You may be aware that the Faculty of Arts is undergoing a three-year curriculum renewal process. This effectively means that curriculums for programs such as Religious Studies or Spanish are being updated, and, until that work is completed, new students will be unable to enrol.
If you're unfamiliar with these pauses to new admissions, or missed the social media update from your SU Arts Representatives, the preceding paragraph might have raised a few questions. If you're wondering things like why these programs and is a 'curriculum renewal' even a real thing, you're not alone.
Students in the affected programs were first informed about the pauses in October last year. When they told us that the Faculty of Arts poorly communicated the news—and the execution left much to be desired, too—we agreed.
Your SU Representatives and Vice-President Academic got busy working with Faculty leadership to make sure students won't be blindsided this way again. We are now pleased to announce that the Faculty of Arts Student Engagement Framework for Program Proposals went live in late March.
This Framework describes the steps that the Faculty of Arts will follow to engage with students if it ever proposes changes to programs again. You can read the full Framework here or find it later in this post, but here are the highlights:
- The Faculty will inform students, the SU, and the Faculty of Arts Students' Association of program pauses before they occur, as well as any proposed program suspensions or terminations.
- These communications will make it clear that students "will be supported in the completion of their program."
- The Faculty of Arts will provide "the rationale for the program pause or proposal"
- These announcements will strive to use "plain language."
- The Faculty of Arts will hold at least one in-person and one online consultation session with affected students.
- All students in affected programs will be invited to at least one online event and two in-person events to ask questions and provide feedback.
Of course, we know that the Framework doesn't answer the questions of what and why. That's why we're going to break down everything you might want to know about what the Faculty of Arts is doing and how we got here in the first place.
What is a Curriculum Renewal?
Why is the Faculty of Arts doing a curriculum renewal now?
Why were admissions to new students paused?
How did students first learn about the pauses?
Is it true there are procedural concerns about the proposals?
How do you know that current students will be able to graduate?
How do you know that the programs won't be terminated?
Why didn’t the Faculty of Arts include all this information in their initial communications to students?
I have too many tabs open already - can you show me the full Engagement Framework?
Hopefully, you'll now feel like you know everything there is to know about the Arts Curriculum Renewal. (Don't worry—there won't be an exam.) The SU will continue to monitor and respond to the situation as it develops.
For now, we like the Engagement Framework so much that we'll be encouraging other Faculties to follow in Arts' footsteps. We also invite students to tell us what they think. You can also reach out to us with questions you may have about anything written here. Contact your Vice-President Academic or Faculty of Arts Representatives using the information below.
Vice-President Academic |
Faculty of Arts Representatives |
suvpaca@ucalgary.ca |
arts1@su.ucalgary.ca arts2@su.ucalgary.ca arts3@su.ucalgary.ca arts4@su.ucalgary.ca |