February 13, 2026

From: Langara Faculty Association Board of Directors

To: Members of the Board of Governors, Langara College

To our Governors,

We are writing in response to the email you sent to the Langara community on February 3, announcing your decision to retain our current president in her position.

It won’t surprise you that the members of the Langara faculty are overwhelmingly disappointed with your decision. We are daily observing the on-the-ground impact of lacklustre leadership, the demise of much of what has made Langara special, and the impact on students. We know that new leadership is required to restore confidence, inspire engagement, and turn crisis into an opportunity for renewal. Instead, the board has opted only for “stability.” But merely maintaining the stability of an administration that has fumbled program renewals, mis-forecast a ballooning deficit, failed to drive fresh domestic enrolment, and lost the confidence of the majority of its educators, is not a recipe for success. This is a stable path downhill, towards the loss of Langara.

Your note did little to acknowledge the real stress and difficulty being faced at the institution you oversee. And it causes concern about how well-informed our board is. For example,

• LangaraFest was not the college’s first open house event to recruit domestic students. On-campus recruitment events were common in the past, but were discontinued when the administration shifted its focus to international enrollment rather than domestic.
• Our Musqueam relationship and name has been in place since 2016. In 2024 an additional MOA was signed, signaling an intent for deeper involvement. However, in May 2025, our administration and board suspended three Aboriginal Studies ^[1] We question promoting intentions on paper which have not been borne out with meaningful action.
• The Future Focused strategic framework, made official in June 2025, says nothing about the federal reduction in international student visas, anticipated enrolment/revenue challenges, the need for renewed fiscal responsibility, or a need to increase domestic enrolment, despite being launched 17 months after the federal government’s January 2024 announcement about caps on student visas. To be credible and effective, strategy must demonstrate that it is based on, and responding to, an assessment of external opportunities and threats. This is fundamental to resilient thinking and planning, yet it is absent here.

What is more concerning about your email is that you present a list of initiatives as if to imply they are accomplishments of our president, yet the most notable aspect of this list is its glaring omissions, given the context of this moment. Where is any mention of a response to the rapid loss of one of our primary sources of revenue? Where is mention of maintaining financial sustainability? How can the items listed be held up without mentioning the serious survival issues facing Langara – issues which have been known now for more than half of President Burns’ tenure, and to which we have not seen an adequate or coordinated response? While the addition of 30 spaces to the ECE program is welcome, how can this be championed when at the same time we have lost 580 domestic enrolments per year due to the administration’s 2-year failure to attend to the renewal of the BBA program? Why do we continue to have an interim Provost and VP Academic seven months after the position was vacated? And a non-business interim Dean of the School of Management a full 14 months after our previous Dean announced her departure – who is now covering two interim Dean roles at the same time? The lack of leadership, strategic focus, and attention to critical revenue and enrollment issues we are witnessing at Langara is underscored by the out-of-touch list in the Board’s email, which comes across as unknowledgeable and unconcerned. We are deeply disappointed that our Board of Governors has failed to hold a strategic and comprehensive lens to the problems we raised for your examination. Both the tone and message of your email can be summarized simply as “This is fine.”

Faculty – unionized or not – are the people who craft and deliver the core product of an educational institution. We develop and refine programming, stay on top of industry and pedagogical developments, and work to achieve student success. While administrative leaders may have been out of the classroom for years, we have substantial day-to-day interaction with the College’s “clients.” Langara’s faculty voted a decisive 92 percent non-confidence in the current president’s leadership at the College. Coming from the central service providers of the institution, both the turnout and the result of this vote was extremely significant. It was taken due to a principled effort to call attention to the urgent needs of the institution from the point of view of those who know its programs and students best.

Yet our Board’s response lists no actions or direction for rebuilding confidence. You provided no feedback about learnings from the wide community consultation you held leading up to the president’s performance review, except to say that these will “identify opportunities where leadership across the college can be strengthened as we move forward.” Faculty who put time and effort into this consultation expected more accountability from this process. We expected more than a simple statement prioritizing stability over urgency, responsiveness, renewal, or collaboration.

We ask of you, our Governors, three things.

• First, we want to know what the Board has directed the president and executive leadership to do in response to the deep concern and unconfidence among the College’s faculty.
• Second, we ask you to share details about the results of the community survey, from number of respondents to the opportunities for strengthened leadership you mentioned, so we can focus together on the concerns raised.
• Finally, we ask that you urgently and vigorously fight for Langara. We need representation at the provincial level to affirm the role and place of this institution within the post-secondary landscape. We believe there is something special here, something worth more than just stability. We are seeking a clear vision and champions to lead it. Please make the future success of Langara your concerted priority. We are deeply dismayed by your response to date, but we are not done working to achieve the best for Langara.

Sincerely,

Pauline Greaves-Aylward, President
and the Board of the Langara Faculty Association

[1] Associate of Arts Degree(Aboriginal Studies); Certificate: Arts and Science Aboriginal Studies Post-Degree; Diploma of Arts and Science (Aboriginal Studies).