Opportunity course would include

an extended paper

(25-30

pages). The internship or Research Opportunity would not

displace other opportunities SFU provides for students to enrich their undergraduate

experience, including participating in international exchanges and field schools.

The Department seeks advice on a direct entry option for Political Science Majors. We do

not have a view on whether this will make Political Science more attractive as a Major.

At the same time, we see no reason to oppose it.

In terms of on

g oing curriculum evaluation and revision, the Department has been

sensitive to the need to revisit curriculum offerings as the discipline changes, as

boundaries between sub-fields become more permeable, and as new faculty members

with new areas of expertise are hired. However, we heard some concerns about the

efficacy of the current decentralized structure of curriculum renewal (with field

committees responsible and acting relatively independently of one another). We suggest

that a Curriculum Committee be created and take over responsibility from field groups.

(We flesh out its composition more fully in Part IV, Administration and Governance.) It

would provide for a more centralized and coordinated structure to undertake annual

review of course offerings and to adjust the curriculum consistent with the expertise of

new hires.

In our meeting with undergraduate students, we were told that the results of teaching

evaluations are not published in aggregate form for each course taught. If these

evaluations are not published. this practice departs from the norm in most Canadian

universities. including political science departments. if this information is correct. we

recommend that the evaluations be aggregated and published for each course and made

available to students.

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Finally, we suggest that the Department seek ways to bolster its provision of academic

advice to students. The Department has made efforts to serve students counseling needs.

but these could he enhanced, through greater information on its website and/or by

designating a faculty advisor to assist students with course selection and provide advice

on career options.

The foregoing modifications can strengthen the delivery of what is overall a well

conceived and structured undergraduate program to which the Department has devoted

considerable attention. We see our recommendations as minor modifications that would

reinforce the good reputation that the Department and its faculty enjoy with

undergraduate students.

H: The Graduate Program

The External Review Team is asked to examine the structure, breadth, depth and course

offerings of the graduate programs; graduate student progress and completion; enrolment

management; their comparative advantages within Canada; the success of the

specializations in theme areas of public policy, governance and political economy: the

competitiveness of funding offers with other Ph.D granting departments in Canada; the

adequacy of the current research design and research methods program requirements; and

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'possible changes to planning processes and internal structures that ma

y result in

enhancing the profile of the graduate program.'

Our observations about the MA and PhD programs come at a time when the Department

is graduating its first PhD students and they are obtaining university teaching positions,

and sonic graduate students are winning prestigious SSHRC awards. The graduate

students whom we met were overwhelmingly positive about their experience in the

Department and their relationships with Political Science faculty, their supervisors, and

staff. They voiced their enthusiasm for a Department whose faculty are diverse in their

epistemological and methodological approaches and take their supervisory

responsibilities seriously.

Turning to the structure of the graduate program, we find the Department's requirement

that MA (and PhD) students take courses in 'Theoretical Perspectives in Political

Science' (POL 801) and 'Political Research: Design and Analysis' (POL 802) to he

consistent with best practices of graduate training. We note and support graduate

students' belief that POL80I works best when it examines all the major epistemological

debates in the field, rather than concentrating overwhelmingly on one approach (for

example, rational choice). Increasingly, graduate programs are adding courses in

Qualitative Methods as requirements to their graduate training and we recommend that

the Department either introduce Qualitative Methods as a component of its P0L802

course or identify a separate qualitative methods course. We note (see above) that the

S

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Department is planning to introduce such a course at the 400-level. but we generally do

not support cross-listed courses (see below).

4

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We also believe that the Department has the capacity to deliver the MA in the three fields

of International Relations, Canadian Politics, and Comparative Politics that it has

identified.

By contrast, we think the PhD program should be narrowed to the two fields of a) Global

and Regional Political Economy and b) Public Policy. We suggest that the three themes

(political economy, public policy, and governance) be eliminated. Students will therefore

write their two examinations in these two fields. The Department has admirable strength

in the regional political economy of Latin America, Africa, NAFTA, and Asia. as well as

global political economy issues, including development. It can also aspire to he the

leading university in western Canada in Public Policy: Canadian, Comparative, and

International. There are currently several Canadian universities offering Masters' degrees

in Public Policy (including Simon Fraser) but there are far fewer that offer a PhD in

Public Policy - and certainly none that we know of in western Canada. A focus on Public

Policy will allow SFU to distinguish itself from UBC and the University of Victoria at

the doctoral level.

Concentrating on the two fields of Global and Regional Political Economy, and Public

Policy, does not rule out the possibility of adding other fields in the future as recent hires

build a research profile. One potential third PhD field is Political Representation, to

reflect the expertise of current faculty in theories of political representation as well as in

the empirical study of representation via political parties, interest groups, digital

communities (for example, around blogs) and social movements. The addition of a few

new appointments would suffice to list this area as a new field and one that would have

important synergies with Global and Regional Political Economy as well as Public

Policy.

There are nonetheless some real concerns about the graduate programs, most notably

their attractiveness to students. The Masters' program has experienced a precipitous drop

in enrolment this current academic year and the PhD program is struggling to attract

stUdents. We lack the information to offer sensible suggestions on the reason for the

sharp decline in MA students this current year or for the failure of the PhD program to

grow to the numbers desired by the Department. The Department will need to try to

build its own database, contacting students who don't take up offers of admission to find

out why, for example, they chose to go elsewhere.

We think there are other steps the Department can take with respect to the delivery of its

MA and PhD programs to make them more attractive to potential applicants and to

enhance the quality of the training of those enrolled in the programs. First, we

recommend the Department reduce significantly the number of cross-listed (400 level

undergraduate and 800 level

g

raduate) courses. If the Department wants to recruit the

best of its own students into its MA (and PhD) programs, it will need to reduce the

number of cross-listed courses since these students will already have taken the courses in

question and hence will see little merit in staying on at SFU.

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Second. the Department should make a concerted effort to offer courses in the designated

graduate fields, particularly core courses, in the fall and winter terms. We heard from

students who had come to study in one subfield only to find that there were no courses

offered in that subfield in either the fall or winter terms. We hope that our

recommendation above to remove caps on third year courses—thereby allowing for

fewer, larger courses at this level--will free up faculty to teach more graduate-only

courses. We anticipate that the recent addition of new faculty members will also allow for

more

g

raduate courses to be offered more frequently. We also pass on the suggestion of a

graduate student that the Department make a more concerted effort to inform students

about courses outside the Departrhent that could serve students' interests and needs. and

direct students to them.

