2016 - A Leap Year in Many Ways
January 29, 2016
Good morning everyone. I want to welcome all of you... faculty, staff, students, members of the
Board of Governors, and guests. Thank you for taking time out of your day to be here.
I know that because of your curiosity about what I will say, I have caused a disruption to your
day.
Given that it is 2016, I thought about scheduling this address for February 29th, an opportunity
that presents itself only once every four years.
A leap year... that once in every four years adjustment that is necessary to keep our Gregorian
calendar in sync with the actual number of days it takes the Earth to circle the sun... might be
thought of as one way of ensuring we stay with the times, so to speak.
If we didn't have it, we would eventually find ourselves celebrating Christmas and New Year's
when the days are at their longest.
While this is the year we do a leap in the calendar, this adjustment does have somewhat of a
plodding regularity to it that diminishes the dictionary definition of leap.
The Oxford English dictionary defines leap as 1) to jump or spring a long way, to a great height,
or with great force, or 2) to move quickly and suddenly.
There is a sense of urgency in that definition that is not quite apparent in the cold dark February
adjustment of our calendar.
A year ago I gave an address called UWindsor 2.0. In it, I talked about how the University of
Windsor is going through a period of change.
I talked about the new era of having a post-secondary differentiation framework and Strategic
Mandate Agreements with the province, the dramatic rise in international graduate students, the
demographic flat-lining of university age Ontario students, and the aging of the professoriate.
We have no option but to respond to these changes, and to do so as quickly as we can and in
ways that position the University to be stronger and more relevant in the future.
These changes are upon us now, and affecting us now, and I know that in adapting to these
changes, many of you feel like you are leaping. In 2016 we are leaping in many ways.
Let me share a few personal reflections. Here we are in Ambassador Auditorium. I'll never
forget this room. It is the first room I was in, along with my wife Debra, at the University of
Windsor when I was introduced to the campus on a snowy day in February, 2008. It is here
where I made my first remarks to a gathering such as this.
I remember saying "If you take the high road, there is less traffic". The arc of my own life will
be forever connected with this room. It means a lot to me that it is a vibrant room in which week
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after week many great things happen. It is a room that sits at the heart of the place our students
call home.
Over the Christmas holiday break I re-read Robert Frost's well-worn poem, The Road Not
Taken. In it he describes walking in the woods and coming to a fork in the path. The poem
draws to a close with these words about the two paths he had to choose between:
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
About four years ago I met with the council of the University of Windsor Student Alliance, and I
asked them what I could do to better connect with students. They told me I had to be on Twitter.
Being someone who still remembers that a Smith Corona is a typewriter and not a new beverage
from a micro-brewery, I was very apprehensive.
But, after a long period of reflection... two years to be precise... I opened a Twitter account.
So now I tweet, and have come to appreciate that it is a great way to get a message out about an
event or about the great work of our faculty, staff or students.
I also had a bit of personal satisfaction in feeling that I had ratcheted up my credentials as what
one might call "a modern guy".
Then just last week I met with Percina Holder and her team, the organizers of this year's
Afrofest, which takes place the first week of February on campus. It is a great celebration for
our students of African descent and for the history of black people.
During the meeting I told them I would send out a Tweet about it, and they looked at me with
what could only be described as sympathy. I looked at them and they said one word: Instagram.
So rather than reflecting two years, I reflected two days, and this week I opened an Instagram
account and am a getting a lesson on how to use it.
I hope all of you know that we are gathered on the traditional territory of the Three Fires
Confederacy of First Nations... the Ojibwa, the Odawa, and the Potawatomi. That awareness is
shared by all of us, but it has deeper meaning for those of First Nations heritage.
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For the past year I have been in discussion with some of our local First Nations leaders about
erecting signs along pathways and in prominent places informing people that this is traditional
territory.
People who study speeches and public speaking say that an audience typically remembers only
two things... what you said at the beginning and what you said at the end.
I'll tell you right now what I am going to say at the end. It is as much a realization of what the
world is as it is a prediction, and I am not the only one saying it:
"The future of postsecondary education will be one of preparing students for life in an
increasingly discontinuous, interrupted and opportunity-driven world, and one of figuring out
how institutions can prepare for the same things".
