Cliff Haman
In May 2024, Cliff Haman was elected President after many years of advocacy for the PEA and the UVic chapter
Words by Jessica Natale Woollard Photos by Aaron Lutsch
Newly elected president Cliff Haman has a vision for the PEA’s future that will draw on his professional expertise in creative problem solving.
In his role at the University of Victoria, he works with artists—faculty, staff and students—to help them solve complex problems with technology, such as robotics, lighting, software or programming. Although Haman does not describe himself as an artist in the traditional sense—he is not a painter or sculptor—he lives and breathes the creative process and applies it to his work, artistic and otherwise.
“The creative process is ultimately about working through problems and experimenting to find solutions to challenges,” Haman explains. “We can show people the possibilities.”
It’s creative thinking of that kind that he hopes to tap into as leader of the PEA executive.
“It’s a creative process to be at a board table,” Haman adds. “We have multiple people looking at a problem, thinking about how we are going to resolve it in a way that we think is best for the organization and its membership.”
Haman has been a PEA member since joining UVic in 2003. He and his wife moved to Vancouver Island from Vancouver, where he served as IT director of a gaming company. His first role at the UVic was to build new computer labs for the visual arts department. Word quickly spread that Haman could help artists solve problems with technology, and faculty and students began coming to him for assistance. The informal one-on-one training he offered evolved into his current role, senior academic administrator in the Visual Arts Department in the Faculty of Fine Arts. A few years later, he designed a course for first-year students to help them expand their digital toolkit and learn technology skills to support their creativity. He teaches the course to this day and calls being in the classroom his “sweet spot”—he loves helping people learn the tools they need to solve problems and move ahead.
In 2007, Haman became involved in PEA’s UVic chapter, joining as a member at large and eventually serving as chair for two years. He led the members through a round of bargaining and then stepped back as his teaching responsibilities expanded.
When time allowed, he rejoined the UVic chapter in 2019 and in the same year ran for a member-at-large position on the executive. In May 2024, Haman was elected president of the PEA executive by his peers.
Haman says one of the executive’s first orders of business is to review the strategic plan and ensure it is pointing the PEA in the right direction.
“We’re going to spend a fair bit of time thinking about what the future is going to look like for the PEA over the next three-year term,” he says. “My vision is that I would like us to accomplish the very lofty and pragmatic goals that we identified at the strategic planning table, including increasing the visibility of the PEA as an organization. We need to do more member outreach and make sure people understand the what, the why and the how of what we do.”
He notes that some chapters have more than 90% of members actively engaging with the union. He’d like to celebrate their success while strengthening engagement in other chapters—because a stronger membership means more successful bargaining.
“We absolutely want to continue our primary mandate of bargaining successful and creative collective agreements for our membership,” says Haman, emphasizing that the coming year will see some complexities at the bargaining table because of the provincial election slated for October 19, 2024.
Another priority for Haman is equity, diversity and inclusion. “With all the strife in the world, we need to treat everybody with the same level of respect and compassion and regard. I think we can do better. As we progress, we’re going to have to deal with some of the ugliness that exists in the world, and that’s going to create difficult and hard conversations to have, but it’s important we have those difficult and hard conversations.”
Perhaps creative problem solving can lend a hand.
Haman describes one of the projects he gives his students: they travel to a parking lot in Victoria, and they examine the space. The students are tasked with transforming the lot into a desirable destination that will be used by all demographics.
“The most interesting are the challenging cases, the ones I don’t know how we’re going to solve,” explains Haman. “I love that work. You try things and see whether they will lead to a good result.
“Very rarely do we ever achieve success in the first or second try of doing things. Success tends to be a very iterative process.
“The only thing we ought not do is to not try things.”
See the article in the Professional, Fall 2024
