Know Your Rights: Scheduled Development

2026-27 Intents and Summer Proposals will be due February 1!

It was wonderful to see so many faculty members who joined the CCFA Infosession today. We even had an exempt administrator attend! Contact us if you don’t have the links to our infosessions in your Outlook Calendar. But just in case you missed it, here’s an updated Know Your Rights blog on what we covered.

All continuing, probationary, indefinite-term, and post-retirement Faculty Members, except International Education Project Officers, Senior Analysts, and Program Developers in Professional Studies and Industry Training, are entitled to two months (or the equivalent) free of regular duties for approved scheduled development activities. Part-time Faculty Members are entitled to two months at their contract percentage.

Haven’t decided what yours will be yet?

• Maybe you’d be interested in working with colleagues on projects such as EV Charging, climate action, and sustainability plan, or developing an interdisciplinary course curriculum? Join our conversations on Discord and ask what other members might be interested in working on together. Bring up your ideas during a Department meeting or ask within the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) Communities of Practice. Also, we learned some good news: the college is working on a platform to replace Faculty Connect, and CETL has plans to make collaborating easier in the future.
• Call for collaborators! – Derek Murray & Martha Thomas (Accounting and Finance) on a project related to metacognition and study skills. If anyone would like to collaborate, please email him! The idea is to:
  • Share and discuss how instructors in different disciplines/programs make study skills and strategies visible to students in their courses;
  • Build a shared repository of discipline-specific resources that can be easily shared with colleagues and students; and possibly; and
  • Develop a micro-course or self-paced learning resources that students can use to develop their study skills.
• Are you interested in learning more about Union work? The Federation of Post Secondary Educators Annual General Meeting and other great conferences, such as the Summer Institute of Union Women, are held during the summer during many people’s SD period. And remember, we can always use faculty expertise to assist and consult with bargaining. Let us know if you’re interested and watch for announcements on our Discord server.

Did you know?

• On Faculty Connect, your Intents, Proposals, and Reports are visible by default to ALL Camosun faculty! You must change the setting on the “sharing” tab from “my whole intent/proposal/report” to “nothing” if you don’t want it openly available. To view everyone else’s submissions, simply click on the “connect” button at the top of your Faculty Connect Dashboard page.
• Your proposals can’t be unreasonably denied! While you are entitled to take your SD as an uninterrupted block, some members propose to split their SD up over the year or take it as a percentage of release time. Let us help if your proposal gets turned down. And remember, if you have trouble submitting your proposal through Faculty Connect for any reason, make sure that you email your Chair and Dean before February 1st.
• You can defer or forego your SD, but please don’t include in your proposal that you will be doing your regularly assigned work as your SD! There are some conditions for deferring your SD, so if you’d like help with your proposal, we would be happy to review it with you in advance.

Scheduled Development IS assigned work!

• You can find a detailed breakdown of the new Clause 10 in this Blog Post or review it in the current Collective Agreement online.
• Some kinds of leave reduce your Scheduled Development allotment, and some DO NOT, so be sure to check with us if you aren’t sure of what yours should be.
• Every round of bargaining, our employer attempts to restrict or reduce our access to Scheduled Development! Read this Blog Post to learn more about how we bargained for this important right. Be sure to fill out our bargaining survey when our new organizing coordinator, Janice Niemann, visits your department so you’ll be first to know what changes our employer is trying to make this round.

Professional Development Funding Applications are a separate process!

• If your proposal includes a conference, workshop or educational materials, you may need to apply for PD Funding in addition to submitting your Intent and Proposal. Be sure to check if you are eligible for Long-Term PD Funding, too!
• While only continuing members are entitled to SD, ALL Faculty Members can access Professional Development Funding!