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Senate

School for the Contemporary Arts

External Review

TO:

RE:

Memorandum

FROM:

REVISED ?

S.03-77

• ?

SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

Senate Committee on University Priorities

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

Review Report on the School for the Contemporary Arts together with the response

from the School and comments from the Dean of Arts.

Motion:

That Senate concurs with the recommendations from the Senate Committee on

University Priorities concerning advice to the School for the Contemporary

Arts on priority items resulting from the external review as outlined in

S. 03-77

S ?

The report of the External Review Committee for the School for the Contemporary Arts

was submitted on April 22, 2003 following the review site visit March 12 - 14, 2003.

The response of the School was received on May 15, 2003 followed by that of the Dean

of the Faculty of Arts on May 23, 2003.

Facilities

SCUP recommends to Senate that the University be advised that the issue of facilities

for the School be accorded the highest priority for action in any of the planning activities

of the University, including the Five Year Capital Plan.

SCUP recommends that firm deadlines be set for putting into place the financial support

and planning for either facilities downtown or a new building on the Burnaby campus.

If the financial support for the downtown campus option is not forthcoming by

the conclusion of the 2003-04 academic year, then the School and the University

must proceed with planning and fundraising for the Burnaby facility without

delay.

SCUP recommends to Senate that the School for the Contemporary Arts and the Dean

of Arts be advised to pursue the following as priority items:

E q ui p

ment and Technical Facilities

SCUP acknowledges that the School, due to the nature of its disciplines, does have

particular equipment needs and its programs are more capital intensive in comparison

with some other units within the Faculty of Arts.

SCUP was advised that this year's annual equipment allocation to Faculties and

Academic Units contained $50,000 designated specifically for the School. As funds

permit, additional funding can be assigned on an annual basis for this purpose.

In order to address capital needs on a longer term basis, the School and the Dean are

asked to prepare an updated, prioritized technical facilities plan and discuss with the VP

Academic how additional ongoing capital funding can be acquired. In addition, the

School is urged to continue to seek external funding from granting councils and from

private and corporate donations in conjunction with the Advancement Office.

Human Resources

The School should continue its examination of its administrative structure (in particular,

the area coordinator positions) and curricula to better allocate its existing teaching and

administrative resources and where appropriate to work with the Dean's Office to

acquire additional resources.

SCUP was advised that a proposal for a Lab Instructor position, to serve as a resource

for the area of technology in arts, is under consideration for funding by the VP

Academic's Office.

Undergraduate Program

A number of the recommendations by the External Review Committee were related to

the design and teaching of the undergraduate programs as well as their scheduling.

From the response of the School, it appears that steps to consider and address these

issues are already underway. As resources permit, the recommendations around extra

curricular and archiving performance should be revisited.

Graduate Program

The School is urged to evaluate its graduate teaching capacity and re-balance

admissions to the program accordingly.

Intearation with Surre

SCUP recommends that the School continue to develop its relationship with the School

of Interactive Arts and Technology and its programs, including the appointment of joint

supervisors and the use of technical facilities.

end.

M. Gotfrit, Director, School for the Contemporary Arts

J. Pierce, Dean of Arts

SCUP O3-

SIMON FRASER UNWERSIT'.

Office of the Dean, Faculty of Arts

MEMORANDUM

To: ?

Subject: External

Review -

Date: ?

May 21, 2003

Contemporary Arts

External Review of Contemporary Arts, Dean of Arts Response, May 20/03

This is a very thorough assessment of the School for the Contemporary Arts

detailing, through seventeen separate recommendations, areas of needed

improvement and future courses of action. The report is not so much thematic as it

is problem oriented and for good reason.

On the one hand the report makes it abundantly clear that the School has clarified

its mission and focus and, in the process, established itself in Canada as a leading

interdisciplinary centre in the contemporary arts dedicated to: balancing theory and

practice in the lecture and studio context; innovation in programming and research;

and contributing to the next generation of artists and scholars.

•. On the other hand the report takes strong exception to the chronic underfunding

and under resourcing of the School in terms of building facilities, equipment and

human resources. With respect to space issues and the ultimate location of

Contemporary Arts, I agree with both Martin Gotfrit and the reviewers that if a

decision/ agreement has not been reached regarding a downtown home and

location for SCA as of Sept. 04, then the university must proceed with a new

building on campus. At this point the distractions from the promise of a downtown

home for SCA must end. The nettle must be grasped and grasped firmly and with

resolve!

The Dean's office has recognized for years the chronic underfunding in equipment

for SCA. Both Roger Blackman and myself have made it clear to senior

administration that we do not have sufficient resources to divert to SCA on a

continuing funding basis and therefore some accommodation must be made for the

shortfall. We have been able to provide one time monies, and we have worked with

various individuals to try to secure additional funds through such venues as CFI,

SFU at Surrey and fund raising; but the shortfall continues to be serious and

ongoing.

As to human resources we recognize that there are shortages. Some of these can be

accommodated via reorganization and pedagogical change within SCA whereas

others require direct increase in resources. We recently, for example, increased to

full time status two lecturer positions. Technical staffing is a problem which we are

in the process of mitigating; in fact we will be submitting a SIF proposal for

technical lecturer support in connection with the Surrey campus.

