The Provost and Vice-Principal (Finance and Administration) have provided an update on the new Queen’s Renew Project in an email to all faculty and staff at the university. The memo follows Principal Patrick Deane’s announcement of the project last week.

The text of the email memo follows:

Dear faculty and staff, 

Queen’s University is embarking on a multi-year university-wide initiative, the Queen’s Renew Project, to ensure the university is structured and operating most effectively to deliver on our academic mission.

As we have shared previously, the university is at a crucial juncture with respect to its financial situation. We are facing a significant deficit, due to several key factors: the provincial tuition cut and freeze; falling international student enrolment, which has not recovered to pre-pandemic levels; and high inflation. We are not alone in this challenge; many other universities in Ontario are facing similar difficulties.

The university must continue to address our current operating budget issues and work to reach a structurally balanced budget over the next two years. While this difficult work within the faculties and shared services continues, separately, we are embarking on the Queen’s Renew Project to ensure we can continue to deliver on our academic mission over the long term, beyond our current budget issues.  

To this end, Principal Patrick Deane has established the Professional Services Working Group, which we are co-chairing and includes representation from faculties and shared services. This working group will, in turn, oversee the Queen’s Renew Project. Its goal is to help us understand where we need to invest to meet current challenges and secure future opportunities. A further goal is to create a working environment where professional staff, who deliver administrative and support work that bolsters Queen’s teaching and research mission, are well supported with effective tools, systems, and processes.  

As Principal Deane announced last week, we will be supported in this work by the Nous Group, an international consultancy that specializes in the university sector.  

Nous's work will focus on:

• Benchmarking Queen's current structures and ways of working against peer universities, using its international benchmarking tool, UniForum 
• Providing recommendations with details on areas where we are doing well and where Queen’s has opportunities to improve.  

The Professional Services Working Group will consider recommendations and determine next steps. An internal project office will be established to support and carry out the longer-term implementation of recommendations. More details on this office will follow soon.

The first phase of the project begins next week with the launch of an internal Service Effectiveness Survey, followed by a data collection exercise focusing on standard service functions in early March. Those directly involved will be receiving direct communications later this week.

We look forward to the collaborative work ahead, as we move forward with the Queen’s Renew Project. We also very much understand that change is inherently difficult, particularly when undertaken during challenging financial times. We will continue to update you regularly throughout this process, and more information will be available on the project website. Thank you for your patience and hard work as we launch this project over the coming weeks.  

Sincerely,

Matthew Evans                                               
Provost and Vice-Principal (Academic)

Donna Janiec 
Vice-Principal (Finance and Administration)