Third, the Department needs to take steps to shorten the length of time students take to

complete the programs. Full time PhD students should he able to complete in

5-6

years

rather than the current mode of 7 years. MA students also appear to be taking longer than

desirable to finish.

In our view, the most important steps to reducing time to completion rate are a) to reduce

appreciably the teaching and TA responsibilities of graduate students-,and b) enhance

theirfinancial package. We recommend that the Department provide PhD students with a

minimal guarantee of funding for four, not three years. In addition. this guaranteed

fi.mnding should not be contingent upon PhD students being required to teach their own

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course prior to their fourth year or until they are finished their field work and have

commenced writing their dissertation.

The collective experience of the members of the Review Team is that while

some

teaching experience is an asset in applying for tenure-stream faculty positions, and while

teaching potential is weighed in the determination of successful candidates. it is not

necessary to have extensive teaching experience. The most successful candidates are. as a

rule, those who have finished their PhD dissertation in a timely fashion and have begun to

publish.

We believe that a better financial package for PhD students is vital to successful

recruitment of the number of students needed to ensure the viability of the graduate

program. Putting in place the resources for a competitive financial package is the

responsibility of the University and it should consider whether it needs to match the 'free

tuition' strategy of the University of British Columbia. It might also investigate more

closely the kinds of offers being made by the University of Calgary and the Universit

y

of

Alberta to their Ph.D students.

And finall

y , the Department will likely need to intensify its recruitment initiatives to

increase its applicant pool and retention rate. We don't have anything novel to add here,

but would simply reiterate the importance of making brochures about the graduate

programs available to colleges and other universities, as well as constructing a more

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attractive website. The Department's website. for example. could profile successful

students in the program. In our experience, students turn to Department websites as the

6

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first and major source of information about graduate programs. Hence the website

creates an impression of the department that can either spark or diminish interest in

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applying. Resources invested in providing prospective applicants with comprehensive

information online about these programs are usually a good investment.

III: The Faculty

The External Review Team is asked to evaluate the quality of faculty teaching and

research; the level of external research support; service contributions; faculty

collaboration and interaction to the end of providing 'a stimulating academic

environment*; and the size and quality of the faculty complement in relation to the

Department's responsibilities and workload.

Beginning with the quality of the faculty, our overall impression of the Political Science

faculty is one of unquestioned competence. Faculty members take their teaching

responsibilities seriously and step up to the plate to meet students needs, including by

offering directed reading courses, turning their courses into distance-education courses,

assuming responsibility for mounting the University-wide writing courses. and teaching

larger classes. There is also evidence of not just competence but also excellence: some

faculty have won teaching awards and garnered large external grants for their research

projects. including those in collaboration with Departmental colleagues and others

outside the university. Most of those without large funding are nonetheless actively

engaged in research and publishing.

Given this overall productivity, the members of the Review Committee are somewhat

surprised that the levels of external research grants are not higher in relation to other units

in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and in relation to other PhD-granting Political

Science departments. We recognize that SSHRCC success rates are not high (an

application has a greater chance of being turned down than awarded), but we do believe

that all faculty should be strongly encouraged to apply for SSHRCC and other external

research grants. These research grants will he a boon for attracting and funding graduate

students, and would expedite the Research Opportunity initiative that we propose be

added to the undergraduate program.

We also recommend that faculty seek higher quality outlets for their publications, we

expected to see more articles published in such journals than was evident on average in

the CVs we received. We urge faculty to publish in widely recognized high quality peer

reviewed journals and with academic presses. Doing so will help raise the profile of the

PhD program, assist in improving success rates at SSHRCC. and attract good PhD

students.

Several members of the Political Science Department have made an important

contribution to the wider Canadian and international political science and academic

community. Hosting the

Canadian

.Journal o/ Political Science

is one clear example of

such service, but there are other examples as well.

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The Department has taken steps to create a lively intellectual environment and to work

collaboratively. We are struck by several examples of members co-publishing. We

applaud the Speaker Series as a vehicle for promoting intellectual exchanges in the

Department (although we do question whether its Monday morning slot is good timing!).

To build on initiatives to date, we recommend that the Dean of FASS provide a small

budget for the speaker series. At the same time, many Departments also find that 'brown

bag' lunch seminars can create a more informal setting in which colleagues and graduate

students can present their own 'research in progress.'

We turn finally to the matter of the size of the faculty complement relative to its teaching

responsibilities and workload. There is little doubt that the increase in undergraduate

enrolment and the University-wide requirements to offer undergraduate writing courses

have placed additional demands on faculty. We understand from the senior administration

that Political Science should not expect any appreciable growth in its faculty complement

to take account of these larger numbers. Accordingl

y

, we think it should be a priority for

the Chair of the Department to pay close attention to equity in the work load of faculty

members. By equity we mean a similar distribution of students across faculty members.

with similar levels of support in the form of TAships and or graders, and roughly similar

responsibilities across graduate and undergraduate teaching and graduate supervision.

Many departments, for example, expect each faculty member to teach a combination of a

large undergraduate lecture course. a smaller lecture course at the third year level, an

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undergraduate seminar and a graduate seminar on a rotating basis.

Our appraisal suggests that the distribution of responsibility for Masters students'

supervision has been quite well shared. The numbers of PhD students are fewer, but even

so we are struck b

y

the fact that no single faculty member has a disproportionate number

of PhD students. The distribution of undergraduate teaching responsibilities may he or

may become more of a problem if our recommendation to remove the cap of 30 students

on third year courses is pursued. Faculty members teaching large third year courses

would then need some compensation for doing so.

Although we don't believe there is any major problem as yet with respect to equity in

teaching/supervision faculty work loads, we recommend that the Chair of the Department

develop, in consultation with faculty, a proposal for how equity in

undergraduate/graduate teaching and supervisory responsibilities will he achieved.

IV: Administration and Governance

The External Review Team is asked to appraise the effectiveness of administration in the

Department. the adequacy of administrative resources, and whether the environment

within

the Department 'is conducive to the attainment of the objectives of the

Department.'

