In the cover story of this Queen’s Alumni Review we learn about Cara and Murray Sinclair, whose extraordinary gift to the university in memory of Murray’s brother will dramatically increase our capacity in cancer research, enhance the facilities in which that research is conducted, and create new training opportunities in the field.
Elsewhere in this issue we also hear from Dr. Jane Philpott, Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, about her recent book that lays out a new vision for health-care reform in Canada. It is a vision that has driven some of the notable achievements of Queen’s Health Sciences during Dean Philpott’s tenure: the highly innovative and timely Queen’s-Lakeridge Health MD Family Medicine Program, for example, which has been much applauded as a new way of addressing Ontario’s acute shortage of family physicians, and also the Weeneebayko Health Education Campus initiative on James Bay, which will train Indigenous health professionals for that community.
Physical and mental health is a vital concern that touches people everywhere in this country, and these stories speak to the positive and significant impact of Queen’s University in that area. But the spheres of life in which the beneficial impact of our university is felt are many, varied, and extend far beyond Canada’s borders. This year’s winner of the Principal’s Globally Engaged Education Innovation Award, for example, is the Jim Leech Mastercard Foundation Fellowship on Entrepreneurship, delivered by the Dunin-Deshpande Queen’s Innovation Centre, that has in the space of three years brought subsidized training in entrepreneurship to 4,500 students from 350 different universities in 49 African countries.
At a time when the public estimation of universities is being complicated by cultural-political strains in society at large, stories like these need to be told and retold. The economic impact of Queen’s is considerable – estimated three years ago to be $1.82 billion in GDP annually in Kingston alone – but that pales in comparison with the human impact of our teaching and research mission, which has been building since 1841.
Right now, though, universities in Ontario are having to make the case for their importance to society and the economy. It should be easy to do, because the facts are clear. Despite being funded by government at 57 per cent of the Canadian average, they produce graduates – 90.4 per cent of whom are employed within six months and can expect to earn 35 per cent more on average than persons without a degree. The number of 18- to 24-year-olds in the province has been rising and is projected to do so steadily over the next 15 years. We are already seeing the consequence of this: over the last four years, the number of Ontario high school applicants to the province’s universities has risen by 12 per cent. And all of this speaks only to the private good served by institutions like our own; the public good, effected by those same students when they graduate and by our researchers, artists and innovators, is incalculable.
I am often asked by alumni how they can be helpful to Queen’s, and of course there are many ways graduates and friends of the university can sustain and advance the work we do here. But the easiest way is potentially the most powerful, and that is to tell the stories of your alma mater, to publicly celebrate the impact of our students and faculty, and to be an informed, active, and passionate advocate for higher education.
Originally published in the Fall 2024 Alumni Review.