Background Information
AU Near-Virtual Fiasco
AU continues to defy the government’s directives for AU to grow it's presence in Athabasca. In the last week of June 2022, most AU staff reporting to the Athabasca campus received letters stating their positions are becoming permanently virtual (work from home).
The “virtual” only letter, appeal process chart, appeal form, FAQs, and the principles and criteria for assessing AU staff roles are included below.
All roles and functions at AU are remote by default or “virtual-first”, and rarely may be place-based. Sadly, the near-virtual fiasco is leading to the ruin of AU.
The “Near-Virtual Location Assessment Appeal Form” and “FAQs from the Near Virtual Information Session for Athabasca on Tuesday, June 14, 2022” shed considerably more light on how the AU executive is manoeuvering for almost all AU staff to become virtual. Click on the buttons below to open and/or download these documents.
In everything associated with AU’s near-virtual strategy, the devil is in the details.
It has taken more than six months months to get a letter to employees to tell them what was already determined in December or before. Then staff get only 10 days to consider their fate and decide on an appeal, yet AU’s executive have 20 days to decide the appeal.
Note the only election Athabasca AU staff members are allowed is to be 100% place-based, and no hybrid election is possible. Edmonton-based staff weren’t even offered an election to be place-based in Athabasca, yet that was promised when the Edmonton leases were terminated.
We understand that AU executives are making it extremely difficult for any staff members that appeal location assessments or elect to be place-based. In effect, the AU executive is burning down the house, so there’s nowhere to come back to, and setting the terms/stage in a way to create division among staff and “prove” everyone wants to be virtual. Manipulative and ruinous!
County population and AU
From 2016 to 2021, Athabasca County’s population declined 11.6%, the greatest drop of any municipality in Alberta.
The Town of Athabasca’s population declined 6.9% in the same period.
The population declines are closely related to the exodus of AU staff and their families from the Athabasca region.
See https://dailyhive.com/calgary/census-alberta-results-population
School enrolments and AU
Similar to the regional population declines, enrolment declines in schools in Athabasca County are also very closely related to the exodus of AU staff and their families.
AU student admissions and registrations
Student admissions and course registrations declined steeply in the year ended March 31, 2022, compared to the previous year.
Details on staff complements were last issued publicly in AU’s 2017-18 Annual Report.
The above graphs were prepared by Athabasca University Faculty Association (AUFA) in May 2021. Since then, we understand that two more AU executives, so at least five excluded managers, live and work out-of-province. As well, staff are now recruited from and can work anywhere in Canada, so the number of staff living and working in the Athabasca region continues to decline.
Commissioned by the Alberta government and Athabasca University’s Board of Governors, this report looked at the university’s role in the town of Athabasca and noted its importance to the region’s economy. It called for the university to:
“…better address northern educational needs, capitalize on underdeveloped opportunities, and position AU as a leading presence in teaching and research related to the provincial North. As an outcome of this activity, AU should be able to maintain if not expand the size of its operation in the Town of Athabasca and in northern Alberta generally.”
– Ken Coates, PhD
The full “Independent Third-Party Review of Athabasca University” report is available here.
