Physical Plant |= |
Responsibilities of Staff and
Management

As a consequence of our move to the new
single facility and the disappearance of
the multi-site College, new duties and
responsibilities have been assigned to
the department's management and staff.

Effective immediately, Ken McCoy, who was
the Site Manager at McBride, now assumes
the duties and responsibilities of Manag-
er of Security and Building Services. As
such he is responsible for the security of
the Royal Avenue facility and the perform-
ance of the custodial staff and cleaning
forces.

Pat Thomasson, who was the Site Manager
at Winslow, becomes the Manager of Logis-
tical Services and is responsible for all
aspects of the telephone system, mail
system and any courier requirements. She
is also responsible for facilities book-
ings, internal or external, including food
service catering.

jest Graydon, Director of Physical Plant
and Site Services, will retain active re-
sponsibility for maintenance of buildings,
equipment, grounds, parking and food ser-
vice liason.

 

Humanistic Education Under Attack

(from the Vancouver Sun,

January 29, 1983) by:

Stephen Duguid, program director for the
humanities in the department of Continu-
ing Education at Simon Fraser University.

In the realm of future-think, a new term
has been coined to characterize our times:
Creative Destruction.

Applied first to disappearing industries
and occupations in central Canada, the
notion is now finding favor with some of
the educational administrators and govern-

 

 

So
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DOUGLAS COLLEGE

ARCHIVE Mad Hatter Page Il

 

ment officials who direct and fund institu-
tions of higher learning. The initial tar-
get is the humanities, that collection of
academic subjects that seem to be having a
difficult time adapting to the age of the
microchip.

Support for the humanities, like support
for the fine arts, is typically weak in
hard economic times, and now the effects

of the business cycle are coupled with a
thorough-going questioning of the value and
usefulness of traditional education in the
humanities in the new era of high technol-
ogy. And, more devastating, the recession
is underlining increasing indifference to-
ward the nonparticipation in traditional
humanistic education and pursuits that have
been developing in Western education for
the past half century.

In British Columbia, the questioning starts
at the top, with both the minister of edu-
cation and the minister responsible for un-
iversities championing the cause of career
and technical education. In their view,
all educational tevels should be geared
mainly to production of technicians, engin-
eers, scientists, and entrepreneurs able to
compete in developing world markets. The
recession looks to be an opportune time to
clear away the unproductive but expensive
apparatus of humanistic education and make
way for the creation of the modernized vo-
cational and professional institutions per-
ceived as necessary for the future.

Taking their cue, students are demanding
more vocational and professional education.
As job prospects for those with liberal
arts degrees narrow, so enrolment in human-
ities courses tends to decline. Even at
Simon Fraser University, where enrolment is
still growing, modest gains in the humani-
ties happen against a backdrop of strong
growth in computing science and business
administration.

Teachers of the humanities, discouraged by
the choices of their students, colleagues,
and governments, may become apathetic, re-
actionary, or fatalistic. Or they may play .
about with the questionable innovations to

 

 

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