Your guide to UTSC government

Have you ever wondered how UTSC works? I mean, like, how is it structured or laid out? Is it like a corporation? Do we have a CEO? A president? How much input does the government have in our institutions? I found myself wondering, so I made an outline of UTSC and brief explanations for the various councils, and bodies with links for your further studies. These are especially poignant with the current governing council and campus council elections going on right now. I hope you enjoy and tune in next week as we explore the various student associations that the students of UTSC are part of, and that represent us on our behalf.

General Layout of the UTSC Governing Bodies

Governing Council

The Governing Council is the Governing Body of the University of Toronto. It’s been responsible for all the top level academic, business, and student affairs decisions of University of Toronto since it was established in the University of Toronto Act, 1971 by the Commission on University Government. (Former Ontario Premiers William Davis and Bob Rae  helped, btw). 

It consists of 50 members, 25 from within the community and 25 from outside.The two heads of the University, The President, and the Chancellor, serve by virtue of their positions, Ex Officio. Eighteen positions are appointed, 16 by the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council (it is a public University after all), and two senior administrators are appointed by the President of the University. The Council elects a Chairman from the officials appointed by the lieutenant-governor-in-council.

Thirty positions are elected. They consist of 18 teaching staff, eight alumni, eight students (four full-time undergrads, four part-time undergrads, two grad students), and two administrative staff.

Students and the senior administrators appointed by the president serve one-year terms, everyone else serves three-year terms. Elected members may serve for up to nine consecutive years.

The Governing Council meets around six times a year, anyone can attend a meeting and it is live-streamed for your convenience. Check their website, for details.

The Governing Council has three Boards, The Academic Board, Business Board, and University Affairs Board, and several standing committees, some of which specifically serve each board.

There is an executive committee, made up of members of the Governing Council, which sets the agendas for the Governing Council, among other functions, which might be considered to be the actual inner circle of top governance at the University.

The Chancellor

The Honourable Michael Wilson serves as our Chancellor. He is the titular head of the University (like the Queen is the titular head of Canada). He represents the University of Toronto to an external committee, and “plays an essential ambassadorial role inadvancing the University’s interests within the local, provincial, national andinternational arenas.” He is also the head of Convocation and is responsible for conferring your future degree.

He is elected for three years by University alumni, and since he is at the head of the University, he has a seat on most councils and committees by Ex Officio.

The President

President David Naylor serves as the University of Toronto’s CEO. He is expected to have “general supervision over and direction of the academic work of the University and the teaching and administrative staffs thereof.” He has several vice presidents that serve directly under him, including our own Vice-President and Principal of the University of Toronto Scarborough, Franco J. Vaccarino.

He also has a seat on most councils and committees, as per his Ex Officio status as the president.

Vice-President and Provost

Cheryl Misak serves as our Vice-President and Provost. She is responsible for “academic and budgetary matters at the University of Toronto.” As such she has several Vice Provosts under her. Her office’s organisational structure is very clearly laidout and there's even a cool chart! 

Council of the University of Toronto Scarborough

The Campus Council is similar to the Governing Council, but primarily concerned with campus wide affairs. It has three very distinct committees (Agenda committee, Academic Affairs Committee, Campus Affairs Committee), which provide separate roles from the Campus Council per se, and hold separate elections from Campus Council. Members of the Governing Council are also present in the Campus Council, and half the members are again from outside of the University of Community. Until recently it was called the College Council and operated under different rules, in fact it is going through a transition right now, with new rules going into effect in July. This article will reflect the upcoming rules.

Campus Council changes and amends bylaws by which the council and the university act, creates committees as needed, and broadly influences policy in its early stages. 

Members of Campus Council, chart taken from
University of Toronto Scarborough Campus Council Terms of Reference

 Please note: “Other members of the community” are defined as “individuals in the broader community who have an interest in, commitment to or affiliation with the campus.”
LGIC stands for Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council, and is the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario.

Agenda Committee

The Agenda Committee is the overseer of the Campus Council, it directs the council’s decisions, motions, proposals, and acts on them. It also oversees constitutional changes, certain scholarship awards, and the electoral process for the councils. Members are representatives of other school councils and committees. Only one student representative, the current SCSU President sits on the agenda committee. Think of it as the Campus Council's equivalent to the Government Council's Executive Committee.

