The President’s State of the University Address 2016 (Transcript)

BuildExperienceEngageSustain

U of A President David Turpin delivers the 2016 State of the University Address

On September 27, 2016, President David Turpin delivered the following State of the University Address:

On behalf of the university community, I respectfully acknowledge that we are located on Treaty 6 territory, traditional lands of First Nations and Métis people.

Thank you all for coming to today’s event. I know how busy September can be — it’s a time of year when we find ourselves operating at full speed all of the time. So finding an hour can be a challenge. Thank you for spending this hour with me today.

A special welcome to everyone watching on the livestream — especially students and colleagues at Augustana, Campus Saint-Jean, Enterprise Square, and South Campus.

And a special thank you to Professor Emeritus Marnie Giesbrecht-Segger for the lovely organ music as we filled the hall today. Thank you, Marnie.

Today, as we gather for the formal launch of “For the Public Good,” I cannot help but reflect on events of a year ago.

Last September, the global community was completely overwhelmed by what continues to be a major refugee crisis. Every day, news reports were filled with stories of people risking and losing their lives escaping from conflict in Syria, other parts of the Middle East, and Africa. Every day, the crisis seemed to escalate as communities in Europe and the Middle East were running out of resources to help.

Like many of you, I felt compelled to do something.

So I floated an idea, first with Provost Steven Dew, and then with others — was there something that we could do here at the University of Alberta? Could we target scholarship or bursary monies to help Syrian student refugees?

The answer came quickly — yes it was possible. Yes, we could do it.
Over the course of the Labour Day weekend with the help of dozens of individuals and two governance committees, we created a new scholarship — The President’s Award for Refugees and Displaced Persons. In the immediate term, the award will cover tuition and living costs for up to 10 undergraduate or graduate Syrian students.

It was a small gesture in the midst of a global emergency but for the 8 Syrian students who are now here at the University of Alberta, it matters a great deal. It matters a great deal to their parents and families.

And, I know, for our many staff, faculty, and students working to make these students feel at home, it continues to be an experience unlike any other.

I’ve invited you here today to review the state of our university. Such a speech asks some pointed questions: what kind of shape are we in? What direction are we headed in? What’s in store for the next year?

I’ve opened my address today reflecting on our response to the Syrian refugee crisis to give you sense of the strong foundations on which this university rests.

This foundation allows us to be nimble and flexible when we need to be. It allows us to find resources for the right initiative at the right time.
It enables us to put into the action the value we place on learners and learning — the value we also place on building a diverse, inclusive, and equitable community.

That foundation doesn’t just enable us to act. It is also strong enough to bear scrutiny and reflection.

When Provost Dew and I set out a year ago to create a single, institution-wide strategic plan, we asked all of you to think about some fundamental things about the University of Alberta. We pulled together a discussion paper so that all of us could understand where we stood.

That made it possible for us to consider together such things as the demographic make-up of our student population, . . . the shrinking number of young faculty members, . . . our performance in standard measures of research excellence, . . .and current and future financial trends related to our most important sources of revenue.

We began our planning process by asking a series of questions to provoke ideas about where we want this university to be in the next five to ten years.

Not surprisingly, as we met with more and more of you — in campus forums and roundtables — at small and large committee and faculty meetings — we heard a range of responses.

But we also heard a tremendous amount of consensus. Themes emerged — and they cut across all groups in the university. We heard similar ideas from people working in every faculty and unit — in every discipline.

We heard, for example, that we must focus on the core mission of teaching and research — but to be forward-looking and innovative in both — increasing our experiential learning offerings and facilitating genuine interdisciplinary collaboration in both classroom and lab.

We heard that the U of A has important stories to tell — and that all of us need the tools to share them more widely.

We heard that the U of A must expand and deepen its connection to the communities both within our broad university and beyond the borders of our campuses.

We heard that we have a responsibility to listen to and respond to the calls of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Steve and I came away from these discussions more deeply convinced of the strength of the University of Alberta than when we began. It was clear to us — having heard from more than a thousand people — that this community has a profound sense of purpose and a great desire to achieve the highest level of international excellence.

What is that purpose? To serve the public good. To make visible — in very tangible ways — the fact that the University of Alberta is a public university.

Launch — laying out the content of the plan
Today, I am proud to launch “For the Public Good” — the University of Alberta’s new institutional strategic plan. I launch it on behalf of all of you, the community that came together to create it.