And I will recap what I have said in the beginning. First, some things in life remain the same. I
believe that most people, regardless of where they are, have recollections of a place. It is the
sense of place that contributes to their reflections on their own life.
It might be a place where you carved your initials in a tree when you were a child; it might be
your grandparents' house; it might be the one book and the locket you carried with you wherever
you have gone because they remind you of a place in your heart; it might be the place your
ancestors lived that evokes a nostalgia and a hope that the world can still be a place of goodness.
Second, there are forks in the road, and it is unlikely you can ever go back and revisit in exactly
the same way a choice you made. I think the subtext of Robert Frost's poem is that one fork in
the road invariably leads to another.
His poem is not about a once in a lifetime choice, but rather it reminds us that each path taken
will lead to another fork in the road. Simply put, we don't know what choices lie ahead as a
result of the choices we make now.
Third, the term disruption has become as commonplace in conversations about the future as the
word innovation. Everything is about disruption.
The word is used with swagger by those who think they have the power to end corporate status
quo, and it is used with fear by those who feel that they may be victims of a disruptive moment.
When MOOCs hit the screen, many people who make a living out of shock journalism predicted,
almost with a hint of joy in their voice, that universities as we know them are finished.
There are those who view universities as rotary dial telephones, and who think that a future with
a virtual cloud-based system of education is possible and inevitable. I don't share that view, but I
don't dismiss that we all have a call to action.
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What will Twitter or Instagram or Facebook, or the as yet unlaunched new social media
phenomenon, look like ten years from now? Will autonomously driving vehicles spell the end of
every employment class that involves a person behind the wheel?
Disruption has happened throughout human history - there is not a great demand for wagon
wheel makers and the TV repairman. But what does seem to be different now is the speed with
which disruption can happen.
We still need the auto mechanic, but now the person has to be versed in computer diagnostics,
and soon, vehicle to vehicle wireless communication.
In virtually every walk of life, disruption can happen that could change the nature of your job.
There are many new jobs that are being talked about... vertical farming (farming in skyscrapers
in cities), memory surgeons, and more.
There is of course the new profession I call "disruptionist".. those who make a living out of
predicting where the viper of disruption will next strike.
A sense of place, many forks in the road, disruption... I want to look at these things first from the
standpoint of being a university student and then from the standpoint of the institution.
Remarks about students must be prefaced with the reminder that one thing that hasn't changed
dramatically over the last few thousand years is the human brain.
We have the same intellectual capacity today that we had in the Middle Ages and the Age of
Enlightenment and the Roaring Twenties.
We have the same need for a human touch, for a sense of belonging, and for the sense of hope
that if we are in need someone will be there to help us.
We have the same feelings of comfort to know we are loved by someone and feelings of despair
when we lose someone.
But the times are different. For a student today, the world is not as linear as it was when I
graduated. For me, and for many of my baby boomer contemporaries, we embarked upon our
working lives with the prediction that we might have at most four or five different jobs in our
lifetime.
In talking about students, let me first quickly re-cap what I highlighted as part of my UWindsor
2.0 address last year. We are in the midst of a very significant change in the make-up of the
student body on campus.
With respect to full-time students, undergraduate domestic enrolment continues to decline, and
now sits at just below 10,000. Similar declines are being seen at many institutions as the realities
of the demographic structure of Ontario's population play themselves out.
Undergraduate international enrolment continues to trend up slightly. In 2010, 7% of
undergraduates were international, and this year that number is 9%.
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Overall, the number of full-time undergraduate students this year, 10,885, has not been this low
since the 2002/03 academic year, thirteen years ago.
On the graduate side, domestic enrolment has remained intact, and in fact increased slightly, but
the huge story is the dramatic growth in international graduate students, driven largely by
enrolments in course-based Master's programs in Engineering and Business. This year over
1,400 of our graduate students, or 54% of them, are international.
The net result of all of this is that total full time enrolment, including undergraduate, graduate,
domestic and international, currently stands at 13,564, which is the fourth highest it has ever
been.