Members of the Agenda Committee, chart taken from
University of Toronto Scarborough Campus Council Terms of Reference

Academic Affairs Committee

Oversees and approves curricular and academic matters, such as programs, courses, academic regulations, and academic policy. Largest Committee, almost half of it consists of teaching staff.

Members of the Academic Affairs Committee, chart taken from
University of Toronto Scarborough Campus Council Terms of Reference

Campus Affairs Committee

Responsible for matters that directly concern the quality of student and campus life, as well as directing and planning uses of campus resources. 

Members of the Campus Affairs Committee, chart taken from
University of Toronto Scarborough Campus Council Terms of Reference

Vice-President, Principal of University Toronto Scarborough

Franco J. Vaccarino is the University of Toronto President. He leads the executive group of Vice-Principals and the Office of Business, Operations and Strategic Affairs, and sits on the campus council as well as its committees.

Vice-Principal Research

Professor Malcolm Campbell serves as the Vice Principal of Research, he works with the U of T Vice-President of Research to direct research at the University, so that they are in alignment with each other. He is the chair of the UTSC Research Advisory Board.

Dean and Vice-Principal Academic

Dr. Rick Halpern serves as the Vice Principal of University of Toronto. His office is responsible for oversight of faculty appointments and career progression, development and administration of academic policies, and development and review of academic departments and programs, as well as management of the academic budget.

Dean and Vice-Principal Student Affairs

Desmond Pouyat is the Dean of Student Affairs, his office is responsible for most of the campuses student services, including student clubs.  It is also responsible for maintaining a healthy relationship with student leaders on campus.

The Office of Business, Operations and Strategic Affairs

Headed by CAO Andrew Anifuzzaman. This office is responsible for operating the complicated school institution. Functions include, communications and public affairs, government and external relations, financial services, information technology, facilities management, business and space planning and planning, capital construction, campus safety and security services, health and safety, emergency planning and business continuity, hospitality, retail, and conference services. 

What kind of lover are you?

I promised to do a professors' edition this week but lo and behold I totally forgot about the special day my blog is on. Valentines Day, or as some of us like to call it, 'Singles Awareness Day'. Having almost exclusively fallen into the latter (more appropriate) designation, I would like to offer everyone that feels badly about it a hug. For those of you who have someone, great job. I'm going to eat my body weight in Ben and Jerry's Cookie Dough Ice Cream now.

 I am offering you this coupon and if you see me on campus you can cash it in.

Thus, I decided that instead of professors this week we shall poke fun at Valentines Day/Singles Awareness Day shenanigans.

Target #1: The Happy Couples.

Don't know if it's super cute or super questionable

Scorned by the lonely single vultures, you must feel like this 'holiday' is a celebration of the love between you and the present love of your life. Revel in it. Throw it in the faces of the green monsters that rear their ugly heads! Just remember, don't take your friend on a date with three couples and one single person, aka the situation known as 'the 5th wheel'. Fortunately, I have yet to experience this. I simply know a victim. 




Target #2: The Haters

Those who are very outspoken about the stupidity behind this most auspicious of holidays, you need a hug. Refer to the coupon in the beginning of this article. Now I will not lie to you. I was one of these folks. I gave those couples sitting around UTSC the stink eye. Now I have evolved. You see, you get nowhere by emitting these hater vibes. Sometimes you need to recognize it just isn't your time yet but there is hope out there! Or you know what they say, haters gon' hate, potatoes gon' potato. (Which I'm pretty means you can't change facts..I think.)



Target #3: The Forever Alone

Besides the usual image of cats, old lady sweaters and Saturday nights watching the shopping network till 3 am, I give you my anthem.

Target #4: Everyone in between

So chances are there are people without dates, without boundless malice and without the deluded ice-cream-stuffing-forever-alone syndrome. At the end of the day them chaps are the ones that know maybe not having a date this year isn't the end of the world. Even if that was the case last year. Why not just accept that Cupid's arrows are off target for now and you need to express affection for those other love-starved entities in your life. Give your Mama a kiss, hug your bffl (best friend for life) and maybe just smile at a stranger who looks like they've been stepped on a few times.

