The USFA has recently been asked to endorse an open letter expressing dissatisfaction with the TransformUS process and to pass a motion of non-support for the TransformUS process because of its perceived inadequacies.
The position of the Executive is that these issues should be addressed and resolved through collegial governance via University Council and the General Academic Assembly.
The USFA strongly supports our members in making their voices heard and participating in the collegial processes related to not only TransformUS, but all aspects of university governance. Academic decisions are the responsibility of University Council and we encourage our members to make their opinions known, to become engaged in the TransformUS process, and ensure that Council members are representing their views.
The open letter appears in an article in VOX that can be accessed at the following link: http://usaskfaculty.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/14-01-28-open-letter-to-the-president-of-the-university-of-saskatchewan.pdf
“The goal for TransformUS is to obtain $20-25 million in permanent annual savings, or approximately five per cent of the university’s total operating budget. In addition, $5 million will be reallocated to top priority programs and services that would benefit from increased resources.” (Provost and Vice-President Academic Fairburn, report to University Council, January 2014)
The process of TransformUS was initiated to address a $44.5 million projected shortfall in the operating budget to occur by 2015-16. The USFA’s position is that there is precious little evidence that the projected shortfall will occur (Collectively Speaking: “Speaking of TransformUS…”). The goal to obtain $20-25 million in permanent annual operating budget savings is not a necessity, but rather, a choice of the Board of Governors and Senior Administrators. The need to cut programs and lay-off faculty and staff for financial reasons seems unjustified.
The USFA disputes the necessity of the goal of TransformUS and is principally opposed to the tactic of involuntary job loss to achieve that goal.
Happy New Year!!
2013 came to a close with bitter cold and concerns about future of many academic programs at the U of S.
This issue of VOX is another submission from Professor Eric Howe. It follows-up what he previously wrote and presents his thoughts on TransformUS now that the task forces have released their reports.
As we embark on 2014, we on the VOX Editorial Board welcome your comments on TransformUS and other issues. What other weaknesses—or strengths—in the ranking methodology were there in addition to those analyzed by Professor Howe? Are there criteria that should have been considered but were not? Grandiose Administrative initiatives like TransformUS are not unique to U of S. If you know of comparable experiences at other institutions, like York University for example, and would like to share your views, we would be delighted to hear from you.
Whether it is in response to what Professor Howe has written or something else, we encourage you to put pen to paper and provide us with your thoughts on issues impacting you.
If you have something you would like to contribute to VOX, information about making submissions can be found on the last page of this publication.
The Editors
Professor Eric Howe
Department of Economics
University of Saskatchewan
My paper “The Emperor Isn’t Wearing Any Clothes: Intellectually Bankrupt Academic Prioritization” (The Naked Emperor subsequently) presented a number of extremely negative predictions about the outcome of TransformUS. Those predictions were based on the methodology being employed—one developed by Robert Dickeson and presented in his book Prioritizing Academic Programs and Services. TransformUS has now released its prioritization report (The Report subsequently). The results are worse than I predicted. TransformUS will cause irreparable damage to our university and province.
In these litigious times it should be stressed that the following is my interpretation. Just as was the case with The Naked Emperor, I do not deny that others may have different interpretations. Again, too, this paper will be limited to examining the prioritization of academic programs; services will not be included.
It should be noted at the outset that our faculty colleagues who were tied up doing TransformUS for eight months worked hard. They agreed to add TransformUS to their already over-full schedules, so they consequently had to make sacrifices in other areas such as research, scholarly work, teaching, staying current in their discipline, public service, practice of professional skills, grant applications, and living their lives. Their efforts on TransformUS fell short, but it is important to note that the fault lies not with the faculty involved but with the members of Central Administration who selected Dickeson’s methodology. From the moment that Dickeson’s methodology was selected, the completion of TransformUS was a fool’s errand.
