The new faculty, which combines programs from existing faculties, will highlight collaboration, says deputy provost
Photo by Sage Blackwell.
Last week, the Board of Governors followed the lead of the Senate and voted in favour of the creation of a new Faculty of Health at UVic.
This faculty will include the existing schools of exercise science, physical and health education, health information science, medical sciences, nursing, public health and social policy, and social work.
The Faculty of Human and Social Development, where many of these schools existed before, will be disestablished. Schools of Indigenous governance and public administration will move to the Faculty of Social Sciences, and child and youth care will move to the Faculty of Education.
Samara Leckenby is a third-year nursing student. She feels that the new faculty will help healthcare workers to work better together. “I think that medical students, social workers, public health [workers] — we’re all so collaborative in the way that we work,” she told the Martlet.
“When I’m in a clinical setting, we’re all together all the time,” she said. “It totally makes sense that we would be a faculty.”
Leckenby also expressed that this change might help steer people away from the myth that doctors are more important than other healthcare professionals. “I think that this will possibly be a step in the right direction for dismantling that myth that we’re just the supporters of doctors,” she said. “We all work together.”
Neha Johal is in her fourth and final year of health information science (HINF). She’s also the president of the HINF course union, which works to bring students together from different cohorts and learn from each other.
Johal supports the creation of a new faculty. “I think for the most part it will be good, because it will give a broader understanding to what all of the majors are that fall within [the faculty],” she told the Martlet.
Because she is graduating this spring, Johal is concerned for what this change means for those who have human and social development on their diplomas, since the school will no longer exist.
Helga Hallgrimsdottir, deputy provost and chair of the Senate Committee on Academic Health Program, addressed this concern in an interview with the Martlet. She explained that UVic will provide information to other schools and employers about the change.
Hallgrimsdottir said that the idea came from a report released in 2018, which proposed that UVic consider restructuring its programming to create a dedicated Faculty of Health. This process was delayed by COVID-19 and started again in the spring of last year.
The undertaking ran through the Senate with the creation of an ad-hoc committee on health programming. This included a group of deans, support people from the office of the registrar and resource planning, and faculty members, said Hallgrimsdottir.
Schools interested in integrating into the new Faculty of Health were invited to submit letters to the committee. Hallgrimsdottir encouraged those interested to “have a thoughtful and deliberate conversation” and to consider future goals for their discipline.
The committee created a survey in the fall of 2023 to hear what students and members of the UVic community thought about the change. They received around 2 000 responses, half of which were from students.
Hallgrimsdottir also organized a pop-up booth in the quad to speak with students and encourage them to fill out the survey. “I was really struck by how passionate people were about making a difference,” she said. “Of course people go to university because they want jobs, but they want jobs that are meaningful.”
“Students are quite interested in health programming and were looking for health programming when they applied to UVic,” explained Hallgrimsdottir. She said she heard anecdotal stories of people choosing to attend other institutions because of their dedicated health faculties.
“We have an entire generation of people that really feel like they want to roll up their sleeves and do stuff,” said Hallgrmsdottir. “And we have to offer programming that allows them to do that.”
Hallgrimsdottir also noted that this is the biggest faculty change to happen at UVic since the faculties of humanities, sciences, and social sciences were split in the 1990s.
The next step for the faculty is the selection of a dean, who Hallgrimsdottir explained will provide leadership and guidance during this change.