Where we disagree with the review team is in terms of the supposed inequities in

workload between lecturers and tenure track appointments. As the review team

itself opines at the beginning of the document, "..the clear collective priority of the

faculty.. .is teaching." The primary responsibility of lab instructors and lecturers is

teaching. I see no imbalance in workload and by extension inequities by virtue of a

standing ratio of 8 lecturers/lab instructors to 20 tenure track faculty. These

individuals were hired to devote their time to teaching and not to research. This

complement is necessary to sustain the demands on teaching. Parenthetically,

when inequities arise we will deal with them on an individual and case-by- case

basis. We are in the process of converting a lecturer to a tenure track appointment

in recognition of his expanded role in research.

Of the remaining recommendations, I believe #5, 7, 11 through 17 (except 15) are

relatively minor and can be acted upon internally with a minimum amount of

effort and controversy. A number of these issues are covered in Martin Gotfrit's

response.

The Arts and Culture Stream (R.8) is being rejuvenated. The new faculty will have

to be carefully integrated into the School. And arguably the purpose of this area

may need some rethinking, as the report points out. Certainly the School needs to

-pay attention to the recommendation that FPA 111 be converted into an arts

appreciation course or at the very least reduce its focus.

With respect to the graduate program (R.9) there are some difficult choices and

trade-offs to be made here. Given the demands of the undergraduate program SCA

must have a clear vision of its graduate teaching capacity. There are limits here and

they must be recognized.

I am concerned about the administrative load of the area co-ordinators (R. 10). Are

there not functions and duties that could be shared amongst the five co-ordinators?

I will be asking the Director to examine their respective workloads and

responsibilities.

And lastly there is no question that we must work together to better integrate

Surrey IA programming with the SCA programming (R.15). I believe the School

needs to come up with a formal plan to accomplish this important and timely goal.

JTP/rt

Cc: M. Gotfrit, Director, School for the Contemporary Arts

T. Perry, Associate Dean, Faculty of Arts

L. Summers, Director, Academic Planning

TEMPORARY

Laurie Summers, Director of Academic Planning

From

Martin Gotfrit, Director

Re j School for the Contemporary Arts External Review Report Response

Please find attached the School for the Contemporary Arts' Response to the External Review

Report. Thanks to you and your office for your assistance to the School during this process.

---/

tmt

8888 UNIVERSITY DRIVE . BURNABY, BRITISH COLUMBIA

CANADA, V5A iS6

(604) 291-3363 • (60)

291-5907

WWW.SFU.CA/SCA

School for the Contemporary

Arts

Response to the Report of the External Review Committee of March 2003

May 12, 2003

The School for the Contemporary Arts underwent an External Review during the

2002-2003 academic year. In the Fall semester we completed a "Self Study" and

prepared for a site visit by the review committee (March 12 -14, 2003). Despite the

amount of work associated with an External Review, we found the process to be both

enlightening and positive. We had frank and illuminating discussions before the site

visit and continued on in this spirit with the reviewers. Overall we are pleased with,

and encouraged by their report.

Of the seventeen recommendations raised by the committee, the first three (clearly

the most critical) are undeniably the responsibility of the university administration.

Of the balance of recommendations, a few will require a collaborative effort in

regards to the additional resources required and the rest are within the purview of

the SCA. In general, we found all of the recommendations to be clear, articulate and

reasonable. We have been working on many

these ideas in recent years and are

pleased to see our direction and vision reinforced by an External Review.

This is the second External Review

the SCA. Seven years ago, the shocking state

of our facilities also began that document. Mentioned as well for the second time was

the "vastly under resourced" technical facilities and funding for capital equipment

that has plagued us for many years. Although one may argue that there has been

increased attention paid to finding the SCA a new home in the past few years, there

clearly has been no response to the recommendations regarding capital funding.

These are critical aspects of our program and represent, in part, our fiduciary

responsibility to the students. We request that the administrative bodies who

commission these External Reviews not ignore these primary recommendations once

again. Surely, at the very least, there are resources available to address the capital

funding issue. It is one thing to occupy clearly "disgraceful" facilities; it is another to

have them filled with cast-off surplus furniture and less than adequate equipment.

Students do notice that they sit in ergonomic task chairs in Applied Science and old

plywood stacking chairs in the SCA. Given the importance

both faculty and student ?

171

morale, retention and recruitment, one has to ask that these recommendations not

be ignored for a second time.

We also must concur with the Reviewers recommendation regarding human

resources. This is an area where we are working hard to do whatever that is in our

power to remedy. We are re-examining our administrative structures and looking at

our curriculum. Clearly our large number of non-tenure track faculty and our

pressing need for technical staff exacerbate the stresses of teaching and

administration.

The balance of the reviewer's recommendations have been taken to heart. We are

currently undergoing an examination of our curriculum in light of issues of

interdisciplinarity. Given the addition of two new faculty members in the Art and

Culture Area this coming fall, we are confident that there will be significant changes

to both that Area and the teaching of theory throughout the SCA. The issues of

Canadian content and the hegemony of Eurocentric focus in the arts have been a

concern of ours for many years. Responses to these recommendations are

complicated by the need for additional faculty, the pressures to reduce courses to

. ?

further nurture interdisciplinarity, and the need to maintain disciplinary rigor. We will

continue to strive to find ways to address these issues beyond our current activities

(activities such as the Gamelan courses, the Ghana Field School, the Cinema in

Canada course and the integration of Canadian content in many of our offerings).