There are many programs at the UofS, so there was little time despite the long hours of work from the Task Force. The Report says that 90 hours were devoted to the review period for 485 programs (The Report, pp. 1 and 10), so the review period allowed an average of eleven minutes and 8 seconds per program. Suppose conservatively that a quarter of the review period was given over to other matters—writing The Report, tallying votes, organizing, breaks, guest presentations, eating meals, and recording comments—and that allows 8 minutes and 21 seconds per program. Each program was assessed on the basis of ten criteria, allowing 50 seconds per criterion per program. With twenty members, each Task Force member got to contribute, on average, 25 seconds of discussion per program, or 2.5 seconds per criterion per program. Even when The Report assigns an important program to an indefensibly counter-intuitive quintile, it is difficult to blame the members of the Task Force because 8 minutes and 21 seconds (50 seconds per criterion) is not much time for an informed decision about something as complicated as a program at a research university, nor is 25 seconds (2.5 seconds per criterion) much time for an individual to affect the decision. Again, the fault for TransformUS lies not with the faculty involved but with Dickeson’s methodology.
I resigned from the Academic Task Force of TransformUS at the end of October. It had become clear that the biases in Dickeson’s methodology were not going to be corrected. It would have been professionally unethical for an economist to continue in those circumstances: economists study how to rationally make difficult choices and TransformUS isn’t how it is done. TransformUS is to rational choice what 1+1=3 is to mathematics.
One of the alarming aspects of TransformUS is the ease with which its terms can be redefined and abused. Consistent with its mandate, The Report states that quintile 5 contains programs that are “candidates for phasing out, subject to further review.” However, quintile 5 was redefined in a UofS announcement by the Academic and Finance Vice Presidents on November 5—even before the Task Force had completed its report—to consist of programs that were “recommended for elimination.”
1. An open, transparent process?
Much of the most interesting information about TransformUS has not been released. We were instructed in the initial full-day meetings of the Task Force that we should not even keep notes since they might be accessible subsequently.
Indeed, the specific event which precipitated my resignation from the Task Force was a document which was distributed for signatures by the members of the Task Force at the end of October which included an explicit agreement to destroy all notes and spreadsheets upon completion of The Report. That for a process which was to be open and transparent?
What has been left out of The Report is much of the information which would allow an interested reader to assess the validity of the quintile assignments.
For example, consider that many of the programs placed in quintile 5 in The Report weren’t placed there when the programs were initially scored. The TransformUS process involved initially scoring each of the programs based on the information available in the templates. Those initial scores involved voting and required a 75% majority. The votes were usually preceded by a discussion of the program. Even for programs that were not discussed, the members of the Task Force were asked if they wanted to discuss the program prior to the vote. Subsequently, however, the Task Force moved some programs in a second pass, still using the same templates. Why?
The Report explains the second pass in this way:
A series of subsequent meetings, including a day-long Saturday meeting, was devoted to revisiting the placement of the programs. In the second pass, the programs were considered in relation to other programs within the unit. This enabled task force members to consider the programs more holistically against the background of the unit, to identify any discrepancies between related templates, and to assure ourselves that a consistent approach to evaluation had been used. This second review also gave the task force a chance to consider whether there were additional general themes that should be identified in the report. (The Report, p. 10)
Note that there is nothing in this explanation that would suggest a substantial inequality between number of programs the second pass moved up to a higher quintile and those moved down to a lower.
From the scoring prior to my resignation from TransformUS on October 25, I have the initial quintile assignments for the 375 programs which had been assigned to that point. These can be compared to the final quintile assignments in The Report to examine the effect of the second pass.
Of the 375 programs, 5 were initially placed in quintile 3 but were moved downward to quintile 5 on the second pass; 17 of the programs were initially placed in quintile 4 but were moved downward to quintile 5 on the second pass. In fact, over one in four of the programs assigned to quintile 5 in The Report were initially assigned to higher quintiles. Over one in six of the programs assigned to quintile 4 were initially assigned to higher quintiles. Over one in four of the programs initially assigned to quintile 4 were moved to quintile 5. Of the 375 programs, 2 were moved up and 36 were moved down.
What motivated this movement from the initial assignment to the final?
I believe that the downward revisions in the second pass were driven by Dickeson’s arbitrary dictum that 20% of the programs must go into the “candidates for elimination” category, quintile 5. The first pass placed 15.5% of the 375 programs in quintile 5. To get closer to 20%, some programs were moved down to quintile 5 in the second pass. That left less than 20% in quintile 4, so other programs were also moved down to quintile 4.
Anyone finding their program in quintile 5 may reasonably be left with the question of what that means. Over a quarter of such programs were initially scored to be better than that. It would be very interesting to know how a good labour lawyer would view this situation when it results in faculty being fired. Programs were scored higher but had their scores lowered to put the dictated number of programs in quintile 5. One wonders what Central Administration’s justification would be: “we wanted to fire more faculty than seemed appropriate from a review of the programs.”
