Sports
Soccer Bears bound for CanWest playoffs 22
Feature
Opinion
Exploring the growing appeal of Burlesque 25
Occupiers don’t deserve bad press 11
gateway November 2nd, 2011
Issue No. 10
Volume 102
THE
TH E O F F IC IA L STUDE NT NE WS PA P E R AT TH E UN I V ER S I T Y OF A LBERTA
budget cuts
Studio Theatre tackles David Grieg’s coming-of-age tale
Arts faculty looks to cut $1.5 million from budget
Yellow Moon preview on page 17
April Hudson
staff reporter @april_hudson The University of Alberta’s Faculty of Arts is scrambling to find $1.5 million in savings by March 31, 2012, after the university mandated it cut 2.1 per cent cut from its base budget. The U of A is requiring a 2.1 per cent cut for all faculty budgets for the 2011-12 fiscal year, leaving the Faculty of Arts with no other choice than to make cuts into its budget. An Administrative Process Review Project (AdPReP) has been launched to rethink the faculty’s core activities, instead of simply shaving down budgets through actions such as layoffs. However, if it fails to find 2.1 per cent in cuts, the result could be the loss of up to 15 positions within the faculty.
“We can’t just keep cutting back and then hoping that people can pick up the slack.” lesley cormack dean of arts
More than three quarters per cent of the faculty’s budget is currently tied up in salaries, with the remaining 12 per cent comprising the operating budget. “We have to investigate how we are doing things,” said Lesley Cormack, the Dean of Arts. “We can’t just keep cutting back and then hoping that people can pick up the slack.” Cormack said the two questions the Faculty of Arts is facing are whether it is doing any unnecessary work, and whether it is doing things in the most economical fashion possible. “We designed the (AdPReP) process to go and ask how people did various tasks, such as finance, business, advising and administration, and whether there were better ways to do that,” Cormack said. “So that’s the plan: to find things we can stop doing, things that can be done through technology, and once we have that, to redesign all of our units.” This means virtually every department will have some changes in the way staff work. “I’m really waiting to see what the process review will show me,” Cormack said. “Decisionmaking is only one part of this. Then we have to plan implementation.” Cormack estimated that it could take another six months to get the project sorted out. “I am committed to maintaining and perhaps advancing student advising and student connection to departments in the faculty,” Cormack said. “So we are really seeing that as very much something we want to protect and enhance, even as all the other things go.”
PLEASE SEE budget PAGE 5
amirali sharifi
academic expansion
Pharmacy faculty to offer doctorate program Andrew Jeffrey
news staff @andrew_jeffrey Following years of planning and various proposals, the first Doctor of Pharmacy degree program in Alberta has been approved and will soon be introduced to the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences — the only pharmacy school in Alberta. The new degree will accept 13 students into a 13-month program after they have completed their four years of pharmacy undergrad. This is only a temporary measure until a twoyear pre-pharmacy plus four-year pharmacy program is implemented.
The new system is already used in the United States and Quebec, while the rest of the Canadian pharmacy schools are hoping to implement it by 2020. Students in the U of A’s new program will be given more education and physical assessment, as well as additional experience working in a team with nurses and physicians. “A lot of what we’re doing is giving them a few courses to up their expertise level at a knowledge base, but then putting them into practice environments in intensive fashion for eight (or) 12 weeks at a time in two or three places that enable them to get their clinical skills up,” said James Kehrer, dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy and
Pharmaceutical Sciences. “An analogous thing might be, do you want your surgeon doing his first appendectomy in his life on you, or do you want them to be practicing? We want them to practice in a team based under supervision before they are out there dealing with what can be life-and-death situations.” The idea of implementing a PharmD program at the U of A was first brought up in 1993. At the time, there were not enough available pharmacists in Alberta with the expertise to oversee such a program, so the current system was created instead.
PLEASE SEE pharmd PAGE7