Under this proposal, tenured and tenure-track faculty at Glendon would be moved to Keele and integrated into cognate departments in LAPS, the Faculty of Science, and other faculties. This will present significant budgetary and other challenges, as it is unclear how departments at Keele will be able to accommodate Glendon faculty and the courses that they have developed at Glendon, particularly content courses delivered in French. Part of York’s rationale for this proposal is to eliminate what they view as inefficient “duplication” of courses between York’s faculties, particularly LAPS and Glendon, without even clearly defining what they consider such duplication. Eliminating this duplication will likely mean that courses that have been developed at Glendon cease to exist, and faculty who move to the Keele campus will have to teach different courses.
York’s proposal also involves integrating French-language courses into Keele programs. It is unclear how this will be accomplished, particularly if departments at Keele are not interested in developing and running French-language offerings. It is also unclear what will happen to Glendon programs that do not have cognate programs at the Keele campus.
It is worth noting that the teaching environment at the Keele campus is quite different from Glendon, because classes are larger. This means a greater administrative and/or grading workload for faculty, in addition to making it more difficult to form meaningful connections to students, both within a particular class, and in between semesters. Faculty who have taught at both Glendon and on the Keele campus note that these differences often translate into a difference in the quality of student work, most likely because smaller classes at Glendon increase student motivation and accountability. Overall, the teaching experience at the Keele campus is likely to be less rewarding and more demanding.
Lastly, integrating Glendon faculty into Keele departments will definitely impact the timing of new tenure-track positions for receiving units.