2. The size bias
One of the biases in the methodology used by TransformUS is a bias against small programs. Incredibly, The Report dismisses small programs as “boutique” programs (p. 20) and questions whether they should be allowed to continue to exist at the UofS.
It is worth emphasizing what the logically correct consideration is—the one that TransformUS should have used. Obviously, the UofS should seek to maximize the benefit (broadly defined) from spending its budget, so the logically correct evaluation of a program is its benefit per dollar of cost.
In that context, a small program with a small cost can easily have a larger benefit per dollar of cost than its larger cousins. Rather than arbitrarily dismissing small programs as “boutique” and assigning them to quintile 5, the larger programs might just as well have been dismissed as “resource hogs” and assigned to quintile 5.
But they weren’t. As explained in The Naked Emperor, the methodology of TransformUS made it bad to be small and good to be large. Regardless of quality. Empirically, that can be documented in any number of ways. For example, there are 363 programs at the UofS with a positive number of students during the three years of data collected by TransformUS. (For this, take the student headcounts from the templates, summing over the three years, drop the student headcounts which were irregularly included for research programs, and count the number of programs with a positive number of students.) The median headcount per program is 53. There are 180 programs with more than the median of 53 students, and 180 with fewer. The set of larger programs have a median quintile assignment of 2 and make up 90% of the teaching programs which were assigned to quintile 1. The set of smaller programs have a median quintile assignment of 4 and make up 88% of the teaching programs which were assigned to the quintile 5.
Defenders of TransformUS might claim that this just reflects the low quality of small programs. However, The Report seems to contradict that view by noting that the group of small programs contains those for which the “rigour and specific focus … embody important academic values” (The Report, p. 20). The Report continues, saying that the evaluation of the future of the small elite programs at the UofS is beyond their mandate. However, The Report then goes on to evaluate them anyway.
3. The bias against Aboriginal programs
Another bias discussed in The Naked Emperor is one against Aboriginal programs. Aboriginal people will make up the majority of Saskatchewan’s population in the foreseeable future. The average educational level of Aboriginal people—although it is increasing—continues to fall further behind that of Nonaboriginal people—which is increasing faster. Consequently, it is vitally important provincially that Aboriginal educational initiatives are expanded. For this reason, it would be expected that Aboriginal programs would be prominent in quintile 1—the quintile for “candidates for enhanced resources.”
Indeed, The Report claims that Aboriginal programs were placed in “The full range of quintiles” (The Report, p. 19). So how many Aboriginal programs are in quintile 1? Zero. That number again, ZERO!
There are three programs in Quintile 1 which include the word “Aboriginal” in their detailed program list in The Report: the 4 year BSc in Toxicology (4.6% of the student headcount is Aboriginal), the 4 year Honours BA in English (4.1%), and the research program in Physics (0 students whether Aboriginal or Nonaboriginal). Of the 482 programs at the UofS scored in The Report, the 4 year BSc in Toxicology is ranked 81st in its number of Aboriginal students, the 4 year Honours BA in English is 104th, and the research program in Physics is tied for last (The Report, pp. 43-45 together with data from the program templates). Perhaps it is best left to the reader to decide whether these three constitute Aboriginal programs. The detailed program list for Toxicology states there are “plans for incorporation of Aboriginal students.” I have absolutely no intention of denigrating the efforts by the faculty in any of these three programs, but note that many programs on campus tried to spin the information in their templates by stating that they have hopes for future enrollment of Aboriginal students. Whether the hoped for enrollment happens is another matter.
So, how did actual Aboriginal programs do in TransformUS? Here the story is mixed, though many of the Aboriginal programs fared badly. The Native Law Centre was assigned to quintile 4 as were the 4-year Honours BA in Aboriginal Public Administration, the 4-year Honours BA in Native Studies, the 4-year BA in Aboriginal Public Administration, the 3-year BA in Northern Studies, the International Centre for Northern Governance and Development, and the 4-year BA in Northern Studies. The Honours BA in Northern Studies was assigned to quintile 5.