We are also in the midst of a significant shift in the distribution of students across the different
Faculties. On the undergraduate side, Engineering has increased by close to 500 students since
2010, while Education has decreased by 400 and the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social
Sciences has decreased by a thousand students.
On the graduate side, there has been a steady trend upward the past few years, primarily because
of the international graduate students in Engineering and Business, although Science and
Education are also seeing some upswing because of Master's programs that are attracting
international students.
While undergraduate enrolment in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences has dropped, as it has at
many universities across North America, FAHSS continues to have more domestic graduate
students than any other Faculty, at 650.
Students are changing in other ways. We now have about 12,000 registered in on-line courses.
There are more discussions about college-university, university-college, and universityuniversity transfers.
Our part-time student population is also an important part of the campus, albeit the numbers are
much lower. As is being seen at many universities, the number of part-time students is declining
somewhat, and we currently have just under two thousand.
Today's students do things differently. They can review options for their post-secondary career
on their smart phone, and seamlessly connect with large numbers of other students here and
elsewhere to make comparisons.
With the assistance of Scott Thornley and Company, we are in the midst of consultations with
faculty, staff, students and alumni on how to best position for prospective students the many
great things the University of Windsor has going for it.
I am very encouraged by this year's application data to the University for Fall 2016. After
several years of seeing application numbers decline more than the provincial trend, this year, in
spite of the continuing demographic flatline, application numbers have steadied.
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The efforts faculty and staff and students have made in recent months in student recruitment at
the Ontario University Fair and other venues locally and further afield have been outstanding,
and I thank all of you for what you are doing.
I am going to digress for a moment... I have been contacted more this year than any other year by
students wanting to come and talk to me, or do an interview, about the reputation rankings in
places like Macleans. They are concerned about these rankings.
I am very encouraged by that. People are talking about it, and let's keep talking about it. I will
say without hesitation that I do not believe that the challenge of our reputation has anything to do
with real data.
The dedication of our faculty and staff, the experiences our students are having here, the
successes of our graduates, the engagement of our alumni, and the relevance of our research and
creative activity to the community and country are simply inconsistent with what I now call the
"reputation about our reputation".
So what lies ahead for students? Canadian data shows that more than half of the baby boomers
like me spent more than twenty years with the same employer, often in the same or similar jobs.
Now, it is projected that today's graduates will on average hold 15 jobs in their lifetime. The
greatest amount of job hopping will continue to occur within the first fifteen years of working,
with the average duration of any one job being about two years.
This doesn't necessarily mean that someone might have 15 different employers or entrepreneurial
ventures. For sure there will be greater mobility than what my generation experienced, but it is
more complex than that.
Organizations themselves are under greater pressure to change in a world where change happens
faster, and where a different job might in fact be that you are asked to take on a different task
within the same organization.
I do believe that today's graduates will, on average, have "15 somethings in a lifetime", but I also
know that for an institution like a university - where our success depends on an enduring shared
belief in our mission and the collective creativity of so many - success will not happen if offices
have never-ending revolving doors on them.
The conclusion I make from all of the talk of disruption and change is that as we think about
what we can best do to prepare students for the future, we might be rediscovering the importance
of what we used to call the "jack of all trades".
Where the "trades" used to be typesetting, plumbing, midwifery, metal-smithing, organ-playing,
painting, poetry recital, forestry, historian, whittling, and everything else that collectively
allowed some people to be referred to as a renaissance man or woman, today in an information
and knowledge-driven world, we need to think about the new jack of all trades... Jack 2.0.
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For today's graduates, at a time when the increasing pace of disruption cannot be denied, more
than ever it is about the need to possess a range of capabilities that will allow for adaptation to
challenges ahead.
Graduates in the 21st century need the expertise that a major offers them, but they will also need
the flexibility that cross-disciplinary courses, team projects, marketing, arts and humanities,
writing and IT and gaming skills, research and experiential learning give them.
There is no way that a program curriculum in 2020 should look like a program curriculum from
1990. These are the conversations we need to have in faculty councils, the floor of Senate,
student gatherings, and gatherings like this.
This past year we announced that fifty new faculty will be hired over a three year period.
Eighteen of those searches are now underway in the first year, with the next round to begin this
coming fall.