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We see good administration and governance as crucial to the success of the ability of the

Department to attain its teaching and research objectives. Our impression from our site

visit is that faculty, staff and students work collegially and with respect for one another.

However, we are aware of both some recent tensions and ongoing matters that. in our

view, require careful attention to administrative and governance mechanisms in the

Department.

First, there are some serious concerns about

hiring procedures.

We stress that the

concern is not with the

outcomes of

these procedures; the Department is excited about the

arrival of new faculty members and there is consensus that they are all excellent

additions, with first rate credentials and research potential. But there are concerns about

new hiring procedures that a) attempt to quantify in absolute terms the de

g ree to which

applicants meet teaching, research and service criteria; b) vary from one competition to

another in the weights accorded to teaching, research and service; and c) are not applied

consistently with stipulated procedures. These concerns have led to the unfortunate

perception that the hiring procedures can be manipulated to favour hiring priorities

related to epistemological and methodological approaches that have not been explicitly

endorsed by the Department.

We agree that rigorous scrutiny of candidates with regard to their potential research and

teaching excellence is important. The present quantification approach used by the search

committee, however, appears to inhibit rigorous scrutiny of candidates according to

advertised criteria and appears to undermine the legitimacy of the outcome even when

there is a strong consensus in the department about a given candidate. In fact,

employment equity principles require that the advertised criteria for a position be those

used exclusively in evaluating prospective candidates. In the schema used by the

department. we did not see direct linkages to the advertised criteria.

Accordingly, we recommend that the hiring committee provide a qualitative written

statement to the Department regarding how short listed candidates meet the advertised

criteria with regard to teaching and research. Such a written report would provide the

members of the Department with the information needed to deliberate and evaluate

individual candidates.

Second, as the Department continues with its process of faculty renewal (with three

retirements pending in the next two years), it will he important to have a mechanism in

place for long term planning. We do not believe this task can fall to the Department as a

whole in the first instance, but is properly the mandate for a committee headed by the

Chair of the Department. Such a Priorities and Planning (P&P) Committee would be

responsible for recommendin g

the priorities of the department with respect to not only

academic appointments but also programs. It would address the question of what the

Department should look like (in terms of areas of strength, fields in the MA and PhD

programs) by the time of the next review in 7 years time. It could also advise the

department on how best to capture opportunities through collaborating with other cognate

units and programs.

C)

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Third. and further to planning, we recommend a Curriculum Committee be created with

responsibility for ongoing curriculum review. This recommendation grows out of our

discussions with faculty members, including the Undergraduate Chair, who are concerned

that the existing structure--delegatin g

responsibility for curriculum review/renewal to

field areas--is not functioning as effectively as needed to provide integrated programs and

ajudicious balancing of undergraduate and graduate courses. The Curriculum Committee

would be chaired by the Undergraduate Chair and its members would include the

Graduate Chair, representatives of different epistemological and methodologica!

approaches as well as the different subfields of political science. It would report to the

Department.

Fourth, we are aware of some recent changes in, and additions to. staff personnel and

heard about the complexit

y

of administering the graduate and undergraduate programs.

We suggest that the time is ripe for the Departmental Manager to institute a weekly

meeting of administrative staff. its purpose will be to ensure effective communication

across staff and an efficient allocation of responsibilities, especially during those times in

the calendar y

ear when staff responsible for graduate admissions face heavy work loads.

It would he helpful if the Department Chair attended these meetings once or twice a

month as well.

Finally, we judge administrative resources to be adequate. We note undergraduate

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students do not have a dedicated lounge or study space or computer equipment, but heard

no complaints from them about any of these deficiencies. We judge library resources to

he excellent in tenils of availability of electronic journals, free access to Interlibrary

Loan, and librarians ea g

er to share their expertise with faculty.

V: The Department of Political Science and Other Units

The External Review Team is asked to evaluate the Department's relationships

with other units and centres, as well as 'the circumstances under which the Faculty

structure review process could benefit the Department.' We were not briefed on the latter

and are thus unable to comment on it.

We begin with the Department's operational relationship with the Centre for Canadian

Studies. We judge it to be good. Although we were not asked to evaluate the Canadian

Studies program itself, we believe that the major/minor programs in Canadian Studies are

not adequately resourced. We do not believe it is go

od pedagogical practice to run a

program virtually entirely on sessional appointments. In our view, the SFU

administration has a decision to make: either put resources into full time faculty for

Canadian Studies or wind it up.

Turning to relations with the School of Public Policy. we heard of a harmonious

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relationship between the Chair

-

of Political Science and Director of the MPP. Our

understanding is that there is limited Political Science faculty involvement in the delivery

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of the Masters of Public Policy program and also little competition between the two

masters programs. The MA program in Political Science is an academic program while

the MPP is an applied program. We think there is some room for more collaboration and

course sharing across the two programs. In particular, MPP students could be invited to

take the Methods courses (POL 802, and a qualitative methods course once it is mounted)

in Political Science. There could also be movement of students across optional courses

for both programs. We learned that there were no particular administrative obstacles to

the movement of students between regular and premium tuition programs.

Our conversations with the Chair of Political Science and the directors of the Urban

Studies and Latin America programs also confirm cordial relationships. The

Department's contribution to the BAFF program also bodes well for a continuing

harmonious relationship here.

Things have not, however, proceeded so smoothly in terms of the relationship between

Political Science and the School of International Studies (SIS). While the Chair of

Political Science and the Director of SIS are both committed to working together, a

synergistic relationship between the two units, to the benefit of SFU as a whole. will

require senior administrative leadership.

In our view, SIS's undergraduate and graduate programs will have a clear impact on

programs in Political Science. Faculty members in Political Science, with colleagues

elsewhere in the university, have worked hard to build Development Studies at SFU,

including the introduction of a Development Studies certificate. They understandably

would like to see these efforts bear fruit in the construction of new programs at the

School of International Studies. Their specialties in international political economy.

development studies, and human security are the very ones at the core of the SJS

Masters' program. In our view, this overlap of teaching and research interests means that

there are clear opportunities for enhancing both the Department of Political Science and

the School if the two units cooperate in the design and delivery of MA (and PhD)

programs.

The history of the creation of the SIS, however, means that there is a strong risk that such

synergistic opportunities will not be realized unless steps are taken immediately at the

highest administrative levels of the university to build bridges between the two units.