In response to the general pressure to increase "student access" throughout SFU we

have been looking at ways to improve our scheduling. With a relatively small faculty

complement (particularly from an Area point of view) and in response to the need for

courses to be offered in a Fall/Spring pattern to enable students to complete their

degrees in a timely fashion, we have in the past offered minimal Intersession and

Summer offerings. We are now looking at creative ways to change that pattern and

are pleased to note that the recent approval of our request to give our long-term

Senior Lecturer in Theatre a 12 month contract and a similar action to our Dance

Area Lab Instructor will facilitate the further development of our Intersession and

Summer activities.

Response to the School for the Contemporary Arts External Review Report

p.2

In conclusion we are buoyed by this positive review. We believe it represents a

strong endorsement of our efforts and vision. We will endeavour to address all of the

recommendations in as timely a manner as possible and note that most of this

activity is currently underway. When we began this process in the fall of 2003, we

were promised at a School for the Contemporary Arts meeting that these External

Reviews would now be taken seriously by the administrative bodies that have

requested them. We have fulfilled our part of the exercise to the best of our ability.

We respectfully ask that the University respond in kind.

Martin Gotfrit

Director, School for the Contemporary Arts

(0. ?

Response to the School for the Contemporary Arts External Review Report

Associate Vice President. Academic

Simon Fraser University

I am enclosing the External Review Report that we have prepared for the School

Fax 416 736 5710 ?

for the Contemporary Arts. Simon Fraser Universit

. Our report has been written

flmvideo@yorku.ca ?

after a careful perusal of the School's own internal review and the documents and

materials provided to us by the universit

, as well as by our intensive immersion

in the School over a period of three days this past March. During that time we met

and had extensive conversations with the Director of the School. Martin Gotfrit

who was unflaggingl y

hospitable and helpful in helping us understand the

complexities of his institution. We had meetings with facult

and staff from all

• ?

disciplines, and with students in both an open forum and in smaller consultative

encounters. We were conducted through all major building facilities both on

campus and at the Alexander Centre downtown. In all instances, discussions led

by students. facultv and staff were conducted in a spirit of generosit

and

openness and this dialogue played a key role in our evolving understanding of the

School. I believe I can speak for our committee, that we all left the School.

energized and inspired by what we had seen.

We would like to thank Laurie Summers for her administrative support and Simon

Fraser Universit y

for this unique opportunit

to work together. The report is

jointly authored but each of us would be happy to respond to future queries.

Sincerel'v

renda ongfello

Graduate Program Director

REPORT OF THE EXTERNAL REVIEW

COMMITTEE

School for the Contemporary Arts

Simon Fraser University

March 2003

RECEIVED

PR 2 2 2003

VicO President

,,_ACADEMIC,.,

SCHOOL FOR THE CONTEMPORARY ARTS REVIEW, 2003

Review Committee: Brenda Longfellow, York University, Chair; Geoff Proehi,

University of Puget Sound; Iro Valaskakis-Tembeck, Université du Québec a

Montréal; Carole Gerson, Department of English, SFU.

The review committee was unanimously impressed by the excellence and vitality

of the School for the Contemporary Arts and by its clear articulation of its

mission. Within the field of fine arts education at the post-secondary level in

Canada, the School is unique in situating interdisciplinarity as the central

principle of both pedagogy and organizational structure. While other Fine Arts

faculties insist on maintaining (if not policing) the borders between arts

disciplines through the traditional structure of autonomous departments mapped

around disciplines, the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser

University has constituted itself through an immensely creative cross-fertilization

and dialogue between disciplines. The uniqueness of its mission and the

excellence of its execution are making an enormous contribution not only to the

training of the next generation's artists and scholars but to Simon Fraser's

national and international reputation as an institution that encourages creativity

and innovation.

The faculty, which include many world class artists and academics, are

distinguished by a range of professional accomplishments which have received

national and international recognition. While maintaining impressive research

profiles, however, the clear collective priority of the faculty (and "joy" as one

individual put it) is teaching. All are passionately devoted to it and to ensuring

that the mandate and creative environment of the school are maintained at the

highest level. We had the impression, in fact, that the classroom for this faculty is

a space of incredible creative synergy and experimentation in which pedagogical

practice is continually refined as part and parcel of the creative evolution of both

faculty and students. Ongoing self-reflection and deep collective dialogue appear

to be an essential part of the culture of the School (and not simply an additional

responsibility provoked by the imminence of a review). Faculty enjoy a healthy

collegiality, and collaboration among members frequently extends beyond the

School into independent artistic and research projects.

