Students at the Department of Science Communication received confirmation last week from Pro-Vice Chancellor (Sciences) Richard Barker of changes that will be made to the Department. The Department is still set to be disestablished, with just a distance-only Postgraduate Certificate and Diploma remaining after current Masters students complete their studies in 2024.
In July, Critic Te Ārohi reported on the “proposed changes” that were pre-emptively sent to students in the Department from its head, Jesse Berring, who told Critic that what he’d “hoped to do was be as transparent as I possibly could about what was happening and how it would affect individual students and their options going forward.” He also wasn’t aware that the communication was pre-emptive.
Lily, one of the Masters students in the Department, said that when they first received the email from Jesse, her first reaction was “disbelief” at not only being told that the course she flew halfway across the world for was being dismantled, but that they weren’t even supposed to know for another month. After taking on a self-described “investigative role where I have been trying to put some of these puzzle pieces together and look back at the history and all these different decisions,” Lily said that she realised “this really was a long time coming… unfortunately upon learning more, it didn’t seem that surprising after all.”
“Which then made me feel a lot more kind of bamboozled. Like, oh my God, I was sold this promise of this great program and great opportunities and everything’s going so well. But that really wasn’t the case.” So while Lily and her peers acknowledged that the bigger changes were out of their control, they couldn’t help but feel they got “the short end of the stick” in terms of their own education, which they were determined to advocate for. But without any initial clear student process for feedback, it felt like “building the plane as [we] fly it”. The biggest thing they wanted was for “somebody to listen to us and to take us seriously.”
Jesse’s advice at the time to the Masters students who would be most affected by any changes was for them to be “as selfish as possible in terms of what is in [their] best interests for your research.” For instance, with the film programme being cut the question of a documentary thesis was up for debate. Would the equipment and support still be available?
Since the proposed changes were announced, Masters students have pushed strongly for their voices to be heard on the matter through news articles, one-on-one meetings with the PVC, a letter of demands from the cohort and 28 individual written submissions. The cohort’s letter to the PVC said that their main concern was that the proposed changes to the Department would mean they “will not receive the quality of education that we have been promised by the University.” Among their requests were adequate technical support, staffing supervision, thesis funding, and resources to be able to complete their Masters in 2024.
Richard told students that these submissions were “carefully considered by an advisory panel who, ultimately, recommended the Department be disestablished” with programme and staffing changes to take effect from 2024. The requests for existing resources to be kept for the duration of Masters students studies were approved, while fixed-term contracts for additional supervisory staff still need to be worked out. Still, that’s better than the original announcement of two out of five staff being retained.
Critic Te Ārohi spoke to Jesse about the changes the department will be seeing, who said, “My role is to be a cheerleader for the programme going forward, acknowledging obviously the stress and difficulties that the current students have experienced. But given the constraints that we’ve been operating in, I’m really trying to highlight what remains on the table.” He called it “making lemonade out of lemons.” We’re not really sure what else you do with lemons, but maybe a science communicator could tell us. Oh, wait.
What Jesse wanted to make clear was that “although change is unsettling, it’s also unavoidable in some circumstances.” He acknowledged that the film programme (which has been the “most expensive aspect to run”) on the chopping block has been a “big draw historically”, the essence of the Department will remain in the new programme in providing “a basic skillset in science communication practice.” And although it's distance-only, that doesn’t mean on-campus students enrolling in the course wouldn’t be able to complete it from Dunedin.
From the students’ end, Lily said that now that they’re on the other side of the consultation process, she’s glad she and her peers were so vocal about their studies: “The moral of the story is: if you’re a student in a department affected by the management of change process and you feel like your faculty are not appropriately representing your interests, you need to kick up a fuss otherwise you’ll miss the opportunity to make your needs heard. They’ll try to make decisions made behind closed doors but at the end of the day no one can advocate for your interests besides you.”