Defenders of TransformUS would perhaps argue that the poor showing of these Aboriginal programs is a reflection of their quality—and take no account that, as shown in The Naked Emperor, the scoring methodology is biased. That argument would be reminiscent of the assertion of segregationists in the American South during Black voter-registration drives that Blacks were illiterate—as supposedly demonstrated by the use of tests which were biased against Blacks.
4. The bias against low-cost programs
One of the laments expressed by members of the Academic Task Force during its meetings was the low quality of the cost data in the templates, and I suspect that the low quality of the data in general partly accounts for the tentative phrasing of quintile 5 (“candidates for phasing out, subject to further review”). The significance of the phrase “subject to further review” deserves some comment. There were several meetings of the Task Force where it was asserted that Central Administration would use “better” cost data before deciding which programs in quintile 5 should actually be eliminated.
Obviously, however, if better cost data exists then the better data should have been used by TransformUS. As shown in The Naked Emperor, the data on program cost used by TransformUS were inherently inaccurate. It would be fascinating to study how the results would have been different if accurate cost data had been utilized in the prioritization. That is not possible since in fact no one knows what the academic programs at the UofS cost.
5. How did the colleges do?
The Report includes scores for 482 programs. How did these work out for the academic units? Table 1 shows the median score for programs by unit, ordered from the worst to the best. (Ties in the ordering of the median were broken using the average; for example programs in both the Colleges of Nursing and of Engineering got assigned to quintiles with a median of 4, but the average quintile for Engineering was somewhat better than that for Nursing.)
Table 1. Median Quintile Assignments by Academic Unit
| Unit | Median quintile |
| College of Graduate Studies and Research | 5 |
| Library | 4 |
| College of Nursing | 4 |
| School of Public Health | 4 |
| College of Medicine | 4 |
| College of Engineering | 4 |
| College of Kinesiology | 3 |
| College of Arts and Science | 3 |
| Western College of Veterinary Medicine | 3 |
| Edwards School of Business | 3 |
| College of Dentistry | 3 |
| College of Law | 3 |
| School of Physical Therapy | 3 |
| College of Agriculture and Bioresources | 2 |
| University-wide Programs | 2 |
| Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy | 2 |
| College of Education | 2 |
| School of Environment and Sustainability | 2 |
| College of Pharmacy and Nutrition | 2 |
Of the principal teaching colleges on campus, the worst one according to The Report is Nursing with a median quintile of 4 and the worst average. The median program on campus is Edwards with a median quintile of 3. The best is Pharmacy and Nutrition with a median quintile of 2 and the best average. If the reader believes that the ranking in Table 1 is based on an appropriate evaluation of appropriate information, then I have some really good land in Florida you will want to buy.
6. Meewasin Valley Community College
There is a straightforward resolution available for TransformUS. This year’s provincial Throne Speech included a pledge to develop a third university in Saskatchewan. The new university will be built from the structure that makes up SIAST. Moving in that direction, SIAST has been renamed Saskatchewan Polytechnic. Suppose that Central Administration accepts the conclusions of The Report and decides that there is no place for nursing education at the UofS. In that event, it would seem reasonable to transfer The College of Nursing to Saskatchewan Polytechnic. Given the significance of Nurses and Nursing provincially, the College’s budget would have to be transferred also. Similar transfers could be made for other colleges which are upset with their ranking or fear that they may be gutted by the arbitrary elimination of important programs.
At the conclusion of TransformUS, with the UofS no longer responding to the urgent social needs of the province, having eliminated its elite “boutique” programs, having transferred away or gutted many of its colleges, it would be appropriate to rename the UofS too. Meewasin Valley Community College would seem to be appropriate.
VOX is a forum for the expression of opinions of members of the USFA on topics of general interest to the membership. Submissions to be considered for publication should be sent to the USFA office to the attention of the VOX Editorial Board or they may be sent by email to usfa@usaskfaculty.ca, or to any member of the Editorial Board.
VOX is sponsored by the University of Saskatchewan Faculty Association and is published by an independent Editorial Board, whose members are:
George Khachatourians
Brian Pratt
Howard Woodhouse
VOX may appear up to eight times a year, depending on the volume of submissions. All articles remain the property of the authors, and permission to reprint them should be obtained directly from them. All opinions ex-pressed in VOX are those of the authors, and do not necessarily represent the position of the USFA or the Editorial Board.