The undergraduate students are enormously articulate and mature, with powerful

self-definition as independent artists working toward professional excellence, but

open to innovation. All praised the devotion and hard work of their instructors,

and the level of student satisfaction with their educational experiences in the

School is incredibly high. School alumni are excelling in all fields and are well

and firmly integrated into professional fields upon graduation. A high percentage

of the new theatre companies initiated in Vancouver have been formed by SFU

graduates and one of these recently received the prestigious $60,000. Alcan

Award for its work. SFU dance grads are touring with local companies and

students graduating from the Music area have gone on to become leading new

ci ?

• music composers and sound technicians in post production houses: In the last

six years, the opening film of the Vancouver Film Festival has featured an SFU

graduate. Graduates in the Visual Arts are quickly integrated into the local vital

arts community as well as into collateral fields in which their background and

training is welcome. It is not farfetched to suggest, given this range of

accomplishment, that graduates of the School are amongst the best and most

thoughtfully trained students in North America.

The committee felt that the key to the School's success has been a carefully

developed honing of focus and mission. At the School level this has involved a

commitment to interdisciplinarity, to the balancing of theory and practice within

both studio and lecture courses and to a School-wide emphasis on contemporary

artistic practices. Additionally, throughout the School, areas seem to be most

effective to the degree in which they have clarified particular missions: Music, for

example, has focused on composition and new music; Film, on bringing in clearly

defined cohorts who work through various stages of the production process as

mini-communities; Theater, on the development of independent artists who can

generate original work and initiate their own projects across a range of

disciplines; Visual Arts, on an insistence that incoming students learn to think in

non-figurative terms as they actively engage in the development of critical

vocabulary at each stage of their process; Dance, on contemporary performance

and choreography; Arts and Culture, on the exploration of critical issues which

• ?

cross artistic disciplines.

The emphasis on contemporary work and on interdisciplinarity has fostered a

critical and unique educational context that questions existing practice and seeks

to create and imagine not only new work but also new ways of working. We are

convinced that the School is a gem in the firmament of fine arts educational

contexts within this country.

We have organized a more detailed examination of the school by subject. We are

aware that focusing on resource allocation as a first priority is somewhat outside

the mandate of a review. However, given that the under-resourcing and poor

facilities of the School for Contemporary Arts are of such a glaring nature and will

have the most forceful impact on the School's future, we have taken the liberty of

insisting on their importance.

1. BUILDING FACILITIES

The committee was shocked at the disgraceful state of the facilities in which most

of the School is housed. We wish to articulate our dismay in the strongest

possible fashion for clearly, the key factor inhibiting the continual growth, vitality

and evolution of the school, not to mention its continued morale, is the

substandard and shoddy conditions of its facilities. The pervasive smell of mould,

the presence of rats and vermin in the film trailers, roofs and windows which leak,

claustrophobic classrooms, offices with no heating, theatre studios with low

ceilings and bad sight lines are not only health hazards, but directly impact on the

quality of education which instructors are able to deliver and which students

receive. Housing portions of the School in temporary trailers which are visibly

rotting reflects poorly (and directly) on the School's public image and casts a

disappointing perspective on the place of the School within the priorities of the

university.

The one exception, of course, is the Visual Arts area which is housed in the

Alexander Centre downtown and which stands as a model of the potential that

architectural renovation and expansion will have for the School as a whole. Airy

and bright, with high ceilings and excellent exhibition spaces, the Alexander

Centre has enormously facilitated a vital interface and interaction between the

School and the Vancouver professional arts community and audiences. The

other excellent facility is the dance studio in the East Mall annex but this is slated

to be taken over by the UniverCity development.

Time and time again, however, we heard from both students and faculty of the

inhibition that the dispersed structural housing imposes on interdisciplinary

collaboration and learning. Students who spend most of their time on the

Burnaby campus rarely have the opportunity to meet with their peers and

colleagues from the Visual Arts area and students from all areas articulated a

strong desire for enhanced social and creative interchange. The absence of a

common meeting space is immediately and directly preventing the possibilities

for spontaneous creative collaboration which are central to the pedagogical

philosophy and unique mandate of the School.

The committee is convinced that the School and the University administration are

perfectly aware of this situation and have devoted much time and attention in

attempting to resolve it. The School has developed a detailed plan for a

downtown campus and for maintaining a strong and vital presence on the

Burnaby campus. The committee felt the School exhibited a clear unanimity and

resolve on the issue and that progress has been hampered by administrative and

funding factors out of their control.

RECOMMENDATION:

We recommend, given the pressing nature of the facilities

issue and given that the School and University have already spent years

attempting to resolve it, that a firm deadline must be agreed upon for putting into

place the financial support for a downtown campus. If financial support for a

downtown campus cannot be organized by September 2004, the School and

University must commit to a new building on the Burnaby campus which would

house all areas. We also recommend, however, that if the latter becomes the

option for resolving the facilities issue, it would be advantageous for the School

to cultivate a downtown presence through the development of a performance

venue for theatre, dance and music. Visual Arts is well represented by the

. ?

facilities at the Alexander Centre. A downtown presence will allow the School to

nurture a vital interface with the public and the arts community at large.

