Meeting Minutes - President’s Advisory Committee on Major Awards (PACMA)
Date: November 5, 2013 Room #210, Board & Senate, Old Administrative Building
Attendees:
Akram Alfantazi, Brenda Carrier, Darren Dahl, Mary Ensom, Judy Hall, Darrin Lehman (Chair),
Cindy Prescott, Ed Putnins, Mike Richards
Note: We were unable to utilize the teleconference option due to technical issues with the Board & Senate
dial-in-pod, so Aslam Anis was unable to join the meeting.
Regrets: Doug Harris, David Kitts, Gail Murphy, Linda Siegel
It was a very good meeting--upbeat and helpful.
Preliminary Comments:
Huge thanks to Mel Comisarow for leading PACMA’s first few years (his Operator’s Manual is a terrific
resource).
Darrin Lehman is willing to meet with anyone to discuss how we might do a better job nominating our
colleagues for research prizes, awards, fellow status, etc. For example how might PACMA better support the
Awards Committees in the Faculties?
We are trying to develop a “culture” at UBC of nominating colleagues for research prizes, awards, fellow
status, etc. PACMA meetings will be for: (1) evaluating how we are doing, (2) sharing wise practices, and (3)
discussing barriers in order to figure out how we can do better.
QUESTION: Are there departments, divisions, institutes, or schools in your Faculty that still do not have
Awards Committees, and if so why not? What support do they need? What are their bottlenecks?
QUESTION: For departments, divisions, institutes, or schools that have not embraced Mel Comisarow’s
Operator’s Manual, how might we encourage them to embrace it?
Units need to have a system in place – not just laissez-faire, “dependent on the kindness of strangers,” or
the entrepreneurial spirit of a particular faculty member. And the system needs to be sustainable over time.
If done by one person in a unit, it is a heavy administrative duty
If done by committee (e.g., psychology), the burden is shared and it’s not so bad
Awards Chairs should not have to write all of the nominations (spread the work load)
Darrin Lehman opened the meeting with introductions, which followed with input from each member on
how their Faculty and individual units handle research award nominations.
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The Chair raised the following framing questions:
What can PACMA do to help stimulate nomination activity?
What are your specific challenges or bottlenecks?
Applied Science:
 They have a Faculty-wide committee as well as department/school committees
 There is significant variability across unit committees -- some are highly organized & active, others
are more ad-hoc & passive
 They raised the notion of incentives (e.g., teaching release, honoraria) in order to create greater
activity
 There is a general sense that awareness of the need for nominations has increased as well as
nomination activity
Arts:
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There is a need for support with nominations. Currently there are no mechanisms in place at the
Faculty level. There is no Faculty-wide committee -- it’s left to departments/institutes/schools, and
many of them do not have an awards committee.
No staff is in place to help. Arts’ grant facilitator is only part-time, and hence has no time to assist
with such activities. Arts needs help/staff -- even funding 1 person (on a trial basis) to do some of
the processing, etc. could make a difference
Once it is in place perhaps the Dean could attend the Faculty-wide Awards Committee?
There is no annual celebratory event for award/prize/fellow recipients and nominators
Dentistry:
 Most PACMA-related work is done off the side of the AD’s desk (with help from a highly competent
staffperson)
 In general there is not much enthusiasm for nominations for external research prizes
Forestry:
 Most PACMA-related work is done off the side of the AD’s desk
 The Faculty is heterogeneous so the AD must stay on top of opportunities across many societies
(e.g., engineering, sociology)
 Excellent use of former graduate students as nomination champions for their previous research
supervisor (the UBC faculty member)
 They feel that they could do more with major external awards/prizes (e.g., Order of Canada, RSC)
Pharmaceutical Sciences:
 An effective process is in place with a key administrative person in the Dean’s Office who actively
organizes the nominations. Pharm Sci is a good model with an e-list of discipline specific awards
(ordered chronologically) that goes out to all faculty members three months prior to the nomination
deadline with a call for nominations (including self-nominations)
 Others are nominated for awards/prizes/fellow status by colleagues at other universities
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Sauder:
 They have a Faculty-wide committee, a staffperson is in place to help with nominations, and their
current process seems to be effective
 They hold an annual Recognition party
VPRI Office/Faculty Awards Coordinator:
 The VPRI Office is committed to communicating major award deadlines as far in advance as possible
to support Faculty processes and to give nominators as much lead time for their efforts
Ideas to Pursue
(a) Given important differences between the 5 large (Applied Science, Arts, Education, Medicine, Science)
and 6 small (Dentistry, Forestry, Land & Food Systems, Law, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Sauder) Faculties, we
will analyze how things could work best in each of the two categories of Faculties.
(b) Regarding Forestry’s mention above, former UBC graduate students & postdocs now on faculty
elsewhere can be excellent nomination champions for UBC faculty (clearly this needs to be vetted by
experienced people)
(c) Each Faculty will consider having an annual celebratory event (which doesn’t have to be expensive) that
honors awardees and nominators, and raises the profile of the extremely important nomination effort (at
this event the awardees will hear that it took a great deal of time and effort to successfully nominate them
for their award/prize/fellow status, etc. and that now it is their responsibility to nominate others in the
future – see point (f) below
(d) We need to recognize that as the culture changes, more faculty (especially junior faculty) will ask to be
nominated (and will self-nominate)
(e) We will keep trying to get the message across that the role of Dept Heads/award recipients/senior
colleagues is to nominate others for prizes/awards/fellow status, etc.
(f) Might Promotion & Tenure committees be a good source of ideas for nominees?
(g) Should departments/division/institutes/schools get some kind of reward/money/help/acknowledgement
from their Faculty when they succeed in getting awards?
(h) Emeritus Professors are open to being involved in the nomination process, and can be very helpful (1) in
departments/divisions/institutes/schools, (2) across the Faculty, and even (3) across the University. We
should engage them.
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