Records of the meeting at Clinic One on Post graduate studies (public health group), School of Health Sciences
The following members were present: Prof Ray Kirk, Prof Ann Richardson, Prof Pauline Barnett, Sonja Macfarlane, Dale Sheehan, Kate Reid, Jeff Gage, and myself. I opened the meeting and introduced the topic of HLTH 407 (the Bioethics paper) and narrated my meeting with Philip recently.
Philip and I met recently and discussed the fate of HLTH 407. A couple of students appealed to Philip about rumours that HLTH 407 will not be offered and they were unhappy about the possiblity that it were not going to be offered. Hence, Pauline and I stressed that there was a need for going ahead with the course. I also stated that Philip agreed that this was an important course and needed to be offered in the second semester. Philip also suggested that Sonja to be the coordinator of the coruse from 2015 and Kate be the coordinator of the course for this year (2014) and asked me to set up a meeting between the three of us. He suggested that HLTH 407 be taught using a team teaching approach.
Ray cautioned against such an approach as it would result in "unethically" some lecturers missing on their contribution credits in terms of EFTs. The course was also discussd in details in our meeting. We, in the group also discussed the eligibility of a coordinator who can teach this course successfully, and discussed possible candidates. It was decided in our group meeting that I shall send the following email to Philip explaining the content of our discussions. The draft of the email is presented below (in the excerpt)
<--- Letter Begins --->
Dear Philip,
Greetings.
As you know, a group of eight of us (cc-ed here) met today with an aim to discuss strategies and options for the public health at our school. We discussed at length about the offering of HLTH 407 next semester. I briefed the attendees about our (your and mine) meeting, and our discussions about coordination of HLTH 407.
In the group meeting, we discussed the urgency and requirement of HLTH 407, checked the number of students already enrolled (8 in all, and roughly 6 in the third term and 7 in the second term) at some length and unanimously agreed that teaching, and co-ordinating a course of bioethics at a tertiary postgraduate level requires highly specialised knowledge (tacit and otherwise) and expertise that none of us in the meeting possessed, and therefore, we felt, that in the interest of providing a quality course, should refrain from undertaking this role.
Having said that, we also actively considered the alternatives and we think that these are the preferable criteria of a person who can be considered for the position of a course coordinator for HLTH 407:
1. An academic who has a PhD (preferably) or a Master Degree in Bioethics
2. At least several years of research/practice experience and has good professional standing.
3. Understands the requirements of tertiary teaching at Canterbury well enough.
The group considered/suggest the following persons for the role of course coordinators for HLTH 407
1. Lauretta Muir, and she had developed this course and conducted it successfully for two years, she has a PhD in Bioethics, and unique expertise in the field.
2. Carolyn Mason from Philosophy (College of Arts) be asked to coordinate the course (whom we have already considered as contributing to the course)
3. Barbara Nicholas PhD (more information here, http://nz.linkedin.com/pub/barbara-nicholas/17/704/a15)
4. Mary Leigh Moore at the University of Otago can be asked to coordinate, see her profile,
http://www.otago.ac.nz/christchurch/services/simulationcentre/staff/otago016440.html
However, in the group we also discussed that some of us will continue to contribute to the lectures in the course HLTH 407 (HLTH 433, HLTH 434) at various points, as we have done in the past. However, Ray cautioned against having too many lecturers in the course as that means some lecturers can not claim sufficient EFTs.
< --- End -->
Other than that, in our meeting, we also discussed the possibility and advantage of Kate offering a course on lymphoedema management. While the details were not discussed, I (Arin) informed the group that Philip told me in my conversations that he was supportive of this effort.
While we did not discuss in the meeting the next date of our meeting, may I suggest that we meet every second Thursday of the month, that'd make our next meeting on 10th June 12 - 1 Clinic One.