2. TECHNICAL FACILITIES

The School as a whole is vastly

under resourced (

relative to the rest of the

University and relative to other

fine

arts departments in the country) in terms of

technical

facilities. For example, the film and video departments at both York and

Concordia have capital

equipment budgets

averaging at least $50,000. per year

which

are

augmented

by special grants and bequests. York, for example, has

just received a $100,000. donation from Universal Studios to upgrade its digital

editing

studios and is currently working on a comparable donation from

OMNI

television. Concerted fundraising

on the part of the university is central to the

viability of arts

departments

in the new century. "Having to make do with less"

• has

been

a constant over the last decade at the School but this fiscal reality is

seriously impinging on the School's ability to

deliver

the excellent education it is

capable of.

Given

that contemporary art is the focus of the school and given that

digital

technologies

are central to all contemporary art practice, the School is in

• desperate need

of a centralized and fully

equipped

media lab that would serve

the

needs

of faculty and students across all disciplines. Access to

hoc way or through individual 'under the table'

relations cultivated by faculty who are cross

appointed

or who have access to

other facilities across campus.

• RECOMMENDATION:

Methods must be sought to ensure stable and yearly capital acquisition monies

which would allow the School to develop, maintain and run the technical facilities

it requires. One potential method might be to consider, in the internal allocation of

provincial funding, the weighting of SCA students along the lines of science

students, whose heavier weighting is due to the expenses of their lab courses.

Additional capital might be made up through a combination of external grants,

private donations (the William F White equipment agreement is a prime

example), and administrative allocation. The committee was impressed with the

CFI proposal authored by Professor Henry Daniel as a productive and ambitious

initiative to develop cutting edge dance research facilities at the School.

Whatever the result of that application, however, a clearly defined plan and

administrative and fundraising commitment must be put into place.

As part of the elaboration of a technical facilities plan, the School must address

the heavy financial demand placed on film students in the completion of their

training and course work who, we were told, are spending up to $15,000. each to

complete their thesis films. Many are working at full and part time jobs in order to

Is ?

performance.

these, with an immediate and direct effect on their academic

performance.

At the graduate level, technical needs are partially met by the facilities in the

Interactive Arts program at the new Surrey Campus. This relationship should be

institutionalized through a formal agreement or understanding that ensures

continuous access to these facilities on the part of graduate students from the

School for Contemporary Arts.

3. HUMAN RESOURCES

Given its limited resources, much of the success of the School has been

consistently fueled by the high idealism of its faculty and support staff who have

been willing to invest tremendous time and energy in supervising and nurturing

an ambitious curriculum and extra curricular initiatives. This ambition, however,

comes

with long term costs, evident in faculty and staff fatigue and potential

burnout with serious health impacts.

RECOMMENDATION:

It is necessary to continue a process of regular and frank appraisal as to the

immediate human consequences of the program as currently designed and the

immediate resources at hand to execute that design. The committee is more

concerned with the immediate and long term wear and tear on an outstanding

team of teacher/artists/scholars/staff members than with a dilution of quality in

teaching; performance, research, or administrative services. The committee

urges the faculty and staff to continue to be extremely vigilant about how

individuals and areas manage the human resources currently at their disposal.

To this end, all members of the department need to listen strongly to concerns

with regard to time and energy management.

One of the most problematic areas in human resource management is the

structural inequity of the School's multi-tiered system of appointment. This

system perpetuates a serious injustice in the case of long time appointees whose

commitment to and work for the department are extraordinary, whose expertise is

essential to the core curriculum of the School and who are, in every way, equal to

their tenured full time colleagues in research and academic accomplishment. The

high number of non-tenurable appointments (8 lecturers and lab instructors) in

proportion to the tenure-stream faculty (20 professors) creates inequities in areas

that require collaboration across the ranks, as well as imbalances in workload

(graduate supervision) and opportunities for study leave.

As a key step in rectifying these inequities, we find reasonable and just the

School's request that the part time teaching appointments in Theatre and Dance

be converted to full time status.

The School has an obvious and pressing need for additional technical and staff

support and for the conversion of sessional appointments to additional

•

lecturerships or tenure lines in each area. We also find an administration quite

adamant about limited resources for funding these requests. We hope and

expect that in time ways will be found to address many of these needs.

4. INTERDISCIPLINARITY

Historically, the School has identified interdisciplinarity as its distinctive mandate

but there are wide variances within the School about the success of this mandate

and how-to achieve it. Some faculty argue for greater interdisciplinarity and a

continued erosion of the boundaries between disciplines, while others emphasize

the necessity for disciplinary training and depth in craft and intellectual pursuit.

We found students who wanted the School to serve as an interdisciplinary

matchmaker earlier in their time at SFU through a second interdisciplinary studio

course in the second or third year. At the same time, we found faculty

concerned that such a class, uninformed by more grounding in the discipline,

would lead to shallow work and that there were marked differences from one

area to the next concerning the levels at which interdisciplinarity is best

introduced.

A persistent theme that emerged in discussing these issues and many others is

the challenges of achieving and maintaining good communication, especially

when students, staff, and faculty do not share a common space.

RECOMMENDATION:

Faculty members and students should extend their ongoing consideration of

interdisciplinarity as the unique and core pedagogic mission of the School. From

our perspective, this consideration might benefit from a clarification of the

following questions in the interests of developing a shared discourse:

What is the relationship between artistic practices?

What is the relationship between theoretical or critical disciplines in general and

the work of the artist?

