News: Winter Break Period
The FSA has met with BCIT and we can now confirm the 2018/2019 Winter Break period. The Collective Agreement ensures a 5-day break for non-teaching departments. Unfortunately, BCIT has not left enough time between the end of marks review date and the resumption of classes in the New Year for teaching departments to have more than a three (3) day break (not including stats). The FSA has been working on this for over a year and had hoped to be part of the discussion as the term dates are set. This has yet to occur. We will continue to work, on behalf of our members, to ensure the BCIT community has these dates confirmed much sooner in the future and that they be in compliance with our Collective Agreement and the related Arbitral Award.
- 2018 school marks review dates: Wednesday, December 19th & Thursday, December 20th
- 2019 resumption of classes: Wednesday, January 2nd
Winter Break 2018/2019
- Wednesday, December 19, 2018
- Thursday, December 20, 2018
- Friday, December 21, 2018
- Thursday, December 27, 2018
- Friday, December 28, 2018
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With the late notice of what now is the Christmas break days starting on December 19th for non-teaching staff, is it still possible to offer the four day ISW over the Christmas break from December 17-20 without impinging on the time off of faculty and staff?
Typically the LTC will run ISW’s after exams are over in December and before most everyone takes time off for Christmas. Having the ISW’s during this time frame is to encourage faculty and instructors to take the four day, daytime class if they have not been able to secure a seat in one of our classes in the fall PTS ISW that run from Sept – November or because we have not been able to fill the class due to low enrollment.
The LTC offers approximately 9 – 15 full-time, day time classes throughout the year. During spring break, perhaps 2-4, in the summer, perhaps 4-8, and typically over the Christmas break, 2 or 3 depending on the volume of requests. These are workload items.
There are 10 PTS ISW’s scheduled on evenings and weekends throughout the year. These are shared and optional amongst the IDC’s (Instructional Development Consultants). Typically each IDC will take 1 or maybe 2, depending on the rotational cycle a year.
With the late notice of what now is the Christmas break days, is it still possible to offer the four day ISW over the Christmas break from December 17-20 without impinging on the time off of faculty and staff with teaching coming from the non-teaching faculty?
With the last day of exams being December 14th and the first day of winter break being December 19th, we have only two days, December 17 and 18th to be able to offer a four day course.
Its becoming more and more difficult to enroll instructors in PTS evening/weekend face to face and or blended ISW’s. The week of December 17-20 was our limited opportunity to offer the daytime ISW.
With this late information coming to us, it appears the LTC cannot offer any ISW’s. Am I correct in this assumption? if this is the case, this late decision will impact the department’s ability to support faculty and instructors across BCIT.
thank you
Reply →Cathy Griffin
Faculty Development Co-ordinator/IDC
LTC