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 100  Chapter 11 Dean of Graduate Studies and Research, Carleton University, 1973–1979  Don McEown and H. Blair Neatby When Gilles Paquet attended his first meeting as dean in September 1973, it was announced that the doctoral programs in chemistry and economics had received qualified assessments as part of the sector assessments undertaken at the provincial level by the Advisory Committee on Academic Planning (ACAP). It was the first time that a university system decision had a negative impact upon the university. While there is no record in the Senate minutes for that meeting of a reaction to the news by the new dean, there is in later minutes a copy of a document entitled “Speculative Notes about ACAP and Planning: For Internal Discussion Only,” dated fall 1973. Dean Paquet began these notes with the following statement: “Much of what follows is based on some assumptions about the nature of ACAP for it is less important to try to cope with its activities of yesterday than to be prepared to make the highest and best use of its activities of tomorrow.”1 This statement shows his approach to the problems that he was asked to solve. Paquet wanted his colleagues to expend their energies in preparing for the future and not to waste their time trying to find answers to the problems of the past. In a period of constant change and adjustment, his approach was the most practical. He would often find it difficult to convince others to accept that approach. In 1973, the new dean of Graduate Studies at Carleton was faced with two major and very complex problems. The first was to fit Carleton into the provincial university system so that it could maximize its talents and opportunities. The second was to sustain growth, both in quality and in quantity, of graduate studies and research in a time of retrenchment and despair. DEAN OF GRADUATE STUDIES AND RESEARCH  101  In the decade prior to his appointment, university growth in Ontario was explosive. From a few universities of modest size, Ontario quickly evolved to a university system of fourteen provincially assisted institutions varying from small to large and from new to old. In that decade, the environment in which these universities operated also dramatically changed from self-governing institutions that received annual government grants to provide a university education to a small set of the population, to a government-funded system of self-governing institutions of mass education. One of the significant engines of this growth would be the expansion of graduate studies because more students required more professors. Since the rest of the world was experiencing the same growth, the new professors could not be provided by the universities of the United States and Europe. Ontario would have to train many of the faculty that it would need. It was around the management of graduate expansion that a provincial system for the universities began to evolve in the province and in which each university’s dean of Graduate Studies became a critical player. At the beginning of the period, the existing universities and the Ontario government came to an agreement that, if the government funded the expansion of the universities so that every qualified student would have a place while maintaining the autonomy of each institution, the universities would undertake the necessary growth to handle the demand. This agreement did not provide the necessary mechanism for the planning and coordination of such growth. It soon became apparent that, to make the program work, some coordination among the universities particularly at the graduate level was necessary, so a commission known as the Spinks Commission was appointed to study the issue. Its recommendation to create a University of Ontario was rejected by the government and the universities, but its analysis of the various forces at play drove the universities and the province to give greater definition to a structure that had been evolving as a product of the general growth. It had three parts. The first was the Council of Ontario Universities (COU), whose members were the universities in the province and represented by the president of each institution and a faculty member elected by each institution’s Senate. The second was the Ontario Council on University Affairs, whose members included the public at large, government officials, and academics appointed by the government and serving as a buffer body between the universities and the government. The third was the Ministry of...

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