When the School looks at such issues, it must consider the differences amongst

(1) requiring a student to learn intellectually about another discipline; (2) requiring

a student to learn, usually at an introductory level, how to begin doing another

discipline; (3) providing formal opportunities for collaborations amongst folks from

different disciplines; (4) providing informal opportunities for collaboration amongst

folks from different disciplines; (5) working in hybrid art forms (installation,

performance or new media, for example) which incorporate aspects of at least

two disciplines. A clarification of these issues must address conflicting schedules

. ?

and demands dictated by the nature of the disciplines involved and by limitations

in resources, both human and material.

One structural change to consider would be the addition of an interdisciplinary

studio course at the second or (preferably) third year level, a demand persistently

articulated by students. Many students observed that interdisciplinarity as an

intellectual and artistic practice only profoundly 'clicked' in the fourth year studio

courses. An additional interdisciplinary studio course could establish a foundation

of interdisciplinary practice which would be enhanced and refined in the fourth

year course.

EVALUATION.

The primary strength

interdisciplinary department lies in the rich

diversity of

the academic and artistic

backgrounds

of faculty and students.

This

diversity,

however,

may occasionally contribute to a

serious misreading of

own area of expertise.

RECOMMENDATION:

Upper division courses with a mix of students should have a clearly articulated

evaluation schema for assessing students of varying disciplinary backgrounds.

Across the faculty, evaluating colleagues for tenure and promotion and merit

must rely on a developed and shared expertise and understanding of the

complexity of different research contexts.

AREA REQUIREMENTS

While

the School has moved to

reduce requirements

in each area there is.still an

incredible investment demanded of

both

students and faculty to meet

the

disciplinary

requirements. Concerns were

raised about 'hidden' requisites

constituted

by the

extensive

and frequently arduous number of hours that

students spend in rehearsal and performance. Students will

often take fewer

courses (or revert to

demanding performance courses, thereby jeopardizing

their eligibility for student

loans. These hidden requisites contribute to a perceived

and structurally limit the possibility for interdisciplinary work.

In general, we

would

urge the department to err on the side

of economies of

human

energies in considering these

issues rather than on the side

of even

the

current

level of expenditures.

RECOMMENDATION:

As a radical, and perhaps unthinkable possibility, we would ask all of the areas to

consider eliminating one or two of their requirements, letting the students instead

fill those credits as unspecified electives elsewhere in the university, thereby

shifting some of the cost of each student's education back to the rest of the

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university. (This would not necessarily mean eliminating courses; it would mean

allowing more than one course to fill a requirement that can currently only be

filled by a single class.) And yes, this would mean that students graduating under

the reduced requirement would not be trained in exactly the same way current

students are trained. Such a change would test the faculty's individual and

collective ability to re-imagine what constitutes excellent training; it also, frankly,

would require a degree of humility, the willingness to concede that even if a given

student did not have a particular learning experience from a particular teacher,

this student would still have received a fine education.

Additionally courses which demand huge expenditures of rehearsal and

performance time (Black Box, for example) might be assigned 4 or 5 credits

rather than 3.

7. "A LANGUAGE AROUND OUR ART"

These were the words one student used to commend the integration of theory

and practice she has found in the School. We believe that such a goal is central

to the School's identity. Even though the faculty has a positive, even exemplary

attitude toward the integration of theory, history, and practice, ideas of what

constitutes a vigorous or rigorous theoretical perspective vary. While we were

regularly told by students that Visual Arts was exemplary in this regard, students

•

from other disciplinary areas felt that critical reflexivity and conceptual depth were

not being sufficiently developed. This was a particularly vocal complaint on the

part of the Dance students. Balancing the demands of cultivating craft and

technique as well as critical understanding is a delicate art in studio courses,

particularly within the context of a university (whose mandate is different from

that of an arts college or conservatory). The solution cannot be to delegate

theory as the exclusive responsibility and domain of Arts and Culture courses,

something that the School, to a great extent, has avoided doing.

RECOMMENDATION:

An enhanced commitment to consistency and to an ongoing interrogation of the

role, definition and weight of 'theory' in studio practice would be of considerable

value. An opening ambit to this interrogation might consider the relationship

between various theoretical or critical approaches practiced throughout the

School, particularly between approaches that are more or less centered on form

(to use, in itself, a suspect dichotomy) and those more or less centered on

implicit, explicit, or encoded content. This conversation needs to take into

account that the nature of theory changes from discipline to discipline, and that

theory must be seen not as a static topic, but as an evolving process whose

general goal is to situate artistic practice within broad social, political and

aesthetic contexts. In this respect, the history of the discipline may be an equally

important path to illuminating contexts.

8. ARTS AND CULTURE

Arts and Culture, with its emphasis on and skills in articulate reflection, is well-

suited to aid the school in this process of self interrogation, performing, in

addition to its own critical practices, a dramaturgical or curatorial function for the

School itself. Arts and Culture should not, from the perspective of the committee,

be the theory that compensates for practice or the prime deliver of arts to the

unskilled masses, so much as an active collaborator in the making of

contemporary, interdisciplinary art and in the making of a School for

Contemporary Arts. To be more specific, the Arts and Culture stream ideally

functions as:

•• a collaborator who brings to the table a deep commitment to the artist and

the artistic process;

•• a collaborator respected and welcomed by the artist;

•• a collaborator attuned to the intricacies of any dialogical process;

•• a collaborator who understands the stringencies of the disciplines and

difficulties of creation and who offers a degree of perspective easily lost in

the midst of the disciplinary performance and rigor.

