By David Dyck
EnVision process seeks to “engage“ with the community and bring undergraduate teaching and research together
Last Monday, SFU officially launched a new strategic vision for the university, a result of year-long consultations with students, staff, and faculty, in which it will seek to be “the leading engaged research university defined by its dynamic integration of innovative education, cutting-edge research, and far-reaching community engagement.” The launch also facilitated the unveiling of SFU’s new tagline, “engaging the world”, which has now replaced the previous “thinking of the world”.
The Peak spoke with President Petter before the launch to discuss the impetus for the new vision, and how it will change the university moving forward. Petter said that the purpose of the new vision is to create a sense of common purpose within SFU, and to “improve the way we educate students, the way we do research, and the way we engage communities.”
The vision is essentially about the long-term direction of the university, and the challenge for the administration will now be to realize the vision’s objectives, such as creating a more supportive campus environment and connecting educational and research goals.
“I think it would be a mistake to think that we could turn this campus into an ivy-coloured liberal arts college of the New England mold, because it isn’t. It’s going to be a commuter campus, principally for students. I think what we need to do then is say, ‘Okay, how can we make it the best campus of its kind?’” said Petter, who admitted that the sense of community was lacking on the Burnaby campus. To do this, Petter hinted at upcoming changes to residence and housing to increase capacity and improve quality.
Another campus community-related issue that came up as a result of the consultation process was the issue of food. Petter said that he was “influenced by the fact that we’d received a lot of feedback from the envision process about food as part of the campus environment. We probably would have done a consultation, but not of the depth or kind that we did end up doing.” He stated that with the Chartwells contract coming up for either renewal or termination provides the university with the opportunity to examine the quality of the food available on campus.
Petter mentioned an attempt to increase campus community academically as well with the upcoming, and according to Petter, the “somewhat corny title”, the “Presidents’ Dream Colloquium”. This will be an initiative to bring in speakers for an interdisciplinary program that students can enroll in for credits.
There are other academic angles to the new vision that capitalize on SFU’s strengths in research and undergraduate teaching. “What the vision says is: ‘Let’s do a better job of connecting those two.’ If we are going to say to undergraduate students that we’re going to give you a different and better learning experience than you would get elsewhere, the one thing we can do to really improve the learning experience that can’t be done by teaching universities is to expose them to the research side of the equation.
“We’re already taking our lead from parts of the vision and seeing if there are ways we can draw in new funding to actually better connect our research to the community, that will create opportunities for graduate students and for undergraduate coops and for interns, working in the community in collaborative research”
Petter also mentioned that Jon Driver, VP-academic, will be updating his academic plans to engage with the community.
Petter emphasized that although the vision has now been unveiled, it’s up to the university community — not just the administration — to realize its goals.
“It will be incremental, and what I hope is that students will say, ‘Okay, that’s great, we’ve got the vision, the administration isn’t doing enough to implement it.’ To the extent that students think that it’s got good things in it, I hope they’ll come forward and take the lead and prod and push and make the difference so that together we can all be trying to achieve the potential that this vision holds.” He added that the ideas that they’ve gathered have come from outside of the administration, primarily from students.
