Board of Governors - APPENDIX VIII - November 22, 2001

ITEMS REFERRED BY SENATE

FOR APPROVAL

1. Western/Fanshawe Collaborative Degree/Diploma in Media Theory and Production

[Subject to Senate approval on November 16, 2001]

Recommended: That, effective September 1, 2002, a new Western/Fanshawe Collaborative Program in Media Theory and Production be introduced, leading to a Bachelor of Arts in Media, Information and Technoculture offered by the Faculty of Information and Media Studies of the University and a Diploma in Media Theory and Production offered by the College.

NEW CALENDAR COPY

WESTERN/FANSHAWE COLLABORATIVE DEGREE/DIPLOMA IN MEDIA THEORY AND PRODUCTION

Admission Requirements

Admission to the program is through the University of Western Ontario and requires meeting the standards of admission to the University. Students must enroll at the University for their first year as MIT-designated students.

Thirty students will be admitted to the second year of the program. Students will be evaluated for admission based on their academic standing by a joint committee from the two institutions. Attainment of minimum admission requirements does not guarantee admission. Entry to the program is competitive on the basis of academic achievement. Ten students will be admitted to each of the program's three streams: Broadcast Journalism, Multimedia Production and TV Production. These stream selections will be indicated on the students' transcripts. Students will rank their preferences, and the ten best selecting each stream will be admitted. Students are not guaranteed to receive their first choice rankings.

Students who have applied to the collaborative program directly in first year will be given priority for admission to the second year. If the collaborative program is not filled from these students, other MIT students may then be considered for admission. The joint admissions committee will review requests for Advanced Standing on a case-by-case basis.

Those students not offered a spot in the second-year collaborative program will be considered for continuation in the Bachelor of Arts in Media, Information and Technoculture, providing they are meeting academic progression requirements, or may apply to a Fanshawe College diploma program.

Progression Requirements

Students must maintain an overall weighted average of 68%, with no more than 1.0 unsatisfactory attempt in 5.0 full course equivalents in any given academic year.

Withdrawal

If, after first year, students wish to continue only in the MIT program, they will be permitted to progress into the second year of the three or four-year degree, provided that they have maintained a suitable academic average and that progression requirements have been met.

If, after subsequent years, students wish to withdraw from either the Fanshawe or UWO portions of the degree/diploma, they should consult with their respective institution to determine which credits may be applied in a transfer to another program within one of the participating institutions.

Upgrading

Upon completion of the degree/diploma, students wishing to upgrade to a four-year university degree must complete no fewer than five senior MIT courses and maintain progression requirements to complete an MIT four-year degree.



Background:

The Joint/Degree Diploma Program in Media Theory and Production is a collaborative venture of the University of Western Ontario and Fanshawe College. The program is intended to produce students who are articulate, informed and critically aware of the roles of media in society, and at the same time skilled in the hands-on techniques and processes related to specific communications technologies.

The program encompasses four full years. Successful students receive the equivalent of both a three-year Bachelor of Arts degree in Media, Information and Technoculture and a two-year College diploma.

Students enroll for a full first year at the University, at the end of which they are considered for admission to the degree/diploma program. If admitted, students must choose one of three areas of study for the diploma:

Broadcast Journalism: Students will gain career training in broadcast journalism, including research, interviewing, newsgathering and writing, computer assisted reporting, and radio and TV broadcast journalism production and management.

Multimedia Design and Production: Students will gain the practical, creative, and communication skills necessary to outline, plan, design, and develop multimedia projects, from simple presentations to fully interactive multimedia applications.

TV Production: Students will gain career training in television technical operations and/or production. Course content includes broadcast and technical operation, studio production, ENG/EFP production, computer graphics, post-production editing, copywriting, scriptwriting, and sales and marketing for television.

Students who graduate with the collaborative degree and diploma could be employed in a wide range of positions such as: Web Site Designer/Developer, Motion Graphics Specialist, Multimedia Developer, Art Director, Multimedia Project Manager, Radio Newscaster/Reporter/Sportscaster, Announcer, TV Weather Presenters, Sports Reporter, TV News Videographer/Producer/Editor, TV News Anchor/Announcer, or Web Content Provider.

Alongside these career skills, the collaboration with Western's Media, Information and Technoculture program enables students to develop an awareness of the wider cultural, economic and social issues surrounding media and information technologies, creating information age artisan-citizens.

A copy of the course descriptions is available in the University Secretariat .

FOR INFORMATION

1. Collaborative Masters and PhD Program in Scientific Computing

Senate has approved the establishment of a collaborative graduate program in Biostatistics, effective January 1, 2001.

A collaborative graduate program is an offering involving two or more OCGS and Senate approved graduate programs. Western currently has four collaborative graduate programs: Environmental Sciences, Molecular Biology, Scientific Computing and Theoretical Physics. Students in a collaborative program obtain their degree in the discipline of their home program along with a specialization in the area of the collaborative program. For example, a PhD student who has been admitted into the graduate program in Applied Mathematics can also apply to be admitted into the collaborative program in Theoretical Physics; his or her degree would then be a PhD in Applied Mathematics with a specialization in Theoretical Physics. The degree diploma would designate the degree as "PhD in Applied Mathematics (Theoretical Physics)".