Yes.

The best Valentine's Day I had was in 11th grade when my bffl and I ran around school giving out chocolate to everyone we knew. I bought a tub of singles and felt the need to give them to everyone and their mothers. There were some genuinely good vibes floating around school that day. So lets end off this week with, Lonely Boy by the Black Keys. Dancing like a bua5 never looked so pro (before PSY raised the standard off the charts).

Three colours

My main program of study is journalism, but that alone doesn’t describe me. I’ve taken English courses, economics, management, stats, media, and enough psychology courses for a minor. I feel full, in a way; three-dimensional. I can talk some management to a management student, or a little bit of science to a science student. More importantly, I’m at an advantage when my subjects play into each other. When statistics show up in a humanities class, I know what the hell a standard deviation is, or a z-score, or a confidence interval. In a creative writing class I can explain a character’s motivation in terms of psychological theories, theories which also broaden my understanding of management principles. Economics helps me when I read journalistic articles; English lit courses help me with  life and the big questions.

The advice I’m giving is, be full. I overhear from students a lot of, “I’m a science student, so why does the university make me take a humanities course?”

Because you’ll learn things outside of your main area of study. It’s that simple. Every student mired in the minutiae of plants and algae beneath their feet should take a philosophy course, and learn to look up. Every student lost in the space-time abstract should learn to pay attention to people and why people behave the way they do. Scientists should moonlight as poets, and artists should be rationalists, and everyone should be a student of history.

In orientation week they give you a colour-coded shirt for your main area of study; arts, science, or management. It fosters a clannish sense of belonging. Back in first year I, too, wore a red shirt and felt familial pride, but in hindsight I feel that the message the shirts send is a mistake. The shirts say that you are one type of person; an arts person and nothing else. You’re immediately taught to not associate with anyone outside your discipline through competition, separation, and slogans of (good-natured) hate.

The ideal Frosh shirt

The attitude that this instills is “I am an ­­­____ student” instead of merely a “student”. Perhaps his discourages students from becoming true interdisciplinarians. Maybe a science student who’s interested in music wouldn’t take that music course, because it’s not where they’re taught to belong. It’s on that other side, the arts side, where everyone smokes cigarettes and wears berets and talks about Marxism and existentialist hooey; an unbreachable gap.

The message I want you to leave with is this: overcome that gap. Be an interdisciplinarian. Know at least a bit everything. There’s a reason that many grad schools want their applicants to have had a wide range of experience. You’ll not only end up knowing a bit more, but you’ll be forced to think in new ways. And you’ll come to the end of your university career richer and fuller, coated in three colours.

Five great study spaces

When asked what one of the fundamental issues within UTSC’s student services is, the answers usually circulate within one sphere of nagging and complaints. My number one is a crowd favorite: Study Space! Or rather, lack of it. I have found myself whining so much about my inability to study properly on campus, that once I got over the complete shock of actually WANTING to study, I decided to jot down a list of place I believe would benefit the greater populace here at Scarbs. These are study areas that are tolerable during the DAY as well as after hours. Commuter students have the chance to get some work done in an environment that isn’t as hustling and bustling as Hogwarts.  You may find that may of my suggestions require sitting on the floor, or stealing chairs and couches. Fear not, what is education without mild theft here and there? We’re in Scarborough friends, we must adapt.

Five great study spaces

•         Quiet study rooms in the MW (now the social sciences wing), they are located on the 3^rd and 4^th floors. Science students rarely have the opportunity to spend time in the MW, and when they do, they pop in and out of their late night classes as fast as their worn out bodies will take them. The MW has study rooms that are more conducive to concentration than those in the library; heavier doors and thicker walls. If you can manage to grab a spot there early on in a jam packed day, consider yourself lucky, there aren’t many and (guurll) they are POP-U-LAR.