Astonishingly, these 18 positions attracted more than 600 applications from across Canada and
around the world.
The positions they are filling are all posted on the Provost's web site. They are novel, exciting,
and are in areas that will catalyse thinking about new kinds of programs and methods of teaching
that will provide students with the best choices.
Through our new career and co-op centre and through EPICentre, we want the UWindsor student
experience to be one where from the time of admission to the time of graduation, students have
every opportunity to know what their education can do for them, to know how they can launch a
new idea, and to know how to best prepare themselves for the discontinuous, interrupted, and
opportunity-driven world.
If we do that, then we just need to get out of the way. Today's students are smart, energetic and
motivated. We will just need to get out of the way and let them take it from there.
Earlier this week we had the Employee Recognition Awards celebration. It was a great event for
colleagues to be recognized for the many ways in which they make our campus a better place to
work and study.
How we interact with each other and how well we serve our students affects everything.
We will continue to put resources into re-thinking how we provide all of the services students
need. We have begun a process referred to as Enterprise Resource Planning, or ERP.
It will be a multi-year project to re-do the major information systems that the university needs,
including our student information systems and financial systems.
This coming year we will be engaging staff in offices across the university in conversations
about how we can help them incorporate technology and new ways of doing things into their
work space. These will be important conversations.
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We have exceptional staff right across the institution. Collectively you bring compassion,
creativity, grit, humor and kind hearts.
Individually and collectively, you will make a vitally important contribution to the
transformation of the University of Windsor.
All of these activities are ultimately about students... they are about our university being a place
that has what they want, and where they feel that we are doing the best we can to support them.
This past year I have heard many stories about the compassionate efforts of faculty and staff to
help students who are feeling stressed or suffering other mental health challenges.
I thank all of you for that. And I thank the wonderful group of faculty, students and staff who
drafted our first university policy on sexual assault, that is now out for consultation.
The care that we collectively can exhibit for the emotional and physical well-being of our
students has an impact on student lives that cannot be measured.
I would add that we also want our students to be able to exercise the body as well as the mind,
and if students want to revisit a referendum on a new Lancer Sport and Recreation Centre, we
will do all we can to work with them on it.
I want to turn now to say a few things about how institutions - our University of Windsor - can
adapt to a world that is increasingly discontinuous, interrupted and opportunity-driven.
The Syrian refugee crisis has again highlighted how discontinuous the world of some people can
be. I want to acknowledge the many people on campus who have responded with compassion.
This week we launched a web site describing the many things happening on campus in support
of the movement of Syrian refugees to Windsor-Essex.
Over just only a couple of months, faculty, students and staff have come up with many
initiatives, including a fund-raising goal to sponsor a refugee family.
But by and large, when it comes to doing our core business for society, universities are
organizational millipedes, often appearing to be incapable of knowing which leg to move first,
and each segment carrying back packs filled with everything they have ever done in the past.
Shedding something that no longer makes sense from a resource utilization or effectiveness
standpoint has never been one of the strengths of post-secondary institutions.
You are all aware that the University of Windsor, like most universities, has had to continually
find ways to deal with fiscal challenges.
Since I have been here, every year I have sent around updates that one way or another
culminated in a general across the board realignment to keep the operating budget in balance.
You will have noticed that I did not do that this year.
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As the University's student body has dramatically changed in the past few years, so to has its
revenue structure.
During this time of change, taking us to UWindsor 2.0, government funding has been flat. In
fact, it has declined slightly. What has grown are the tuition fee revenues.
Domestic tuition revenue has been essentially constant. Although tuition has increased as per the
provincial tuition framework, the decline in domestic enrolment has kept overall domestic tuition
revenue increases modest.
International tuition revenue has increased significantly, however, primarily because of the
strong increase in international graduate enrolment. It now comprises 38% of the total tuition
revenue the University receives.
For the University of Windsor, these changes in the student body and in our revenue sources are
a disruption.
In the widely praised book "Exponential Organizations", which I encourage you to read, Salim
Ismail and his co-authors make many observations about how disruption occurs and how
organizations are having to re-think how they do things.