Central to this function is the commitment of Arts and Culture to furthering an

ongoing dialogue that will endeavor to understand and clarify the goals of the

School and its constituent areas. To this end, Arts and Culture should continually

ask itself and the School, 'What does it mean to be interdisciplinary? What does

it mean to be contemporary?"

In recent years, Arts and Culture has been exemplary in its willingness to

eliminate course offerings that stretched its abilities beyond its means. With the

new hires in this stream, that process of refinement will continue. Clarity of this

sort provides a filter through which to understand each stage of the curriculum

and then judge the success of their outcomes.

Such clarity is also a function of careful hiring. With two new hires, including the

prestigious Wosk Chair, Arts and Culture is on the threshold of a long overdue

expansion and grounding in a tenured faculty complement. How these new

faculty members are integrated into the evolution of Arts and Culture in particular,

and the School in general, will require careful reflection.

Arts and Culture has defined its own unique mission by focusing on critical issues

and debates which arise in contemporary arts practice as opposed to an art

history approach (the typical mandate of academic streams in fine arts

departments). In the curriculum offerings there is only one course which refers to

art practices which predate the twentieth century.

Arts and Culture is also the site in the School where the theoretical framing of

interdisciplinarity is most complex and perhaps no more so than in FPA 111, the

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• ?

required introductory course for all majors. Traditionally organized as an omnibus

course with the responsibility for covering all of the artistic disciplines in the

School, the range and extent of the course has frequently left students and

faculty (who are expected to develop expertise in areas outside of their research

and training) overwhelmed.

RECOMMENDATION:

The committee questions the extent to which the ambitious mandate of EPA 111

might unintentionally mitigate against intellectual depth and understanding. We

would encourage the School to consider that majors might be better served by a

more concentrated introduction to a discipline either through reducing the focus

of FPA 111 or through an alternative requisite system which requires two or three

introductory discipline based courses at the lower division rather than EPA 111.

FPA 111 could be reformulated as an arts appreciation course for non majors,

providing a crucial service course to the university and an alternative pathway for

student recruitment.

While the committee felt that the focus on contemporary art was appropriate

given the limited rotation of courses in Arts and Culture, we would encourage an

ongoing consideration of the way in which history and historical practices and

contexts might illuminate contemporary critical issues. An exclusive focus on the

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"now" (and this includes studio courses as well as academic ones) might be too

quickly captured by current fashions in the art world and, as a consequence,

might lose crucial perspective and analytic depth.

9. THE GRADUATE PROGRAM

The committee encountered some very diverse opinions on the success and

value of the MFA program with respect both to the quality of the educational

experienced provided and to the contribution the graduate program makes to the

School itself. Some faculty felt that students in the graduate program were

considerably less accomplished than the School's superior advanced

undergraduates. There was a concern that some students were admitted without

an academic background and were now experiencing real challenges in reading

and writing at a graduate level. Another faculty member complained that many

graduate students were electing to do performance based theses without

sufficient background or solid training in performance and that these projects

were placing an undue strain on faculty and technical facilities.

The committee generally found that while the graduate program shared the same

interdisciplinary mandate as the undergraduate program, it was unclear as to

how this was differentiated at a graduate level, with respect to recruitment,

training and curriculum.

The Graduate Program is very explicitly committed to attracting students with an

established arts practice who are seeking to refine both their art making and their

critical reflection within the context of an academic environment. However, the

backgrounds of students seemed to vary considerably and this has perhaps to do

with how the interdisciplinary mandate is being interpreted. Would it be more

advantageous to the Graduate Program to select students with more developed

disciplinary training (but with interdisciplinary interests) who would be mentored

accordingly? How important is the development of a cohort for peer collaboration

and growth? At the moment, graduate students appear to seek collaboration from

the ranks of undergraduate students but not necessarily from each other.

While the graduate students were content with the quality of mentoring and

supervision they were receiving and were particularly impressed by the system of

interim advisors, the committee did have concerns about the general pedagogical

approach of the Program which centres on self directed research and artistic

practice. Although fostering autonomous work must be an objective of all

graduate education, this must be balanced with the necessity of providing in-

depth training in both technique and critical studies. Individual practice at the

graduate level can only flourish when it is challenged, deepened, and

contextualized by a structured academic core of study, writing, reading and

debate.

RECOMMENDATION:

Given the extensive demands placed on faculty and support staff by the

undergraduate School,. the committee recommends a strict limit be placed on the

number of students admitted to the Graduate Program. Even if a particular

faculty member has time and energy to mentor a student, the repercussions of

that mentoring on human and physical resources across the School needs to be

carefully reviewed with the goal that a faculty member might mentor a student

once every four

years

instead of once every two, reducing faculty work load. At

the same time, graduate students may and often do bring extremely important

resources to the school as teachers, teaching assistants, technicians, and

performers. In other words, a complex barter economy exists in and around the

admittance of each graduate student. The school is well aware of that economy.

