ULFA strike post-mortem points to research impacts
By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on March 23, 2022.
LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com Will the strike by the University of Lethbridge Faculty Association have a long-term impact on the reputation of the school?ULFA president Dan O’Donnell said the strike/lockout will have an impact on research funding.
O’Donnell said Monday night while it could have been tactically wise for the faculty to strike against research activities, the union chose not to go down that direction because it wasn’t in the best interests of the university.
However, he said the lockout by the U of L’s Board of Governors affected research as well as teaching and the impact will be felt for years.
“The thing that the public won’t see and if you’re not in the business you can’t see is the damage that this has done to the university in terms of research, in terms of research grants, has been astounding and set us back a decade.
“The University of Lethbridge is a comprehensive academic research university. That means it’s in the same class provincially as the U of C and U of A but we’re obviously much smaller. We have spent 50 years building a research record and they cut us off from research funders,” he said.
In some cases, if deadlines are missed for research funding applications, applications can’t be resubmitted for a year and in some cases the chance may be lost to renew a research chair.
“We’re going to be seeing that for years now in lower student support because they locked us out of research. Even though it would have tactically, in fact some of our members said let’s strike against everything, we said it’s not in our interest to destroy the university or its long-term interests so we weren’t going to strike against research – not because that’s our hobbies but because that’s where student support comes from.
“And the university decided to strike against research and that’s going to affect our ratings, our rankings. It’s going to affect our ability to get money for students and the teacher, it’s going to affect our ability to do research. Ultimately it harms the province because important research is not getting done.” Follow @albeebHerald on Twitter 4
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