Ours is a plan of action, structured by five verbs that capture the intent of our aspirations for the future: Build, Experience, Excel, Engage, and Sustain.

How will these five actions change the University of Alberta in the next five to ten years? How will we be different?

Build

We are going to build a more diverse university community. The goal?
To ensure that when new students, faculty, or staff members arrive at the U of A from here in Edmonton …or from one of Alberta’s proud Indigenous communities ….or from Victoria, Ottawa, or Halifax ….or from countries around the world, they will study or work alongside people from different backgrounds, experiences and world views. . . and will benefit from and celebrate that diversity.

Experience

Our people will experience education as a transformational force. Every member of the U of A community will experience what becomes possible when we are encouraged to learn and enabled to excel and to fulfill our own particulars talents and potential.

Excel

The desire to excel is a defining feature of the University of Alberta. Our reputation for excellence in research and teaching has put us into the ranks of Canada’s top five universities — we are also ranked among the finest public universities in the world.

Last week alone, we learned that 8 faculty members were inducted into the Royal Society of Canada, and our vice-president of research, Lorne Babiuk, was named the 2016 World Agriculture Prize Laureate. All of that happened in a week in which we celebrated the achievements and honours of 121 faculty, staff and students at Celebrate!

To sustain and build on this level of performance, we must continue to grow as thinkers and learners. Teaching and research are dynamic activities, and — as we lay out in “For the Public Good” — we must continually strive to be innovative and original in both.

Engage

Achieving excellence for the public good means that we must engage with each other and with external communities as effectively as possible. We must engage with communities near and far, building meaningful partnerships and collaborations that work to solve the challenges that society faces now and in the future.

That’s why I will also be spending a significant amount of time travelling this fall — meeting with the University of Alberta’s key partners and organizations in India, China, and Hong Kong.

This will be my second major international tour as president of the University of Alberta and I am looking forward to sharing “For the Public Good” with them and using it to open up further opportunities for reciprocal, mutually rewarding partnership.

Sustain

To serve the public well, we need to sustain our capacity to respond to change with imagination, creativity, invention, and action. To do that we must pay careful attention to the details. We must take care to ensure that our people are well and healthy, . . . that our governance and operational processes facilitate rather than stifle action, . . . and that our university both models and advances excellence in environmental sustainability.

As “For the Public Good” took shape over the last year, I often noted that a new strategic plan is not always about doing more — in some ways, it’s about thinking about what we already do through a new frame. A frame that, on the one hand, resonates with who we are. A frame that, on the other, has the power to reinvigorate and renew us.

“For the Public Good” has that power.

As I said earlier, many people told us that the U of A has great stories to tell.

Those stories are woven throughout “For the Public Good.” From our founding until now, the University of Alberta has played a central role in shaping the Alberta and Canada that exists today.

Our impact comes from the vision set by our first president, Henry Marshall Tory. In 1908, he stood before a collection of the province’s leaders and told them that the university would be outward-looking, dedicated not only to scholarly concerns but to the “uplifting of the whole people.”

Whether we speak of farming, ranching, forestry, oil and gas, education, arts and culture, the courts, or health — we can easily demonstrate that none of Alberta’s key industries and services would be the same without U of A’s research and U of A alumni. This university has had a proven direct impact on all of them and more.

Our alumni have founded more than 70,000 organizations and businesses. They’ve created 1.5 million jobs, 400,000 of them in Alberta. That means that more than 1 million were also created throughout Canada and countries around the world.

That’s why “For the Public Good” resonates with our community. The energy of the plan’s verbs — and the ambition expressed in the objectives and goals — these verbs reinvigorate and renew us.

We all know that institutional strategic plans are notorious for disappearing from view shortly after their unveiling. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s stumbled on a dusty copy long buried on the shelf.

Let us commit to keeping “For the Public Good” in the foreground. This plan will remain in full view on my desk top. I ask you keep it on your real or virtual desk top too.

It’s not often that a plan receives unanimously approval by both General Faculties Council and the Board of Governors. We should take that approval seriously.

It is now up to us to make our plan a reality.

To begin, we must identify immediate, mid-term, and long-term priorities.

Some objectives and strategies in the plan can be operationalized under the leadership of one unit — although success will depend on the engagement of many across the university.

To reference a few initiatives, Provost Dew and I have asked Registrar Lisa Collins to take the lead on Objective 1: developing and implementing a national recruitment strategy. The plan is now unfolding and we have, for the first time, guaranteed every first year student a place in residence.