One of their observations is the following: "Strategic planning is giving way to data-driven
predictive analytics". We are living in an information world... how we use that information will
define our success.
They go on to say that the very notion of five-year plans may become obsolete, as the need to
respond more quickly to realities becomes more important.
Enrolment drives the revenues to the institution, yet historically the data about enrolment has
been more or less disconnected from the budgeting process.
As a part of the response to UWindsor 2.0 that I discussed last year, it was indicated that we
must begin to move to an activity based budgeting model that builds in the ability to respond to
the actual data about enrolment.
It must be a model in which the pivotal conversations about resources occur with a full
awareness of the actual data. By working with actual data we can achieve greater transparency,
and approach challenges with a clearer understanding of the underlying causes.
We must also remain a comprehensive university. At any one time in our history, one or another
of the Faculties may ride a crest or hit a trough with respect to enrolment.
We have to find ways of moving resources to where they are needed, while not diminishing the
real or perceived value of any one part of the campus.
And so we are assessing a new budget model. It is a model in which the allocation of revenues
and responsibility for cost increases is data-driven.
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The model identifies that there are four sources of revenue to the institution, domestic students,
international students, government, and other.
The tuition revenue can be calculated precisely based on enrolment, and it can be attributed to
the Faculties precisely in proportion to their enrolment data.
The government grants can be attributed to all other costs in the institution - scholarships, light,
heat, central services, library, IT Services, Centre for Teaching and Learning, and more.
The grants can also be used to ensure that there are incentive funds available to Faculties and
other areas, such as the Strategic Priority Fund, the Research Incentive Fund, and a new Student
Success Fund we will introduce this next year that we can use to better support the overall
student experience.
The responsibility for annual cost increases will now rest with each unit, whether it be a Faculty
or administrative unit.
Discussions are currently underway with the Deans on this new model. Inherent in it is the
recognition that each Faculty will have unique realities and opportunities regarding enrolment in
each of the four major categories - domestic and international, graduate and undergraduate.
A set of considerations is being developed that will guide the setting of enrolment objectives.
How is our enrolment positioned within the Ontario cohort of university students?
What are admission averages and retention rates? Are there learning outcomes that have to be
met?
It is only through a revenue allocation model that is linked directly to the source of revenue that
we will be able to provide incentives for Faculties to pursue enrolment where they think they can
be competitive.
Within a year we will have to develop a new Strategic Mandate Agreement with the province of
Ontario, and it is hoped that this new approach to budgeting will help us identify and pursue an
agreed upon target with the province for enrolment.
I will not be issuing a campus-wide realignment target table this year. In reality, you will likely
hear me say the word realignment much less in the future. 2016 is a leap year in many ways.
This does not mean that there will not be budgetary challenges, but with the new model we will
all have greater transparency around enrolment numbers and their relation to budget, and will be
able to put in place incentives that Faculty can use to maximize their enrolment potential.
I want to conclude by talking about pride... pride in our students, our faculty, our staff... and
pride in what we can accomplish going forward. Pride in our university will give us all a
swagger that will be felt by everyone, and it will make others want to be a part of us.
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I want to suggest that the pursuit of pride is made easier if we have a sense of place. I remember
the little Munich sidewalk cafe breakfast more than I remember being in line in our car at a Tim
Horton's drive-through. Both times I had a bagel and coffee... but you know what I mean.
So I want to get at this issue of sense of place. This past autumn we enjoyed for the first time a
car-free and care-free Sunset Avenue. We had community barbeques there, and students and
faculty and staff could stroll and relax.
I do not want the University of Windsor to forever refer to that wonderful space as Sunset
Avenue. It is not where the sun sets... it is where the feeling about being at a university should
be nourished.
So I am going to launch a process shortly to come up with a name for this new pedestrian
thoroughfare.
It will be a process open to everyone... come up with a name for Sunset Avenue. I will tell you
right now that the suggestion to call it "The Street that Used to be called Sunset" won't fly.
And then there is historic dead-ending of Patricia Avenue. This spring, adjacent to the new
Stephen and Vicki Adams Welcome Centre, we will be completing the landscaping with a new
entrance way. It is where Patricia Avenue used to continue on.