We merely underscore its importance.

10. ADMINISTRATION

Given the complexity of running a School with the equivalent of six departments,

the task of centralizing administration is a difficult one in view of the expertise

required in terms of scheduling, space needs, the hiring of sessionals, etc. Area

co-ordinators receive no administrative off load although their responsibilities and

work are intense and demanding.

RECOMMENDATION:

We would recommend a careful and itemized evaluation of the duties of area co-

ordinators with the intention of isolating and transferring those tasks which do

NOT require such expertise to a centralized administrative body -- for example,

student advising and assignment of advanced standing and course

equivalencies. These seem to take up a fair amount of time on the part of area

co-ordinators even though they are also part of the responsibility of the

administrative staff. Given the School's ongoing relations with various colleges in

the province, the assignment of advanced standing and course equivalencies

could be more systematized and centralized. Ideally, the transfer of these

functions would not overburden an already overburdened support staff but might

become the responsibility of an Undergraduate Chair or Associate Chair who

would receive a partial offload.

11.

SCHEDULING

The problem of moving through a degree in a timely manner was consistently

raised by students, many of whom claim they are taking up to six years to

graduate because desired or required courses are not offered with sufficient

frequency. Faculty seem very reluctant to consider summer teaching as this has

traditionally been their research semester.

RECOMMENDATION:

Flexibility and a commitment to offering educational opportunities should be

structured into an awareness that the university runs on a three (and not a two)

semester basis. The University offers three models of summer instruction which

could be used to by the School to offer additional required and elective courses:

intensive intersession (8 weeks, May-June), intensive summer session (6 weeks,

July-Aug), and the full summer semester. The summer might provide a

productive time to offer lower division interdisciplinary studies courses which

would additionally serve the large constituency of arts, communications and

humanities students at SFU and could, conceivably, be taught by sessional

faculty.

12.

EXTRA CURRICULAR PERFORMANCE

The Off-Centre Performance Group has clearly played an important role in the

identity of the Dance area. However, it was probably wise to call a hiatus to a

program that was putting a serious drain on some members of the dance faculty.

The Group, however, offers a rich and unique opportunity for students to gain

performance and touring experience as well as publicizing the School to a

40 ?

broader community.

C20 ?

RECOMMENDATION:

We encourage the School to consider reconceiving the Off-Centre Performance

Group in a way that will not over-burden this area. That decision must, however,

be carefully weighed. In the interim, it is important that prospective students

understand at each step of the way the degree to which a class or program will or

will not be available.

13.

EUROCENTRIC FOCUS.

Many students expressed the desire that the curriculum in both studio courses

and Arts and Culture be expanded to include art theory and practices from non

European based traditions.

RECOMMENDATION:

While the field school in Ghana, the courses on Gamelan and the proposed field

school in Cuba go some way toward reforming a Eurocentric bias, the School

might commit to a broad cross disciplinary effort to include material across the

curriculum which addresses diversity. This is particularly the case in the Music

area which would reap great benefit from hiring a scholar in the field of World

Music. The committee felt that the dance history courses would also benefit by a

more inclusive approach. In particular, the History of Dance: origins to the 20th

Century might be re-oriented from its exclusive focus on 'Western theatre dance

and classical ballet" to include World Dance.

14.

CANADIAN CONTENT

The committee felt that the Canadian contribution to the contemporary

performing arts as an area of scholarly research and historical example was

acknowledged in an uneven way across the disciplines. While the film area has a

course dedicated to Canadian cinema, it was unclear how Canada's vital

contribution to contemporary art was represented in the other disciplines. For

young artists and scholars who, for the most part, will be working within Canada

upon graduation, an intimate knowledge of the structural contexts, policy

implications and creative work of their immediate and historic predecessors must

be a key objective of all fine arts education.

RECOMMENDATION:

The School should commit to a broad cross disciplinary effort at including

material across the curriculum which highlights Canada's contribution to

contemporary arts practice and theory.

15.

INTEGRATED ARTS AT SURREY

The School is very open to a partnership and on going collaboration with the

Surrey program of Integrated Arts. Many of the faculty in Surrey are SFU

graduates and understand the specific orientation of the School for

Contemporary Arts. Graduate students in the MFA program are seeking out joint

supervisors with faculty in Surrey.

RECOMMENDATION:

Clearly the School would stand to gain great advantage through a formalized

relationship with the Surrey campus through cross listed courses, shared

facilities and joint ventures.

16.

ARCHIVING PERFORMANCE

RECOMMENDATION:

The School could productively commit to documenting all stage productions

through video or still photography and through careful archiving of published

catalogues and programmes. Archival stills of past performances could be part of

an ongoing and changing exhibition in the lobby of the theatre.

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17. STUDENT PARTICIPATION IN ADMINISTRATIVE BODIES.

Students occasionally voiced a concern that their participation was not solicited

on departmental committees and that misunderstandings had developed

because of the absence of clear systems of communication.

RECOMMENDATION:

Students should be invited to participate in departmental committees where

appropriate.

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