From: Kimberly Lopez <kimberly.lopez@uwaterloo.ca>
Date: Tuesday, February 3, 2026 at 4:20 PM
To: Fenton Litwiller <Fenton.Litwiller@umanitoba.ca>
Cc: Audrey Giles <agiles@uottawa.ca>, Dawn Trussell <dtrussell@brocku.ca>, Shintaro Kono <skono@ualberta.ca>, Monir Shahzeidi <monir.shahzeidi@ubc.ca>, Kyle Rich <krich@brocku.ca>, Board CALS <cals-board-2023-2026@lists.umanitoba.ca>
Subject: Re: CCLR Discussion
If Dawn isn’t available I can attend.
i everyone,
I have some CCLR updates for you all.
I was contacted by Amanda Johnson from VIU, who has been on leave on and off for the past year and just catching up on CCLR planning.
She updated me on a few things:
While I was under the impression that Aggie was actively involved in the planning of CCLR and the abstract review process, this is not the case. Jenn did not alert me to the fact that Aggie has been almost completely absent ( likely consumed by her new decanal
role at Okanogan College).
Jen is not an academic and will not ask for help.
Amanda suspects that because the abstract review process was lagging too long, it may be that Jenn/others made the decision to accept all abstracts without peer review/feedback (this needs to be confirmed).
Amanda is reaching out to her Chair (Joanne) to have a discussion about CCLR concerns, and then Amanda, Joanne, Jenn and I will meet. I would like a member of the board to join me in this discussion (perhaps Dawn if possible?)
One of the main concerns is reputational harms related to the alleged lack of abstract review. Amanda is willing to step in and organize a peer review process so that authors (especially students) can get feedback.
What I need from you all are some specific comments that I can bring to the meeting - it seems like abstracts were sent out at very different times, and most without feedback. Can you let me know when you and your graduate students received your abstract and
if there was feedback given? Also, please let me know about any other concerns you have.
Sorry all - I would have followed through on this if I had left my meeting with Jenn knowing or suspecting any of this.