•        The stacks. Our library is usually crowded and let’s be honest, people book study rooms for many purposes OUTSIDE OF STUDYING. My greatest pet peeve: the lone guy sitting in a 10 person study room going hard at his homework. It’s impressive and inspiring... BUT STOP HOGGING 9 OTHER SEATS. Unless these students are clinically proven to be claustrophobic or something, it is necessary that students NOT be allowed to book the larger study rooms for just them. My personal solution to that is studying upstairs in the stack, and I am often surprised by how few people do the same even during the day. Yes, pop culture teaches us to use the dusty old areas of a library for the best kinds of ‘fun’, but if you can get over whatever may or may not have happened in those stacks last Valentine’s Day, it’s a good idea to give it a whirl. The stacks near the back have a lot of outlets and chairs, and most importantly, IT IS QUIET OVER THERE. You can here a pin drop, you can hear yourself procrastinate and log onto Facebook. It’s actually a wonderful place to study, and keep your productivity in check. Also, you can eat a foot-long sub and not worry about people noticing you chew like and animal and spill ranch sauce or meatballs all over yourself.

Well, if Mr. Prez can do it...

•           The hallways in the Science Wing. Most students know where these are, the eerie orange lockers (with an unusual amount of anarchist movement stickers and memorabilia on them), and all the clandestine lecture halls reserved mostly for science students, and the occasional French class. It is not the classrooms that are great, but all those wide, open corridors that no one visits unless they absolutely have to. It’s always fruitful to just drag one of the tables from the Meeting place into a hallway, and set up camp there. The general guarantee is that you probably won’t be disturbed, there’s lots of lighting, and once in a while, you may find a leather couch hanging out somewhere near you. DO NOT TAKE A NAP ON IT.

...Unless you're a genius like her and brought a cushion with you

•         The second/third/fourth floor of the AA building. For some unknowable reason, the Arts and Administration building seems like a gigantic waste of space most of the time. There are too few lecture rooms and too much space for people to dance to Gangnam Style. However, this place is the Narnia of the UTSC campus, the place where a lot of the magic happens and study spaces are available at will! First off, the second floor is  rarely visited after 5 p.m and has benches and floor space that will motivate you to study your life away. The tutorial rooms are usually not locked and can be accessed frequently. Moving on, the upper floors belong to the department of visual and performing arts, you will find little ‘lounges’ where students either chill on couches, study on couches, or sleep on those same couches. The important thing to take away from this is that those areas are ALWAYS QUIET. The hallways are big if you want to just plop down on the floor and get started. On your lucky day, you may even be serenaded by some fantastically talented person practicing their Mozart four rooms away.

•         Student Lounge. Not the little gamer-corner right upstairs in the student centre, but the corridor to the left, where the health and wellness centre is. Honestly, nobody ever goes there, except for sick students, and pretending-to-be-sick-so-I-can-miss-my-tutorial students. There is a gigantic, unheard of conference room up there that can both be booked, and walked into at any time, especially if you are with a group of friends and need a private space. If not, many students often take a chair or couch from the outside lounge and make their own study space there. Precedent would say that it helps.

Midterm season is fast approaching, for many of us it is already here! It may actually be time for us to accept that we desperately need to crack a book open or maybe log on to portal for the second time this semester. Try checking out these study spots and see if you get any work done there. At the very least, a change may just help our somewhat rusty study habits.

Oh, I’ll do it on the weekend…

So this long weekend consisted of horrible weather and hours upon hours of shoveling driveways. But hey, I can’t complain. The weather this weekend gave me an excuse to stay in bed and do nothing but eat pizza and catch up on my TV shows without feeling guilty. Needless to say, I did not get anything productive done this weekend.

This lead to the concept of my blog this week – 12 things you said you’d do this weekend (or every weekend) but never did.

