I am a charter faculty member at UNBC, i.e., I arrived here in 1994 about a month before Queen Elizabeth II officially opened the Prince George campus. Along with many of my colleagues, I feel that UNBC is my university in that we helped make it what it is today. I was part of structuring our graduate programs, because we believed that these were critical for success. When we arrived, we had no lab materials, no previous course outlines, and no mentors who could help us get started. I was alone in my discipline for the first seven years. We survived on hard work and adrenaline, plus an amazing team spirit that made visitors from other institutions jealous. In my faculty, the ability to cooperate in an interdisciplinary environment was in fact a key qualification for employment.
I am now in my last year at UNBC before retirement. Looking back over the past 21 years, I am proud of what we have accomplished. The administration is also quick to sing our praises by highlighting our accomplishments and the Macleans' rankings. Words are cheap, however, and I feel a great deal of disappointment over a gradual erosion of faculty support. In negotiations over the years, the UNBC faculty association has yielded to administration pleas of inability to pay and PSEC guideline restrictions out of concern for the future of our university. Now we are paying dearly for this, and as a pensioner, I will no doubt feel the impact for many years to come. We are again told that UNBC would face economic ruin if faculty were compensated appropriately. Meanwhile, seemingly unlimited funds have been poured into renovations, e.g., I have lost count of how many times the registrar's office has been renovated, usually without consultation and at the expense of functionality for faculty.
I despair over the impact of the strike on students and staff. Our wonderful students have recognized that the problem stems from a systemic failure of the provincial government to fund education adequately. Clear evidence of the deteriorating environment for universities is that faculty at three of BC's research universities, including UNBC, opted for union certification in the past year. The strike cost me more than I can gain, but I support the principle of equal pay for equal work. The future of UNBC depends on it, and it truly is about priorities.
Staffan Lindgren
Prince George
