2023 English, Culture and Communication Program Cyclical Programme Review Implementation Plan Update of Cycle 1

Advocate for the re-integration of all arts degrees into acceptable degrees for the Logistics Branch

Completed

The Logistics branch now recognizes a degree in ECC as “ideal,” and there are no restrictions on students in this professional stream taking an ECC major.

Huw Osborne, LCol Andy Brown, and DSSH Jim Denford have advocated strongly for the placement of ECC within the accepted degrees for Intelligence and Public Affairs branches. Both now officially recognize ECC as an acceptable degree for the trade. ECC and Public Affairs are also discussing how PA officers can cycle through RMC to teach within the programme and be sponsored for graduate work.

We have since developed a minor in Culture and Diversity as a step toward creating a post-graduate certificate in Cultural Intelligence to serve the needs of Intelligence.  Our first Public Affairs military faculty member is no in the process of completing his PhD with the support of the Public Affairs branch.

Ongoing

In Winter term 2018-19 AY, one faculty member received workplace second-language training supported by the College. It consisted of one weekly three-hour small-group lesson. The lessons were offered for the Summer semester, but timing was not feasible. No exams were taken.

The department needs to continue to stress that greater access to second language training will foster a faculty more able to participate in a bilingual institution and will lead to more faculty members willing and able to step up to more senior leadership roles, from which they are currently excluded due to language profile requirements.  Currently, as all departmental positions are annotated as English Essential, if department members have not developed a second language ability on their own, they are essentially disenfranchised from the administration of the university. Access to lessons as well as to public service examinations, to establish levels after training, is paramount.

The department has returned to onsite teaching, but very little second-language training has occurred.  This lack of training is partly due to the high teaching workload carried by RMC faculty in Social Sciences and Humanities (five or six credits per year).

Actively continue to pursue internal and external funding for research and continue to advocate for accessible and equitable internal opportunities for research and conference travel.

Ongoing: Department members regularly apply for SSHRC funding.  In the past few years, four members of the Department (Behrisch, McKeown, Johnson, Streight) have received SSHRC funding.  In 2016-2017, two part-time members (Hardwick and Tracy) led the successful application for a SSHRC Connections Grant focused on the TRC calls to action and reconciling RMC. In 2017, one term member (Johnson) received a SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2017-19). In 2019, Behrisch received a SSHRC Insight grant (to 2023).

As reported in our last update, the Department has also been very active in advocating for a collaborative discussion of the college’s new Strategic Research Plan (SRP).  It contributed to refining the language and focus of the SRP, which is still in progress.  Our contributions to the plan recommended language and research priority areas that would align department members’ research with the university’s SRP and, therefore, strengthen applications to SSHRC and other funding agencies.  The completed SRP does indeed accommodate EEC’s research goals, so we look forward to leveraging this new SRP in future research grant applications.

The Commandant has established a Red Tape Committee, and the Principal’s office continues to work at streamlining the approvals

Reviewed on an annual basis. While some efficiencies have been put in place, unpredictable restrictions from outside RMC make travel uncertain, which directly impacts the careers of faculty members.  The restrictions and barriers to travel still result in approvals arriving just days (or even a single day) before travel.  Many of these problems are beyond the control of the department, but they have long-term negative impacts on career progression.

Since COVID, there are more opportunities to attend conferences virtually, but in-person travel for research and collaboration is still essential, and the travel approval process is still an impediment to faculty research.

Completed

Work to ensure the best practices in the hiring of sessional staff.

Ongoing

The department has developed a fair and consistent process and matrix for hiring contingent faculty, which it continues to review and refine.  It also recognizes that best practices continue into sessionals’ term of teaching, and it has sought out opportunities to support sessionals’ research activities through funding projects and publications. In general, the department subscribes to the best-practices outlined by ACCUTE: Contract Academic Faculty in Canadian Departments of English A Best-Practices Checklist (.pdf). The department has also contributed to advocating for increasing the use of Term contracts and eliminating the use of casual contracts, and both of these recommendations have been met with support from the Dean of Social Sciences and Humanities and the other departments of the faculty of SSH.

Ongoing

Supervising at the graduate level: Several faculty members have adjunct status at Queen’s University, which makes it possible for them to supervise and co-supervise Queen’s graduate students. Adjunct status at Queen’s is renewable on a three-year term. Also, all department members are eligible to supervise graduate students in RMC’s interdisciplinary War Studies program, and several ECC professors have done this in the past. Faculty members have also been external examiners for doctoral and Masters’ theses, the most recent being Dr Osborne in 2021.

Teaching at the graduate level: The ECC revised the graduate war literature course to a single term course in order to cycle through a wider diversity of courses taught by a larger number of professors.  This course revision was completed by September 2017. In Winter 2019, a new graduate course was added: Working with Archives, and in 2020, a third: Narratives of Exploration. The Department works closely with the associate chair WS to produce offerings that are timely and relevant. No faculty members are teaching graduate courses in 2021-22 AY.

The department is also anticaptes contributing to a new graduate certificate in Cultural intelligence, which will create more opportunities for graduate teaching outside the context of War Studies. 

ECC’s ability to contribute to graduate teaching was impacted by the loss of a funded position, which remains unfilled.  With fewer professors to carry the workload of the core curriculum and the undergraduate programme, graduate teaching in the department has significantly declined.

Apply a greater degree of explicit consistency of requirements and assessment in the multiple sections of ENE 100/110 and 210 courses.

Completed and Ongoing

The department began and continues to run a series of workshops to revise and maintain ENE100 and ENE110.  The first workshop resulted in a set of common learning objectives, grading practices, assignments, and content guidelines. The changes were trialed for one year and revisited and officially adopted in Spring 2017.  In Spring of 2017, the department also revised ENE210 to implement the same level of consistency. 

Ongoing

The review of ENE100, ENE110, and ENE210 has done much to formalize the department’s assessment and reporting of student achievement of DLEs. 

The completion of the Common Core Curriculum committee’s report is an important document that the department returns to in order to continue to ensure that its objectives and priorities are being met.