1. Do a real, actual cleaning, where you get into the grimy corners that you’ve been completely ignoring every time you slide that mop across the floor.
2. Catch up on that amazing TV show everyone is talking about like it cured cancer or something. I usually just watch re runs of my old favourites. 
3. Find farmers market and get those wonderfully perfect bottles of milk with the cream still on top. Or those cookies… MMmmmmm those cookies.  
4. Do groceries. 
5. Make that thing you saw in that cooking magazine you read last week.
6. Finally read that book you bought which has been sitting on your night table for a good six weeks. 
7. Get caught up on things from school/work to be super ready for what next week throws at you. (Yeah right!) 
8. Clean out your closet and donate that 80% of clothes that just stay there untouched week after week after week.
9. Volunteer somewhere, doing things that help make the world a better place.
10. Go to a yoga class to relieve all that stress built up inside.
11. Spend meaningful time with your significant other by actually going out and making an effort.
12. Wake up early and get a nice run in before your day begins! (HAHAHAHAHA now I’m just talking crazy).

UTSC Profiles #3: Library creatures

Hi Everyone! Welcome to the 3rd edition of my visual mind vomit. This past week has been about as pleasant as a steaming pile of cow dung on a hot sunny afternoon with nothing but petrol to drink, but enough about me. This week is

LIBRARY CREATURES

Contrary to popular belief these are not the predominant species that grace the library. 

Let me tell you the real story.....

All the frustration.

This actually happened to me multiple times in the BV Mac labs..

Would have been me if I hadn't waited till I was 21 to buy an Xbox

These people should just move in and pay rent.

These are all based on observation and bear no resemblance to actual persons.

Thanks for reading! Next week I'm thinking of doing a Professors' Profile edition tantantantaaaa

Good luck with all the midterms!!

<3

My Favourite Quotes from TEDxUTSC

While there's no replacing watching the actual thing, it's seven hours long. We have it hard enough staying focused on half an hour of chemistry homework. Therefore, I thought I'd cherry-pick the best easily-digestible moments of TEDxUTSC, pithy kernels of undeniable truth. I hope you'll gain a thing or two from the great, smart people who took the stage at UTSC this Saturday.

About the question What are you good at?:

 “Unfortunately, in therapy we don’t ask this question because for more than a century therapy has been a place where clients go and discuss their troubles, their deficits, their disorders, their syndromes, their symptoms…. And we stop therapy when symptoms remit. And what we’re left with, I can tell you, we’re left with empty clients…. We treat strengths as inauthentic.” -Tayyab Rashid

"What makes your life worth living?"

“What makes your life worth living? My data, and also confirmed by some colleagues of mine, have robustly shown that it is your capacity to love; hope and optimism; your curiosity, the sense of wonder; your zest and vitality; and finally, your gratitude.” -Tayyab Rashid

“Ninety-nine percent of people will tell you that university and college was the best time of our lives. So you have to wonder why that was. It’s because you meet amazing people, and dive into deeper connections, and have the most incredible conversations, and explore the most incredible aspects of living.” -Bobby Umar

“[My parents] didn’t get me. And it’s understandable because from the age of 17 to 23, you go through an incredible fundamental shift of who you are, what you believe in, and what you stand for.” -Bobby Umar

“Of course university is a great experience. But in order to fly you also have to go through the crap. And my fourth year was, you know, very depressing, I had times where I was crying, I was crying, I felt lost, I felt like no one cared, I felt like I couldn’t do what I wanted to do because I was forced into some definition of success, or some path that wasn’t me. And that happens a lot. But you have to be willing to understand who you are and fight for it.” -Bobby Umar

“For me [when I was growing up], freedom, independence, and self-expression came when you bought a car… Now you guys are born connected. The ability to do that is a switch that’s turned on but we don’t know how to turn it off.” -David Shing

“Personal expression is the new form of entertainment.” -David Shing

“Don’t worry about online and offline; we’re going to talk about it as awake and asleep… And by the way, don’t worry about social as a place you go; it’s a thing you do. In the future it’s just going to be like water and electricity; it’s a utility.” -David Shing

"I've never ever ever felt so alone."