We’ve asked Interim Vice-President (University Relations) Jacqui Tam to lead Objective six — the advancement of the U of A story.

We’ve asked Heather Zwicker, dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, to lead the expansion of professional development opportunities for graduate students.

At the same time, we recognize that units across the university are already working on initiatives that align with and fulfill the objectives and strategies of “For the Public Good.”

Under SUSTAIN, for example, the Office of Sustainability which has finalized the U of A’s new sustainability plan and will be introducing it to the community this fall.

Human Resource Services, in partnership with the Dean of Students and Faculty of Physical Education and Research, have launched consultations for the Healthy Campus Initiative.

And, General Faculties Council has initiated a review of the academic governance system to enhance its effectiveness.

Under EXPERIENCE, Faculty at Augustana are in the process of revising the academic calendar to allow for an extraordinary, intensive 3 week undergraduate learning experience at the beginning of each term. One that will allow for a new level of interdisciplinary experiential engagement with one topic.

This is a mere sampling of the work currently being done by faculties and units that aligns with the goals of the plan. That work will continue and drive into our outcomes.

Some objectives in “For the Public Good,” however, ask all of us to come together to do new things or to do things differently.

Putting these complex objectives into action will take more time. They will require support, engagement, action, and leadership from many stakeholders across campus.

What falls onto this list? Some immediate examples include:
• Responding to the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee
• Selecting signature teaching and research areas
• Creating a faculty renewal program
• And many more

How will we manage these more complex initiatives?

We’ll take a similar approach to work done in the last year to develop a response to the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

For the last year, under the leadership of Deputy Provost Wendy Rodgers, Indigenous faculty and groups across the university, as well as partners in external Indigenous communities, have come together to create an inventory and website of the many Indigenous initiatives already existing at the University of Alberta.

Together, they are developing plans for a long-term sustainable plan for moving these and other initiatives forward. Through these efforts, significant work has been done. This Wednesday and Thursday, the U of A is proud to be hosting the 2nd annual national Building Reconciliation Forum. More than 200 Indigenous and academic leaders are gathering on campus for a series of keynotes, panels, and discussions.

Using this approach as a model, we will begin to tackle other complex objectives in the plan by establishing cross-faculty and unit working groups that will have defined tasks, timelines, and deliverables. Many of these working groups will initially focus on doing inventories and environmental scans of work already being done, investigate best practices, and develop a coherent plan for change or expansion.

We need to take a staged approach — rolling out working groups at different times and stages so that the work of one can feed into or integrate with the work of another.

Whether you are a student, faculty, or staff, think about where you might want to be involved in these cross-institutional initiatives and let us know.

One of the complex objectives that will be an immediate priority is Objective 12 — the identification of a small set of signature teaching and research areas that distinguish the University of Alberta as a national and international leader.

We are in a position to do this because of the University of Alberta’s fundamental commitment to cultivating individual excellence — clearly stated in objective 11. We cannot build areas of distinction without first ensuring that we cultivate and maintain a broad foundation of excellence.

I know firsthand that this balance works. My background is in photosynthesis. I was not ever part of a large initiative — but I found a home and was able to pursue my research and my potential in every university I’ve worked.

However, I also knew there are good reasons for identifying signature teaching and research areas of distinction. What are they? Let me focus on the three most important.

The University of Alberta aspires to do the public good. We need to identify those areas where we can more effectively meet the interdisciplinary complexity of the global community’s biggest questions and challenges. We need to maximize our capacity to lead change by creating dynamic, innovative, creative interdisciplinary teams able to take multi-faceted approaches to problems.

Through genuine interdisciplinary connection and collaboration individuals will also benefit. They find directions sparked by exchange with colleagues and classmates from other disciplines.

With that kind of forward-looking dynamic learning environment, we’ll attract more talented students, graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and new faculty who want to be part of an exciting endeavour.

Lastly, we will be in a stronger position to apply for and create major new funding opportunities. With that, will come the opportunity to partner with other leading institutions and teams across Canada and the world.

Let me give you an example.

Earlier this month, the University of Alberta was awarded a $75 million grant by the Canada First Research Excellence Fund for the establishment of the Future Energy Systems Research Institute.