This is a wonderful historic Champs-Elysee through the old part of the campus, past Dillon Hall
and the soaring London Plane trees. For the non-botanists, those are the beautiful trees with the
mottled bark, scattered among which are the fabulous sculptures donated by the Odette families.
When I lived in Strasbourg, France, in the 1980s as a single man, there was a park near my
apartment filled with London Plane trees. I walked a wonderful pathway through them countless
times.
Many years later, I could not wait to travel there with Debra and show her that path.
Every time I walk through our campus I think of it. But what is even more important is that
every time I see a London Plane tree somewhere else in the world, I also think of our beautiful
University of Windsor campus and that park in front of Dillon Hall. Places stick with us.
How can something this vital to our campus not have a name? So, in addition to having a
process to name Sunset Avenue, we will have a process to name what used to be Patricia
Avenue.
The names could be ones that reflect our traditional lands, they could be ones that reflect our
diversity, they could be ones that honor great alumni or scholars, they could be ones that remind
us that education and compassion have the power to change lives immeasurably.
Once we have names, they will be prominently displayed as you enter what will be the two
greatest corridors through the campus. So stay tuned for this.
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And this next summer we will begin work on an area that right now we refer to in our Master
Plan only as the Commons. It is the space between the Odette building and the Dr. Murray
O'Neil Medical Education Building.
We are also now about to begin a formal planning process for the future of Essex Hall. I
acknowledge that many of our science programs have been very patient about this, as they have
been patient as the Biology building has undergone extensive repairs.
We have also begun a process working with students to see how this Student Centre can be
enhanced to work better for all of people and organizations who use it.
And the house on Riverside Drive that was acquired from Assumption University is being
converted to a new home for our Psychological Services Research Centre.
I am not sure how many of you have been in the downtown lately, but the new home for our
School of Social Work and Centre for Executive and Professional Education is open.
It is a wonderful building, and one that will make a difference to our students for generations to
come.
With a courtyard, and a rooftop terrace overlooking the river, it also has very special places,
places that we hope will become a part of the memories our graduates have of studying at the
University of Windsor.
And then there is the Armouries. How many of you remember when this picture was painted?
There is currently a metamorphosis occurring within the building that, when completed, will be
completely unique for our University and for our region.
A whole new level is being created below ground. When completed, the building will have
spaces within spaces.
It will be a place that we are sure will inspire creative students in music and visual arts. Over the
past couple of months I have seen art exhibits and heard concerts featuring our students and
alumni of our music and creative arts programs. They have been nothing short of spectacular.
And across the street, on the site of the former Tunnel BBQ restaurant, will be a building that
will house visual arts and film production.
Right now, this area is being used as a staging area for the Armouries construction, but the goal
is that the entire complex will be completed for Fall of 2017.
There is already a lot of thought going into what these new facilities will mean in terms of
student recruitment.
There is also a lot of thought going into the moment when the current music building can be
taken down. I am not receiving petitions to keep it intact.
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We are also working on a concept to convert the old Greyhound bus depot into a cultural centre
for the University, a space that could be used by our faculty, staff and students, but also by
community organizations in the creative arts. We are currently approaching foundations for
financial support for this project.
And as I am sure you have noticed, Electa Hall is down. There is a continuing need to
rationalize the footprint of the University as well. We need new facilities that will appeal to
students, but we also must keep right-sizing ourselves.
So as I said at the beginning of my address: The future of postsecondary education will be one
of preparing students for life in an increasingly discontinuous, interrupted and opportunity-driven
world, and one of figuring out how institutions can prepare for the same things.
This year is a leap year, and between changing enrolment, new budget models, and continual
renewal of spaces, there is a lot of leaping going on.
But I want to close with a plea. It is a plea to seize the opportunities that are brought on by all of
the disruption that new technology and change brings.
Think differently about what you do, and think about what you can do differently. In doing so,
you will be a part of shaping a new future for the University of Windsor.
It is almost a cliche to say that universities of the future will not be what they were in the past.
But I have absolutely every confidence that when it comes time for rolling up sleeves, the people
at our university will take a back seat to no one.
A sense of place, a sense of hope, and sense of pride. We can do it. Thank you.
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