This past year I have been on the executive in the role of Director representing the Academic Faculty constituency. During this time I led unprecedented consultation with Departments, an open collaborative survey, round table discussions with Department chairs on FEC, personal development in director training, and preparation for our contract negotiations.
Hello to all my colleagues and friends, many of you whom I have met this past year. Like many of you I am frantically preparing online teaching content while I try to supervise graduate students over the phone and keep laboratory activities alive in these unusual times. I am honoured to submit my self nomination for the position as Faculty Constituency representative. I know you are all so busy but I would be grateful if you could read a quick few words I have written to support my nomination to be renewed in this position. Thanks you all to those who take time to vote, contribute or just to be concerned about our union at this important time.
This past year I have been on the executive in the role of Director representing the Academic Faculty constituency. During this time I personally reached out to all of the Departments and was able to meet close to half of the Departments in person. Thank you to so many of you who took time to provide feedback. It was a great opportunity to hear from you and to collect information about the concerns of our faculty members. From Augustana campus, to South Campus and between, it is clear our members share many of the same concerns and we are pushing these priorities with the University.
As an academic I am a professor in Mechanical Engineering, and have been since 2000. My research is in energy and thermal sciences and my research funding is currently in Wind Power (FES Wind Theme lead), HVAC (working on F&O research and the effect of Covid19 in ventilation systems) and combustion and atomization. I teach Mechanical Engineering Measurements, Fluid Mechanics, Thermodynamics, Heat Transfer and Turbulence. From 2012-2017 I was the Chair of Mechanical Engineering. I have also worked in politics and as a TV host for CBC on The Nature of Things. I have served on numerous boards at the university and outside the university. I am also active as an engineer and run small businesses with technology development and mentoring of recent grads.
I also organized a team to gather input and was lucky enough to have Karen Goodman direct the draughting of a survey with the help of other faculty members, and collect important information about input for our bargaining priorities. This information was critical to providing our aggressive stance on the contract bargaining which we hope to begin soon.
Together with President Kane, I organized discussions with Department Chairs on priorities for FEC improvements. This is an extremely sensitive topic and will be a focus of my future activity. We need to hear more from our members on how FEC can be beneficial to them.
Personally I completed university training (The Directors Education Program at UofT) to improve my skills and knowledge in my director duties for the AASUA. I found this course to be extremely useful, especially relating to our duties and liabilities as board members.
You can find my CV here https://tinyurl.com/ybnz76vt
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