We won this historic grant because of the breadth of our vision and the depth of our research and teaching excellence in energy and its impacts. We also won this grant because we stepped up and met the challenge. To succeed, we had to do more than focus on the strengths of one individual doing exceptional work in one area. We needed to show that we had broad and integrated research depth across many teams and disciplines.

What makes our new institute so exciting is that we will take a full systems, truly interdisciplinary approach to the problem. Research will cover the spectrum from enabling cleaner, more efficient development, processing and consumption of fossil fuels . . . . to exploring and inventing alternative energy sources, such as solar and wind, . .. to the unpacking the philosophical, ethical, and economic underpinning of our current petroculture.

I’ve asked Provost Dew and Vice-President (Research) Lorne Babiuk to lead the process of determining signature research and teaching areas. The process will allow for grassroots engagement of faculty, staff, and students. Chairs and deans will also play a key role. Please watch for a campus forum on this topic in October.

Implementing “For the Public Good” is the responsibility of all of us. I ask all of you to contribute. I ask all of you to help us take down barriers that might stand in our way. I know from events this year that the collaboration and cooperation we envision throughout this plan is possible.

When Fort McMurray was forced to evacuate in a matter of hours, we were ready to help even before the government of Alberta asked. Staff, students, and faculty answered that call from at least 10 units across the university. Together, they provided communications, housing and healthcare (and all of the many, many tasks and responsibilities that entailed) for a period of weeks.

In addition to these efforts — as a community we quickly came together, arranged a fundraiser BBQ and raised $16,000 dollars in only a couple of hours — money that was tripled by matches from both the provincial and federal governments.

Just as with the quick establishment of the President’s Award for Refugees and Displaced Persons, the strong, resilient state of our university makes it possible for us to be nimble and collaborative when we choose and need to be.

One of the most memorable moments of my first year the U of A came at the Fort McMurray fundraising BBQ. Walking around the quad on North Campus that day, I ran into one of the first Syrian scholarship recipients.

When I asked him what had brought him out that day, he said that he knew what it meant to be forced to leave your home with nothing, and he wanted to give back where he could. That speaks volumes about this young man . . . and the community that has welcomed him.

As this story reminds us, none of us work alone. The University of Alberta’s strength is buttressed by our many steadfast supporters and partners.

Donors and alumni continue to provide extraordinary support — giving a total of $115 million for 2015–2016.

In June, we received the largest gift in our history from the Stollery Children’s Hospital Foundation and the Royal Alexandra Hospital Foundation. Their combined donation of $54.5-million to the U of A’s Women and Children’s Health Research Institute will push forward the full spectrum of women’s, children’s and perinatal health research — areas that have traditionally been underfunded.

The University of Alberta’s consolidated budget is in positive financial state due in large part to the provincial government’s commitment to providing stable funding, even in a period of significant financial hardship.

In addition to this stability in provincial funding, agreements with faculty, staff, and graduate student associations were signed, thanks to the dedicated efforts of many people across the institution. My thanks to all.

Our partnerships with the province continue to be multiple and varied — with faculty members working with ministries across the government on research projects, special committees, and task forces. Just last week, Professor of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology, Vic Adamowicz was named to Climate Technology Task Force.

Last week, I sat down for coffee with Mayor Don Iveson when we continued our discussion on our shared goals and initiatives.

Likewise, the conversations that I am having in Ottawa right now are tremendously positive. With colleagues at U15 and Universities Canada, I am actively participating in federal reviews of both the basic science and innovation agendas.

We have an important opportunity to shape future policy and I want to assure you that I am working hard to represent our voice and that of universities in general in those discussions — providing national leadership as befits this university.

In closing, along with Provost Steven Dew, I would like to take a few moments to acknowledge those who played an instrumental role in creating and drafting “For the Public Good.”

The members of the Institutional Strategic Planning Advisory Committee helped us to listen to and reflect the aspirations of the community. They came to consultations — they read hundreds of pages of feedback — they proposed objectives and strategies — and provided Steve and me with critical advice throughout the last year. I thank them for their service to the university and ask that they stand today and receive a show of appreciation.

Finally, I would like to thank each and every person who took the time to participate in the planning process over the last year. Your comments, emails, and submissions mattered. We learned from you. We were energized by your enthusiasm and passion.

“For the Public Good” is yours. It is ours. Each of us can take action — each one of us can do something powerful to build, experience, excel, engage, and sustain.

Acting together, we will propel this great institution to a place of unprecedented leadership, and in common cause, we will build a better community, a better Canada, and a better world.