Through the even-handed direction of senior administrators, it should he possible to

counter perceptions that new programs at the School will undermine undergraduate and

graduate programs in political science.

Over the medium and long term, a good operational and academic relationship between

Political Science and SIS will increase the ability of both units to attract highly qualified

graduate students in Canada and abroad, as well as recruit excellent faculty members.

SFU will be more attractive to those who are already at SFU and a good working

relationship will help to retain current faculty and move their own research projects

forward. Programs at the two units will be strengthened as faculty members can

collectively offer more courses and share graduate student supervision.

---

We think it imperative that the serious strains between the Department and the School be

addressed immediately or both units will suffer and opportunities for mutual growth and

support will be lost. Accordin

g

l y

, we recommend in the strongest possible terms that the

Vice-President, Academic create a coordinating committee, chaired by himself or his

designate, and whose membership includes among others the chair of Political Science,

the director of the School. one faculty member from Political Science whose expertise is

Human Security and another whose expertise is International Political Economy. and a

SFU faculty member whose expertise is Development Studies.

VI. Recommendations

The Review Team has been asked to prioritize its. recommendations and we do so here,

beginning with the most important.

The highest priority should be given to ensuring a collegial and mutually

beneficial relationship between the School of International Studies and the Department of

Political Science. To this end, the Vice-President Academic should create a committee to

coordinate programs offered by the School and the Department. The membership of the

coordinating committee should include, among others, the Chair of Political Science, the

Director of the School of International Studies, one faculty member from Political

. ?

Science whose expertise is Human Security, another faculty member whose expertise is

Development Studies, and a Political Science faculty member whose expertise is

International Political Economy. The Vice-President Academic or his designate should

chair the committee.

The Department of Political Science should remove the cap of 30 students on

third year (300) courses.

The Department should guarantee PhD students a minimum of four years of

funding (through a combination of scholarships and TAships.)

The Department should strive to increase the relative proportion of graduate

student funding through scholarships rather than Teaching Assistantships.

POL 801 (Theoretical Perspectives in Political Science) and POL 802 (Political

Research: Design and Analysis) should be required courses for all graduate students.

The number of cross-listed courses (POL 400/800) should be reduced

significantly.

The Department should offer 2 PhD fields: a) Global and Regional Political

Economy; b) Public Policy, It should eliminate themes of study.

0

---

The Departmental hiring committee should provide a qualitative written statement

to the Department regarding how short listed candidates meet the advertised criteria with

regard to teaching and research.

The Department of Political Science should eliminate its Honours program.

The Department of Political Science should introduce an Internship or a Research

Opportunity Course as two additional options to a Thesis for fourth year undergraduates

in the Major program.

All required graduate courses should be offered annually in the fall and winter

terms.

PhD students' financial packages should not include sessional teaching earlier

than the fourth year of study.

The Department of Political Science should coordinate the responsibilities of

providing academic and program advice to students in a single office.

The Department should consider creating a Priorities and Planning Committee,

with the mandate to recommend academic priorities for the department, including hiring.

The Department should consider creating a Curriculum Committee with

responsibility for regular curriculum review and renewal.

The Chair of the Department, in consultation with faculty, should develop a

strategy to ensure equity in teaching responsibilities.

Faculty should put a high priority on securing more external grants and research

funds.

To raise the profile of the PhD program and attract good PhD students, faculty

should aim to publish in high quality peer reviewed journals and with academic presses.

The Department should make full use of its website to provide information on

courses, inside and outside the Department; applying for SSHRCs and other fellowships:

and university support services and programs.

The Department of Political Science should follow through on its proposal to

adopt an upper level (400) course that examines non-quantitative !qualitative methods.

POL 801 should retain its broad objective of introducing students to the major

epistemological debates in the field of Political Science.

POL 802 should incorporate qualitative methods: if it does not, the department

should identitv a separate qualitative methods course for graduate students.

---

The Department may wish to add a third PhD field in the future in the area of

Political Representation.

The MA program should retain the three fields of International Relations,

Canadian Politics and Comparative Politics.

The Dean of FASS should provide a small budget for the Department's Speaker

Series.

Consideration should be given to holding a weekly meeting of administrative

staff

in order to ensure effective communication and efficient allocation of responsibilities.

.

.

14

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-

?

I ?

. ?

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?

Faculty of

St

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I ?

•

Arts and Social Sciences

\.

MEMO

ATTENTION BiLl Krane, Associate VP Academic

Faculty of ?

I

FROM Lesley Cormack, Dean, FASS

Arts and Social Sciences ?

RE External Review - Political Science: Dean's Response

Office of the Dean

DATE November 7, 2007

Street address

Academic Quadrangle

Room 6168 ?

1 welcome the opportunity to respond to the External Review for the

Burnaby, BC Canada ?

Department of Political Science, written in April 2007, as well as the

V5A 1S6

?

Department's reply of September 2007.

604-291-4415 (Tel.)

I am particularly pleased that the reviewers found the

604-291-3033(Fax)

Faculty of

Arts and Social Sciences

done by a Priorities and Planning Committee and a Curriculum

Committee, as suggested in the Review, or through some other

configuration, as suggested by the Department, is less important

than that on-going planning take place in a collegial atmosphere.

With regards to curricular development, the Department must be

creative and work within its resources to make all its programs the

best possible. I encourage them to consider all possible

suggestions. The department should examine how well students

flow through their program. They need to ensure that lower level

courses fill an effective recruiting function as well as laying down

fundamentals in the field, and once in the program, students should

not encounter course access bottlenecks. For example, I urge them

to take seriously the External Review's suggestion to lift the cap on

3rd year courses. While I understand their reluctance to increase

class size, they need to weigh the relative merits of

3rd

year caps,

400/800 courses, lack of choice at the

41h

year level, and stand-alone

graduate courses.

•

?

I agree with the Department that it does not make sense to

eliminate the Honours program. The External Reviewers' Ontario

orientation makes them misunderstand the important role of

honours programs at SFU in training the best of our students and

preparing them for graduate work. It might be interesting,

however, for the Department to consider the suggestion of an

Internship option, if this is not already a possibility within their

undergraduate program.

