Executive interview series part II: Brendon Goodmurphy

The series resumes, at last, with a conversation with our AMS VP Academic.

Brendon and I sat down today to discuss U-boulevard, the new Acadmic quality committee, “consultation,” daycare, and the AMS-university relationship.

Some randomly summarized items are:

• AMS Planning & Developement committtee is coming up with a concrete consultation plan to accompany the U-boulevard policy so that the university knows what students expect in terms of “meaningful consulttion”.
• Personal relationships with UBC officials often prove more effective htan official venues like boards and committees.
• the newly-hired assistant VP academic (Blake frederick) is going to revive the AMS teacher evaluation publication, Yardstick.
• AMS had commited 1 million dollars over 10 years to build chilcare – the construction awaits commitment from the BC government and additiional commitment from UBC.

To me, the theme that came out was in this conversation communication. Brendon has been writing alot of letters, and sitting on alot of committees. More importantly though, he’s realized that communicating properly, openly, and appropriately with both students and UBC officials is what’s going to get things done in this highly sensetive portfolio.