The proposed Biostatistics collaborative program involves the participation of the following OCGS and Senate approved graduate programs: Epidemiology & Biostatistics, and Statistics.

Biostatistics is the area of Statistics concerned with medical, biological and agricultural applications. It is currently a very active area of statistical research. The proposed collaborative program, which will combine epidemiological and medical subject matter with a strong grounding in statistical theory and methodology, will be directed towards students who are preparing for a career as a biostatistician in government, industry or academia.

2. Tertiary Care Nurse Practitioner Certificate Program

Senate has withdrawn the Tertiary Care Nurse Practitioner Certificate Program in the Faculty of Health Sciences' School of Nursing, effective September 1, 2001.

This post-masters certificate program was introduced in September 1998 to meet a need in the London and area health care agencies for advanced practice nurses. This need has now been addressed and there have been no admissions to the program since 1999. Also, the program is no longer congruent with the foci of graduate education in the School of Nursing.

3. Report of the Academic Colleague on the 257th Meeting of the Council of Ontario Universities

See Annex 1.

4. Announcements - Appointments

Faculty of Health Sciences

T. Sumsion, Director, School of Occupational Therapy, March 1, 2002 - June 30, 2007

Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry

M. Clarke, Assistant Dean (Information Technology), July 1, 2001 - June 30, 2002

S.P. Lownie, Acting Co-Chair, Dept. of Clinical Neurological Sciences, July 1, 2001 - Nov. 30, 2001

M.J. Strong, Acting Co-Chair, Dept. of Clinical Neurological Sciences, July 1, 2001 - Nov. 30, 2001


Board of Governors, November 22, 2001 - APPENDIX VIII, Annex 1

Report on the 257th meeting of the Council of Ontario Universities

Thursday and Friday, October 11 and 12, 2001

D.M.R. Bentley, Academic Colleague

Several aspects of the meetings of the Academic Colleagues' Caucus and of the Council itself will be of interest to Senate.



(1) Preliminary Enrolment Data for 2001-02. An enrolment increase of approximately 5.2% rather than the predicted 2.3% has prompted renewed calls for full Government funding of all students in the system. While both the Minister and the deputy Minister are apparently committed to securing such funding, the economic downturn preceding and following the events of September 11 has left the financial future very uncertain (a point reiterated by the representative of the AUCC with regard to that organization's efforts to persuade the federal government to fund research overheads).

(2) ACUMEN Report on the Socio-economic Profile of University Students. The main finding of this Report is that "applicants are not being pulled from an increasingly narrow group towards the top of the income distribution. In fact, it appears that the number of applicants from the lower segments of the income distribution increased somewhat from the 1994 to 1998. In addition, from 1998 to 2001 overall application income did not appear to increase. Instead the pattern of increased applications from lower in the income distribution appeared again with the applicants reporting family income under 30 thousand dollars increasing from 22% to approximately 28%." The upshot of the extensive discussions of the Report among members of Council is that its findings and conclusions should be treated with circumspection for a variety of reasons, including the fact that they are based on applicants rather than registrants, the likelihood that they are skewed by data from the northern universities, and the seeming disparity in some respects between StatsCan data and the data generated by ACUMEN. It was widely agreed that the Report should be carefully examined and weighed, and placed in the context of studies of student debt-load.

(3) EKOS Survey of Public Perceptions of the Quality, Funding, and Accessibility of Ontario Universities. With respect to quality, this Survey revealed very strong agreement on the value of broad-based university education and strong agreement on the desirability of the development of skills leading to employment, strong agreement on the importance of teaching and facilities (laboratories and libraries), on the availability of wide choices of programmes and courses, and on the benefit to students of working with an active researcher, and weak agreement on the importance of comfortable residences and internet access. With respect to funding, it revealed very strong agreement that the Ontario Government should be the main source of funding, that funding should be "core" rather than targeted, and that universities themselves should be responsible for directing funding to areas of "student demand." It also indicated strong support for funding to improve the quality of Ontario universities (which was perceived as fair to good but not excellent) and to deal with the "double cohort." And with respect to accessibility, it revealed widespread agreement on the principle involved, as well as widespread agreement that students should be able to choose programmes leading to future employment.

(4) Ontario Institute of Technology. The most lugubriously anticipated event of the Council meeting was unquestionably the introduction of Mr. Gary Polonsky, the President of Durham College/OIT. (One can imagine that the senatorial reception of Caligula's horse after it had been made a consul was similar in enthusiasm and complexity.) Mr. Polonsky informed Council the OIT would be a fully-shod university in all but name (though it would not be saddled with a senate), that it would focus primarily on education leading to "high-wage employment," that it would be "up and running" by September 2003, that it would reach an enrolment of 6,500 by the end of the decade, and that it would eventually have a student body of 25,000.