Concerning the Graduate Program, I urge the Department to take

seriously the External Review's suggestions with regards to limiting

the number of areas of specialization, particularly at the PhD level.

While it is understandable that the Department wishes to maintain

an active PhD program in all areas, in order to be competitive and

attract the best graduate students it is important to differentiate

themselves from programs at other universities. The best way to do

this is through the development of particular areas of strength. This

would not prevent students in other areas from being admitted to

the program, but would allow the Department to develop and

promote the areas in which they are particularly strong.

I applaud the Department's tangible commitments to funding

10

?

graduate students, particularly their recent transformation of the

"IN u)\is:

?

t:\!E!I1Y

?

YNKING ?

WORLD

---

Faculty of

Arts and Social Sciences

Michael and Jan Stevenson Graduate Scholarship in Political Science

to an entrance scholarship, and their commitment to 4 year funding

for PhD students. This is very important in the competitive world of

attracting graduate students and I encourage them to continue to

find creative ways to increase funding (especially through mentoring

students as they apply for SSHRC grants, through faculty grants

supporting students, etc.)

I urge the Department to take seriously the comments by the

External Reviewers regarding research profile. It is very important

for the Department to demonstrate its research excellence, through

publishing in top venues, through applying for and winning important

external grants, and by making a significant contribution to the

national and international scholarly community. This is itself a key

step in ensuring a top graduate program; the recruiting of good

graduate students will follow where there is research leadership

shown by faculty members.

There is a suggestion that the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

contribute funding for a speakers series. Unfortunately, FASS is not

in a position to increase funding to departments at this time, and

suggests that the Department consider using its FIC funding for such

a purpose.

Finally, I understand that the hiring policy, criticized by the External

Review, has now been changed, so this should not be an area of

concern.

This review has given the Department a strong agenda for moving

forward. I strongly urge the Department to take the key

recommendations from this review and work diligently to assess

them, and implement those that will benefit the Department and its

programs into the future.

I ?

/2

Lesley Corm- ck

Cc: D. Laycock, Chair, Dept. of Political Science

i.

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N F R A

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5 ?

Response to 2007 External Review

Department of Political Science

Simon Fraser University

September 2007

Our department welcomes the opportunity to respond to a thoughtful and often

helpful External Review Report. We have discussed all of the recommendations

in a combination of e-mail conversations and several meetings of the whole

department. We will respond to the recommendations in order of the subject

areas addressed in the External Review Report, following the rank of importance

they attach to these in their final list of recommendations. We will offer one of

four responses to each recommendation:

1.

accept the recommendations without qualification,

2.

accept the recommendation with some qualification,

3.

take the recommendation under review by relevant department

committees, and report to the SFU Administration at a later date on the

verdict and course of action intended; and,

4.

reject the recommendation, with explanation.

S

I.

Undergraduate Program

We were pleased with the External Review Committee's overall assessment of

our Undergraduate Program, in which their recommendations were presented as

"minor modifications that would reinforce the good reputation that the Department

and its faculty enjoy with undergraduate students." Where we disagree with their

suggestions, it is typically because we believe the ERC missed or under-

appreciated some important aspect of the specific context in which we operate,

or has not appreciated how crucial student recruitment and retention will be for

us and SFU overall in the coming decade.

While the ERC placed a high priority on their proposal that

the Department

should remove the cap of 30 students on third year (300) courses, POL

colleagues are unanimous in reiectin

g

this recommendation. We agree that our

teaching resources must be sufficient to offer more graduate courses, but we are

not prepared to make such a sacrifice to do this, and do not believe it is

necessary to achieve this result. At a time that SFU is asking departments to

develop strategies to retain UG students, we feel it would be unwise to surrender

one of the major advantages we offer POL majors when compared to other

Canadian and BC universities. Our undergraduate students' association has told

us that the relatively small 300 level courses we offer provide them with key

reasons for coming to and staying in our program. We also note that in the five

courses in which we have lifted caps at the 300 level, we did so in response to

different enrollment crises - that is, far too many students chasing too few class

spaces, between 2003 and 2006. We do not appear to be in this enrollment

jg.

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2

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4

environment any longer. To free up some additional teaching resources at the

graduate level, however, we are prepared to increase the cap in those 300 level

courses that already have over 50 students to a level of 102 per course. By so

doing we will also discover more accurately whether there is additional unmet UG

demand for our most popular 300 level courses.

It is worth noting here that in Macleans' 2007

Guide to Canadian Universities,

the

SFU profile's section on "What's Not [Hot]" included a mention of "large class

sizes: many multiple-choice exams, less one-on-one time with profs"

[p.

155].

Whether this is a fair depiction of SFU's undergrad programs is somewhat beside

the point; Macleans has created this perception, and it will affect many

prospective Political Science students' university choices unless we can show

that this is not true in our department. Political Science is happy to continue to

provide an example of how pedagogically superior, low-enrollment 300 level

classes can make SFU an attractive destination for top students.

The ERC also suggests that

the Department should eliminate its Honours

program, and introduce an Internship or a Research Opportunity course as

two additional options to a Thesis for fourth year undergraduates in the

Major program.

Our Department overwhelmingly supports retention of the

Honours program, and hence rejects this recommendation. We note that it does

not currently consume substantial resources, and that we perceived some lack of

understanding among the reviewers regarding our program. Part of the problem

is that the 'Ontario model' features a different set of options, in which an Honours

degree is [or was, until recently] the only four-year option, while regular majors

graduated with the equivalent of 90 SFU credits. So it is difficult for Ontario and

Quebec-based academics to see the rationale for a distinct Honours program if it

is also a 'four year' option. We acknowledge, however, that we need to find ways

LO

make our Honours program more attractive to top students if it is to be

retained. We have thus asked the Undergraduate Committee to study various

alternative models, and report back to the Department by the end of April 2008

with a set of recommendations.

We do not believe that either a new Internship course or a Research Opportunity

course is desirable, since we currently offer Direct Readings courses [POL 498]

and a "Directed Practice in Political Science" [POL 497], which can together

satisfy most of the objectives of the Internship and the Research Opportunity

courses proposed by the Review Committee.

We can understand why the ERC proposed that

the Department of Political

Science should coordinate the responsibilities of providing academic and

program advice to students in a single office.

