2009 Chair's Report

In September 2008 I was appointed to the BC Council on Admissions and Transfer by the Minister of Education. I will be serving as a post secondary faculty member for a three year term. On May 28 and 29 I will be attending the annual meeting in Vancouver. BCCAT has produced a number of interesting reports over the past year, which I have linked to on our webpage. In particular you may want to check out the Environmental Scan of BC Post-Secondary Admissions by Nick Heath and the 2008 Admissions & Transfer Experiences: A BC Stats Report.

Normally in February I would have attended the Articulation Chairs and System Liaison Persons meeting in Vancouver but it wasn't held this year. Instead there will be a joint annual meeting (JAM) in November which will include Institutional Contact Persons (ICPs) as well. Our System Liaison Person for the last few years has been Dr. Sandy Vanderburgh who was the Dean of Science and Technology at Douglas College . Sandy has now moved to Lethbridge so the SLP position is vacant. Raili McIvor from BCCAT and I are in the process of contacting people who may be interested in filling this position. An SLP is a university administrator (Dean and above) who can provide advice and information to an articulation committee about the structure of the post-secondary system and current system-wide innovations or initiatives. They also provide administrative perspective on issues under discussion and can act as a liaison with system committees such as the Deans and Directors groups. If you know of anyone who may be interested in filling this position please let me know.

Our webpage is once again functioning. My apologies for the hiatus. Our Earth Sciences website, within which we are hosted, will be migrating to a new format soon and that meant that I couldn't update our page. The numerous institutional name changes have created a little bit of an increased workload for me, so bear with me while I change everything over. When you use the BCCAT Transfer Guide you will find transfer agreements using these new names: Capilano University (formerly Capilano College ), Emily Carr University (formerly Emily Carr Institute), Kwantlen Polytechnic University (formerly Kwantlen University College ), University of the Fraser Valley (formerly University College of the Fraser Valley ) and Vancouver Island University (formerly Malaspina University-College).

Of note are some new additions to our webpage. Under Sharing – Field Trip Liability , I've posted the pdf that Mark Smith spoke about at last year's meeting. The Langara version was not ready in time for a discussion at this meeting, but I will put in on the webpage as soon as I receive it and we can discuss it at next year's meeting if you wish. Under Sharing – Job Postings I've linked to each institution's Human Resources page from which you can navigate in search of advertised positions. Under Archived Photos I've posted all of the photos that I've received from past meetings. Under the new heading of 2008 Meeting I have posted the information from the post-meeting educational presentations.

These are just some of the webpage updates. Have fun navigating around the site and feel free to point out any errors or omissions. As our departmental website changes format, I'll be revamping our webpage. Let me know what else you'd like to see on it.

Over the next year, I will be coordinating with Mike Winsemann at BCCAT to get our transfer grid reformatted and posted on the BCCAT website.

Enjoy the meeting and field trip. Thanks to UVic and Camosun for hosting this year's meeting.

Robbie