“This is the world we’re moving into…as much as we’ve got all these devices, I’ve never ever ever felt so alone. So as much as I’d say we are the connected generation, my friends, I think the next step we need to move into is the connection generation.” -David Shing

“When you care about humans you kind of end up caring about anything, so being a humanist activist kind of means you end up being a feminist activist, an animal rights activist, an environmentalist.” -Jesse D’Andrade

“We kind of want to tell our stories in black and white—either I can save the world, or I can do nothing, but it’s not like that…. We can only ever do our best…. We can’t ask to be the most thoughtful or the most caring or the most disciplined, but we can always try be a little more than we are.” -Jesse D’Andrade

“Climate coverage in this last year with all this happening got a total of eight minutes on the Sunday news channels in the U.S.; not much better in Canada. Meanwhile a viral media YouTube sensation got 1.2 billion views, and yes that’s ‘Gangnam Style’…. We’re getting engaged with stuff that’s funny, that’s exciting, things you want to be a part of. And we need that now for a movement. We need virality in activism…. Traditional activism needs to be shaken up.” -Emily Hunter

“When it comes to personal finance, I’m a firm believer that it’s 90% psychology and 8% math, and usually people say ‘well what’s the last 2%?’ The last 2% is a testament to how unimportant the math is, because it doesn’t add up to 100%.” -Preet Banerjee

"We need to start hating debt again."

“Debt used to be a four-letter word. Technically it’s still a four-letter word, but I mean, it used to be a four-letter word. You go back far enough in history, and if you borrowed money to buy something that depreciated, that went down in value, people would look at you funny. Today, debt is everywhere. It’s so normal that if you told people you don’t carry a balance on your credit card, you’re the weird one. We need to start hating debt again.” -Preet Banerjee

“Think of borrowing money today as negotiating a pay cut with your future self. Because that’s exactly what you’re doing. Except your future self doesn’t really have a say in the matter, do they. Imagine telling your future self ‘you need to work an extra eight years [due to interest build-up] because I want to shift my income forward a little bit’. Eventually you’re going to become your future self and you’re not going to be very happy.” -Preet Banerjee

“Now we have all this media, and are we transforming education and research and dissemination of research in any significant way? To a large extent I would say no… In order to get your work read and recognized and promoted by your institution, you need to publish in recognized academic journals.… Much of the practices of how academic journals are shared still remain in the mold of the 17^th century.” -Leslie Chan

“[Aaron Swartz] felt that a private company taking control over public resources and putting locks on them…and putting unfair terms on their use really is a form of social injustice…. His act [hacking into MIT and downloading journal articles] was really a demonstration to show how ridiculous the system is and how much that system needs to be challenged.” -Leslie Chan

“A lot of people make a lot of decisions in our lives. A lot of people make decisions for us. When it comes to the question of ‘What are you going to study? What are you going to do as your career?’ people make the choice to take the safe option, or they go for the lucrative option, as opposed to pursuing their passions.” -Karthik Kanagasabapathy

“Consider this. You are almost always going to be better off being in the top 1% of a field that may not be considered lucrative as opposed to being average in the lucrative field. And if you’re not enthusiastic about something, you’re destined to be average or you’re destined to be bad at it. While if you’re enthusiastic, you have a shot to be the best…. Life is too short to spend 40 hours a week on something you’re not enthusiastic about.” -Karthik Kanagasabapathy

“I feel like I should probably apologize for what I’m about to do to you, before I do it. But I won’t, because it’ll be great.” -Steve Joordens, before cover of “We Don’t Need No Education”

"Something about the way we educate students can kind of suck the fun out of learning."

“Sometimes, something about the way we educate students, can kind of suck the fun out of learning. I went to school, as we all did, and I learned. But I went to school primarily for two reasons. One, my friends were there, and two, my dad would kick my ass if I didn’t….

          “The learning I would almost describe as uphill learning. I kind of learned despite the system. It wasn’t that I was eating every new piece of information up; I was kind of digesting them somehow intravenously through a drip that the system had put into my arm. Which is fine. But if we could ever capture that really excited learning, the kind of learning that the student embraces, then that would be great.” -Steve Joordens

“We ask to students to create an essay, or to work through some problem set, or to do a case in a business course, and do all this stuff, but ultimately every student knows that all of their work is not going anywhere. It’s just a hoop they’re being asked to jump through so that they can be marked and that’s it. And then we as educators are sometimes depressed because the students aren’t into it…. They’re not engaged. And engagement is the front door to learning.” -Steve Joordens