Once again, however, we

believe this recommendation is off the mark and are reiecting it. One colleague

noted that this was the third straight Review Committee to be confused by the

responsibilities and functions of the Departmental Advisor [now Manager of

Academic and Administrative Affairs] in our department. It is easy to see how

?

0

/q.

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It

3

colleagues from other universities have difficulty understanding how we have one

person who can handle student advising and general department management.

Our reality, however, is that our DA' provides degree completion advice [which

requirements need to be met, when, before graduation, etc.], without presuming

to offer academic advice on course selection, relation of the sub-field courses to

each other, career options after graduation, consideration of and preparation for

graduate and professional school applications, etc. This work is transferred to

both the Undergraduate Chair and colleagues at large. We have recently begun

to make more structured efforts to provide all POL majors with key information

along these lines, and the Undergraduate Committee is reviewing ways to

enhance our ability to assist students with career planning. There is no question

that we need to make improvements in these areas, especially as more FASS

and SFU resources are devoted to this aspect of student experience at SFU.

However, we believe that by making these improvements, we will be able to

effectively divide academic and program advice between our academic faculty,

UG Chair and DA in a way that serves students well.

Our department stands by its earlier Undergraduate Committee proposal to

adopt an upper level (400) course that examines qualitative methods,

so is

pleased to acce

p

t this recommendation. We have asked the Undergraduate

Committee to review the proposal with an eye to preparing a new course

proposal for the FASS Curriculum Committee's evaluation next spring.

II. Graduate Program

The External Review Team had generally positive comments on both the

structure and success of our graduate programs since 2000. They noted that our

graduate students are "overwhelmingly positive about their experience in the

Department and their relationships with Political Science faculty, their

supervisors, and staff," and voiced their enthusiasm for a Department whose

faculty are diverse in their epistemological and methodological approaches and

take their supervisory responsibilities seriously." One is tempted to quote these

lines in our graduate program website. Nonetheless, they offered 13 separate

recommendations concerning our graduate program. The Department is pleased

and in agreement with the vast majority of these. Where we differ, an explanation

will be provided. In cases where the recommendations are very closely linked,

we will address them together.

We are happy to accept the ERC's recommendation

to guarantee PhD

students a minimum of four years of funding (through a combination of

scholarships and TAships),

though it is beyond our power to implement it. The

External Review Committee clearly feels we need to make our program more

attractive to a larger number of top quality PhD candidates, which is also easy to

agree with. Acknowledging that we lack the power or resources to offer such a

guarantee, however, we can note that: 1. we expect our graduate students to

benefit appreciably from recent provincial government programs offering new

.

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4

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I'

funding for graduate students; 2. We have good reasons to believe that our

faculty will soon be able to offer considerably more RAships on the basis of

increased levels of major grant funding; and, 3. Our experience over the past

seven years is that we have been able to provide four years of funding for our

PhD students, through a combination of graduate fellowships, scholarships,

TAships and RAships. We give PhD students priority over MA students in our TA

allocations, so this alone can be used to practically provide four years of funding.

We acknowledge, however, that to make our PhD program more attractive we

must strive to increase the relative proportion of graduate student funding

through scholarships rather than TAships, as

the Committee recommends.

To this end we will consider converting the Michael and Jan Stevenson Graduate

Scholarship in Political Science from one awarded to a current student to a PhD

entry scholarship. We will also provide better instructions/links on our website for

students to apply for SSHRC and other external scholarships, make efforts to

create new endowments that can act as a basis for additional internal PhD

scholarships, and attempt to 'bundle' existing RA monies in ways that provide

students with opportunities to do dissertation research in areas linked closely

with those specified in faculty research grants.

Also in the area of graduate student funding, the committee recommends that

PhD students' financial packages should not include sessional teaching

earlier than the fourth year of study.

We are ha

ppy

to acce p

t this

recommendation, but note that it appear to have come from a misunderstanding

of how the standard financial packages then advertised on our website are

delivered in practice. It is true that we have rolled sessional teaching

opportunities into the standard PhD financial package for students nearing

completion, in order to give them some full course instruction experience before

they enter the job market. In practice, however, we never invite PhD students to

teach before the beginning of their fourth year unless they complete

comprehensive exams, defend a dissertation proposal and make substantial

progress on dissertation chapters by the middle of the third year. This is quite

rare. In any case, we have changed the wording on our Graduate program web

site to prevent misinterpretation of the role of sessional teaching in PhD funding.

With regard to the graduate curriculum, the External Review Committee

recommends that

POL 801 (Theoretical Perspectives in Political Science)

and POL 802 (Political Research: Design and Analysis) should be required

courses for all graduate students.

Our department has a

g

reed that POL 801

and 802 should both be required of all our PhD candidates, but is not prepared to

require both of MA students. Currently while PhD students are required to take

either POL 801 or 802, virtually all except those who have taken an MA level

equivalent elsewhere take 801. We also have very strong support among faculty

and graduate students for requiring 802 of all PhD students, on the grounds that

such methodological and research design training is crucial for their dissertation

research and for their research and teaching once they graduate. There is no

---

5

question that the North American norm is to have at least one course like 802

required of PhD students, and we have no desire to disadvantage our PhD

candidates and graduates in their competitive job searches. For MA students, we

require either POL 801 or POL 802. We prefer to keep this arrangement, as

requiring both 801 and 802 of our MA graduates would mean that they have only

3 other non-required courses in their probable course set before graduating. We

do not believe this would allow them to achieve the combination of substantive

breadth and depth that most seek in the MA program.

A closely related External Review Committee recommendation is that

POL 801

should retain its broad objective of introducing students to the major

epistemological debates in the field of Political Science.

Our department is

pleased to endorse this recommendation, which entails no departure from our

approach to this valuable course.

Another closely related External Review Committee recommendation is that

POL

802 should incorporate qualitative methods; if it does not, the department

should identify a separate qualitative methods course for graduate

students.

Colleagues and graduate students readily acknowledge that we must

find some way to offer our graduate students structured, class-based exposure to

training in qualitative methods. Many are inclined, however, to think that dividing

attention in POL 802 between research design, qualitative and quantitative

. methods would result in insufficient attention being devoted to all three. For this

and other reasons, it may be desirable to have a freestanding graduate course

on Qualitative Methods, POL 803. The Department has asked our Graduate

Committee to develop a proposal for teaching qualitative methods in our

graduate program, either as the focus of a separate course or as part of POL

802. The Graduate Committee will present that proposal to the Department for

review and decision by April 2008.