Following is a link to an issue of Collectively Speaking that discusses the projected $44.5 million structural deficit in relation to TransformUS. A hard copy of this issue is on its way to you.
http://usaskfaculty.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/13-12-20-speaking-of-transformus-final.pdf
The USFA will continue to work on a more complete understanding of the financial status of the University and we will do our best to keep you informed.
The Executive and Staff of the University of Saskatchewan Faculty Association wish you a happy holiday and prosperous New Year.
Our office will be closed on Tuesday, December 24th reopening on Thursday, January 2nd, 2014. In the event of an urgent matter, please feel free to contact Jim Cheesman (jim.cheesman@usask.ca).
On December 9, the TransformUS Task Force reports were released, but the process is not yet complete. Between now and February there will be consultation and opportunities to provide feedback. From February to April the President’s Committee on Integrated Planning (PCIP) will review the feedback and develop an implementation plan, which will be shared in late April.
As this period of consultation and feedback gets underway, the USFA Executive wants to provide information that is important to keep in mind as the conclusion to the TransformUS process plays out. (Read more.)
When the University of Saskatchewan was created in 1907 it was called the People’s University. It was created not merely to educate students in attendance but to extend knowledge to the province as a whole, and to act as a tool in the advancement of society. In 1931, then Premier Anderson reiterated this sentiment when he opened the School for the Deaf (Williams Building) on campus land by emphasizing that the University is the property of the people of Saskatchewan and that it will always be open to the public for the purposes of education. These sentiments are as relevant today as they were 100 years ago.
Judging by the type and number of programs that were ranked in the lowest three quintiles of the recent TransformUS report there is a danger of becoming an “Elite University” that does not meet the needs of the people of Saskatchewan. Realize that TransformUS looked primarily at budget efficiencies and not necessarily the importance of programs to the people of this province.
Will the University of Saskatchewan really become a place that does not offer a comprehensive range of academic programs? The University of Saskatchewan is still the People’s University and the faculty, university community, and people of the province should collectively decide its mission.
University Council is being asked to approve in principle the undertaking of a process for program prioritization at its January 24th meeting, but what exactly is Council being asked to approve?
We know that the prioritization process will be an exercise about choosing what programs and services get funded based on “contributions to our overall success.” We don’t know the priorities nor do we have a definition of “success.” On top of that, the process includes these important parameters being decided upon by steering committees whose membership will be decided upon by the President.
Consultation, transparency and accountability lie at the core of any good process. Yet, it already feels as if Senior Administration would have us believe that academic programming decisions should be made by them and then communicated to faculty for implementation. TransformUS, the planning process du jour, will most certainly create confusion and cynicism on campus in all sectors, but its success will ultimately be defined by its process.
Council has the statutory authority for academic programs and will be asked to approve recommendations affecting academic programs that come out of the yet to be articulated prioritization process, so Council must be central in leading a process that will presumably change the landscape of post-secondary education at the U of S and across Saskatchewan?
TransformUS cannot be a top-down plan.
Get involved. Get to Council on Thursday to hear the discussion, ask questions and state your position.
USFA has heard from faculty members who have found (to their surprise) that they have been designated by the Employer as “non-active researchers” – something you may wish to explore among colleagues within your academic unit.
Where did this designation come from? Certainly not from any negotiation or collegial process.
Its origin seems to lie in TransformUS, the cost-cutting exercise of several years ago initiated with fanfare and now operating behind the scenes. Two legacies of that era – Responsibility Centre management (RCM) and the Transparent Activity-Based Budget System (TABBS) – were established to find productivity metrics to assist in the ongoing resource allocation exercise, and this seems to be where the metric originated.
It appears that in some cases, “research-active” was unilaterally and without consultation defined as “faculty holding tri-council grants”. Besides being excluded if you have grants from other sources, you may also be excluded if your research funding comes from another unit or institution, if you are involved in interdisciplinary research, or if you are not named as PI on a grant.
Perhaps it was an administrative efficiency, but faculty should be aware this arbitrary designation should not affect terms and conditions of employment. Research activity varies widely across the campus, but for “faculty evaluated under this category, research, scholarly and/or artistic work is creative, intellectual work which is in the public realm and which has been subjected to external peer review. This includes, in the case of artistic work, exhibitions and performances.”
A forthcoming e-Letter will suggest ways of dealing with this appropriately.
You can let us know your concerns simply by responding to this e-Letter.