Finally in the area of required graduate courses, we accept the Committee's

recommendation that

all required graduate courses should be offered

annually in the fall and winter terms.

This has always been true of POL 801,

offered every fall. We plan to offer POL 802 annually in the spring term.

By contrast with our positive response to the above recommendations for our

graduate program, we find ourselves strongly opposing the recommendation that

we should

offer 2 PhD fields: a)

Global and Regional Political Economy, and

b)

Public Policy,

and eliminate themes of study.

The overwhelming

consensus was, in fact, that we should encoura

g

e students from all fields of

stud y

to apply to our PhD program. Our department feels strongly that doing so is

not only feasible given our size and breadth, but also desirable as a means of a)

continuing our commitment to intellectual pluralism, b) sustaining a broad

undergraduate program, and

C)

encouraging new colleagues to feel fully

incorporated into and benefited by all aspects of department life. Even though we

0

?

have impressive strength in the two areas identified by the Committee, we do not

---

feel the need to limit our graduate program or our department's development

within a set of niches passed over by UBC's political science department. We do

not accept the idea that all but the few largest Political Science departments in

Canada must specialize to prosper. We are quite confident that our faculty is

both sufficiently diverse and substantively accomplished enough to attract and

support PhD students from all major fields of study.

Our reiection of the Committee's recommendation to dramatically narrow the

PhD program's field of study entails that we also reject their recommendation that

the Department may wish to add a third PhD field in the future in the area of

Political Representation.

While we appreciate the Committee's

acknowledgement that we have experienced and newly acquired faculty strength

in this area, we will not adopt it as a separate or third field of PhD study. 'Political

representation is as an aspect of the conventionally described fields of

comparative politics, Canadian politics, normative political theory and even

International politics and public policy. We will thus (continue to) incorporate

comprehensive exam readings on matters of representation, to varying degrees,

into all our fields' comprehensive reading lists.

The Committee recommends

eliminating our 'themes' of political economy,

public policy and governance.

We acknowledge that the program's

configuration into 'fields' and 'themes' is somewhat confusing for prospective

applicants, so we have asked our Graduate Committee to see whether there is

some way of clarifying this expression of our commitment to a broad and

inclusive PhD program. They will re

p

ort to us on this issue within several months,

with proposals that can be implemented prior to our graduate program

application deadlines. However, we do not plan to eliminate these themes in the

manner proposed by the Committee.

With respect to our MA program focus, the Committee recommends that we

should retain the three fields of International Relations, Canadian Politics

and Comparative politics.

Once again, we feel that this recommendation is

based on an incomplete understanding of our actual practice, and are thus not

willing to accept it as stated in the External Review Report. As noted above, our

department is not comfortable with the 'niche program' recommendation in

relation to our PhD program, so there is no reason for us to narrow the scope of

our MA program in the manner recommended. Aiming to be diverse and inclusive

at the PhD level, we will have the orientation, course curriculum and

departmental events consistent with a wide-ranging MA program. We also note

that many of our MA graduates have specialized in public policy, a field not

mentioned in the Committee's recommendation re. the MA program. A significant

number have even specialized in normative political theory. We see no reason to

stop serving MA students with widely varied interests.

Also with respect to our graduate program curriculum, the Committee proposes

that the number of cross-listed courses (POL 400/800) should be reduced

significantly.

We concur with this recommendation and the rationale behind it,

n

c23

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7

and will do our best to offer graduate students a higher proportion of seminars

without substantial 'fourth year' undergraduate participation.

Finally, the Review Committee recommends that

the Department should make

full use of its website to provide information on courses, inside and outside

the Department; applying for SSHRCs and other fellowships; and university

support services and programs.

We can easily agree with this su

ggestion, and

acknowledge that our website design and content have been less than optimal

over the past several years. We have recently hired a website design consultant

within SFU, and our Department Manager is now being trained to apply the web

design program we are adopting to accommodate future changes. We have

already introduced a host of changes to our graduate program pages, and will

soon introduce more with the aim of advancing the aims of this recommendation.

lii.

The Faculty

The External Review Committee report expresses not just confidence but

considerable praise for the Department's overall commitment to and

achievements in teaching and research. Specific recommendations regarding the

graduate and undergraduate curricula are addressed elsewhere; the Committee

chose to offer no general recommendations regarding the quality, scope or focus

. of our teaching. However, the Committee did express a concern about 'equity in

the work load of faculty members,' equity referring to "a similar distribution of

students across faculty members, with similar levels of support in the form of

TAships and/or graders, and roughly similar responsibilities across graduate and

undergraduate teaching and graduate supervision." Noting that they did not yet

see any major problem in this set of teaching equity issues, the Committee

nonetheless recommended that

the Chair of the Department, in consultation

with faculty, should develop a strategy to ensure equity in teaching

responsibilities.

Our department welcomes this recommendation. While we agree that no major

teaching equity problems currently exist, and recognizing the importance of

viewing teaching loads in the context of overall faculty work loads, we believe

that further steps should be taken to ensure that major teaching equity problems

do not arise in the future. We currently operate with the expectation that faculty

members will teach some combination of a high-enrollment lower division or

high-enrollment 3

I

year course every year, several low enrollment 300 or 400

level classes and perhaps a graduate seminar. We also allocate initial MA and

PhD supervision responsibilities on the basis of both student preferences and a

balancing of faculty loads for such supervisions. Inevitably, some colleagues

carry more graduate supervisions than others, but the Graduate Committee and

Chair distribute the initial supervisory load as equitably as possible. This work

can certainly be improved through the creation of a more explicit department

strategy on this issue. Allocation of responsibility for teaching high enrollment

undergraduate classes, currently undertaken by the Chair with input from the

Mil

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I

8

Undergrad Chair and Field Committee Chairs, can also yield more equitable

results with reference to an explicit equity strategy. We also note that various

faculty members' service commitments and research grant-leveraged teaching

buyouts will always mean that complete teaching equity will be impossible, as the

Review Committee appreciates. Nonetheless, we can improve on our current

efforts to move closer to this goal.

On the research side, the Committee informally suggests that

POL faculty be

encouraged to seek more SSHRC and other external research grants. We

a g ree, and are pleased to report that the number of external grant applications

has risen appreciably over the past several years, and that with seven dynamic

new faculty members, this will be an even more prominent aspect of faculty

activity in the near future. Our colleagues have already broadened their range of

granting agency 'targets' significantly beyond traditional SSHRC programs, to

include major applications to SSHRC's CURA program, CIDA, Canada's

Department of National Defence, Genome BC, the IMF, the World Bank, the

Ford, MacArthur and Rockefeller Foundations, NATO, the Inter-American

Development Bank, and a variety of Canadian 'think tanks,' including the

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the Canadian Policy Research Network,

and the Fraser Institute.

Also on the research side, the Committee recommends that to attract strong PhD

applicants, enhance the graduate program's profile, and increase our SSHRC

and other granting agency success rates,

POL faculty should seek higher

quality journal and academic press outlets for their publications.

It was not

that such publications were missing from faculty CVs, but that the committee

members felt that our substantial research output could receive better recognition

and more attractive funding and recruitment results if a greater proportion of this

output found its way into widely respected peer-reviewed journals and academic

press volumes. We concur with this recommendation and its rationale, and will

act on it accordingly.

IV. Administration and Governance

The External Review Committee offers four recommendations in this area, on

issues of hiring procedures, long-term planning mechanisms, ongoing curriculum

review and administrative staff meetings.

The ERC reported a division of Political Science department opinion regarding

our recent use of a weighted score assessment system for evaluating and

comparing short-listed candidates' strengths in the areas of research, teaching

and service. In applying this system, the hiring committee received department

approval for candidate evaluation criteria for research, teaching and service prior

to each set of interviews. As the External Review Committee Report stated, there

was no concern with the outcomes of searches conducted using this process:

"the Department is excited about the arrival of new faculty members and there is

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0

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9

consensus that they are all excellent additions." However, after six searches in

two years, we do not have a consensus that a quantitative weighted assessment

system is the best way to undertake a systematic evaluation of candidates.

Consequently, in response to the Review Committee's recommendation that

the

Department hiring committee should provide a qualitative written statement

to the Department regarding how short-listed candidates meet the

advertised criteria with regard to teaching and research,

the department has

decided to re

p

lace the current quantitative approach with a qualitative method of

assessment. Our Appointment Committee will propose a systematic alternative

method of assessing candidates for tenure-track academic appointments that

can provide the basis for these qualitative written statements.

The External Review Committee also recommended that

the department

consider creating a Priorities and Planning Committee, with the mandate to

recommend academic priorities for the Department, including hiring. We

have considered this option, and decided that while it may well be necessary in

the future, it is not yet needed to perform these functions. In discussing why we

reiect this option, colleagues noted that we currently set such priorities through

several means, including regular Retreats and annual reviews of our hiring

priorities in full department meetings (with recommendations from the

Appointments committee). In light of the support shown in response to other

recommendations for an enhanced range of roles for our field committees,

. colleagues consensually supported the idea that initiatives to retain or alter

department priorities can come through better utilization of existing committees.

For example, initiatives of this kind might start fin field committee discussions,

find fora in Undergraduate and Graduate Committee meetings, and include the

Chair before coming to full department meetings. Should such additional uses of

our existing committees and practices fail to support effective academic priority

setting, colleagues agreed that we might re-consider a Priorities and Planning

Committee.

Related to the above recommendation is one that

the Department should

consider creating a Curriculum Committee with responsibility for regular

Curriculum review and renewal,

to facilitate more effective planning more

integrated programs and a "judicious balance of undergrad and graduate

courses." Once again, we acknowledge that the Review Committee has identified

a significant issue, and that we should renew efforts to improve program

integration and course balancing. However, the consensus within our department

was that to achieve these purposes we would prefer to enhance collaboration

between our field committees, the Undergraduate and Graduate committees (and

their Chairs), and the Chair. While appreciating the attention paid by the Review

Committee to this issue, then, we reiect their recommendation as unnecessary

given our existin g

committee mandates and potentials.

Finally, the Committee recommends that our Department Manager hold a

weekly

meeting of administrative staff in order to ensure effect communication and

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10

efficient allocation of responsibilities.

We canvassed our staff on this issue,

and are satisfied that though the objectives are desirable, they are already being

met with bi-weekly staff meetings, so we do not see a need to accept the

recommendation for a weekly meeting. The Chair will stay in touch with the

Department Manager to ensure that bi-weekly meetings continue to be sufficient;

if they seem not to be, we will re-consider the weekly staff meeting proposal.

V..-.The Department of Political Science and Other Units

Under this heading, the Review Committee discussed our relations with a

number of other units at SFU, with generally positive comments on the wide

range of connections we have with other programs and departments at SFU. The

exception concerns our relations with SFU's new School of International Studies.

After considerable comment on this relationship to date, and on the prospects for

mutually beneficial relations between POL and SIS, the Review Committee

recommended that

the Vice-President Academic should create a committee

to coordinate programs offered by the School and the Department, and

specified a particular configuration for this committee's composition. Our

department expresses strong support for this recommendation in principle,

seeing the need for such program coordination and the importance of protecting

key department interests in doing so. The department commits to discussing how

this coordination can occur with the Vice-President Academic, the Dean of FASS,

and the Director of the School of International Studies. We look forward to

both

identifying

units can

ways

attract

to ensure

strong

that,

faculty

through

and

enhanced

top graduate

coordination

students,

and

and

consultation,collaborate

?

go

on a variety of mutually advantageous initiatives.

In conclusion, then we will take action on a large number of the External Review

Committee's recommendations, in some cases with easily implemented changes

to which the department has already agreed. In a variety of other instances we

note, above, that the Department will await the results of Department committee

reports. We will soon set specific schedules for these committees to invite input,

deliberate, and report in a timely manner to Department meetings, at which

colleagues will decide on how we can best implement these External Review

recommendations. There are, however, some recommendations that Political

Science Department colleagues find inappropriate or unnecessary, and have

accordingly decided to reject. We trust that our rationales for doing so are clear,

and that any questions regarding these decisions will soon be brought to us.

Collegially, on behalf of the Department of Political Science,

David Laycock, Chair