Going into negotiations we have to consider that the largest source of revenue for the university is the operating grant from the Government of Saskatchewan. With this year’s provincial deficit now projected to be $1.2B and growing, and where “everything is on the table,” what will this mean for our university? Will the U of S be able to buck the trend of acquiescing to transformation solely as a panicked reaction to dire financial threats? Is this shaping up to be a smoke-and-mirrors “TransformUS” scenario, round two, only this time more transparently driven by a government agenda?
The Crown sector, publicly-funded institutions and the public service are being asked to pony up through clawbacks of 4–5%, cutbacks, wage freezes and voluntarily opening closed collective agreements. Not yet known are the implications for universities in this province, but we have already witnessed the impact of the Ministry of Advanced Education’s proposed “transformational change” on our university.
We have seen $20 million withheld from the university’s grant in 2015–16, a 0% increase in the 2016–17 base operating grant from Advanced Education and a subsequent clawback of $20 million.
Messaging from university administration is already sobering. The Operations Forecast for 2017–18, which provides information requested by the Ministry of Advanced Education to support the university’s funding request, notably includes a statement on the impact of 0% growth in the base provincial operating grant.
The university forecast indicates that a 0% increase now would amount to a funding reduction of $19.1 million by 2019–20, equivalent to:
Such dire scenarios in the operations forecast are troubling. While the university cautions that it does not intend to implement such drastic cuts, there is no question that this forecast signals the potential of a significant impact on our programs and units. The threat posed to the autonomy and independence of the university as a result of cutbacks in concert with funding targeted to specific initiatives is not the only concern: no less troubling is the potential impact these cuts will have on the lives of all the people who make up our university community.
We invite you to reply to this email and share with our team your experiences or reflections on this issue as we prepare for negotiations.
With pleasure, we announce the 2016 recipients of the Peter T. Millard Award, the USFA Academic Freedom Award and the Peter C. Dooley Legacy Award.
The 2016 Peter Millard Award goes to Chris Adams from the Library.
Chris has patiently and painstakingly served USFA members for a number of years. As an Executive Committee member and a Grievance Officer for the USFA, as well as a member of the CAUT Librarians and Archivists Committee, he has worked steadfastly and without flamboyance in support of the USFA, USFA members and his fellow librarians.
The 2016 Academic Freedom Award goes to Penni Stewart, Associate Professor of Sociology, York University.
Penni has made numerous and important contributions to academic freedom in Canada. A gifted, unselfish and courageous colleague, she has patiently and bravely unpacked difficult situations that bring the desire for equity into conflict with principles and practices of academic freedom, including exposure of and resistance to the misuse of respectful workplace policies to silence criticism of University and college administrations. Penni has made national contributions to academic freedom as President and member of the CAUT Executive protecting the rights of unfairly endangered colleagues and educating university presidents and provosts in the basics of academic freedom. She has exercised prudent and informed counsel, keeping interests of individual faculty and their associations’ paramount and developed defences of core academic rights that send a powerful message across Canada and across borders.
The 2016 Peter C. Dooley Legacy Award goes to Howard Woodhouse and Jay Kalra, both from the University of Saskatchewan. Their examples as champions of collegial governance and collegial decision-making at the U of S, while different, are equally important.
Howard is committed to the University as a place of learning where major decisions are made by faculty free from the influence of external forces. Through various peer-reviewed and popular publications, he has taken an active role in the mobilization of knowledge about university governance and he has used it in conjunction with members of the university community to draw attention to the problematic aspects of the TransformUS initiative where collegial governance was undermined.
Jay has had a leadership role in collegial governance as Chair of University Council while the collegium navigated very rough waters seeking to restore our institution to internal health, invigorating independence and public esteem. His unequivocal commitment to collegial rights and responsibilities as the ground on which stability could be achieved and a new institutional course set, along with his unapologetic and recurrent reminders at Council meetings of the values and process that govern Council’s activities and that academic decisions belong in academic hands, carried the university community during the acutely stressful time surrounding TransformUS, the ensuing leadership crisis and an interim presidency.
These awards will be presented at a celebration dinner on Thursday, April 7.
In addition to the celebration dinner on April 7, the USFA is hosting an academic freedom event from 4:00 to 5:45 in the Neatby-Timlin Theater (241 Arts). Event details can be found on the USFA website. Please plan to attend.