From the Principal: An open letter to the Queen's community

A more immediate and urgent consideration is the revision to post-secondary funding presently being implemented in Ontario. One consequence of this will be a focus on certain fixed employment and economic outcomes—results not antithetical to universities’ larger mission, certainly, but also nowhere near a full accounting of that mission as we understand it. The challenge we will face in negotiating these changes is to ensure that while we address public expectations as articulated by the present government, we do not lose sight of our larger and more profound goal. That is, to foster human talent through cultivation of the mind and the creative spirit, and through research to advance what we know about ourselves and the world we inhabit.

We are also at the end of Queen’s most recent planning initiative, the Strategic Framework 2014–2019. That document was intended, in former principal Woolf’s words, “to strengthen the university and make it more resilient in the turbulent times ahead,” and in the context of the challenging circumstances I have just described, we can be grateful for that preparation. As we enter this new and profoundly challenging phase, we are solidly positioned, academically and financially, which is certainly a necessity if we are to be resilient. Yet we will need to be much more than that. We also need to be bold, determined, and ambitious for Queen’s.

What we need to be and what we need to do are two different things. The latter is secondary to the former: strategic planning—the usual way in which organizations decide what they are going to do—is useful in organizing day-to-day activities around identified goals; but, in the absence of a clearly-articulated, far-reaching, and aspirational vision for the university, conventional planning will yield only predictable and mundane outcomes. We need to be self-excelling,  to be led daily more by our values and conception of what Queen’s University is and what it exists to do, and less by the demands and imperatives of our day-to-day transactions.

 

Both universities and people within them have accepted the application of an industrial model to an activity that is fundamentally about nurturing humanity rather than producing commodities.

Universities are out of the habit of talking about such things. Our funders in government have adopted an instrumental view of universities that can have the effect of constraining any conversation that looks beyond our immediate economic or social impact. On campuses,  I would observe that in this era of mass higher education, process frequently trumps principle, conformity outweighs individual need, and a culture of measurement has taken hold that dismisses or trivializes anything that cannot be quantified. Most within our institutions would vehemently assert that education is not industry, but the truth is that over the last decade both universities and people within them have accepted the application of an industrial model to an activity that is fundamentally about nurturing humanity rather than producing commodities.

All of this is to say that before Queen’s can decide on what will follow the Strategic Framework 2014-2019, we need to have a broader conversation about what matters to this institution, what it exists to do, beyond teaching, research and service, and how it can excel itself according to those criteria. While I said at the start that we need to be ambitious, ambition itself is not enough. We need to be excited and compelled by goals and aspirations that confer a higher value on our day-to-day activities and speak to our passion and convictions.

I will use every opportunity to advance the conversation…

The purpose of this letter is to let you know that  I am initiating a  conversation with the entire university community about the issues I have outlined here. In fact, the conversation will not be confined to campus, but will draw in the Bader International Study Centre, Queen’s alumni and friends, as well as our immediate and broader communities. I will use every possible opportunity to advance the conversation when I meet with individuals and groups throughout the year.

I hope very much that you will seek out opportunities to participate and advance the discussions. Next spring, I intend to report to you on the conversation, to articulate the highest aspirations of our university community as they have been expressed or emerged through the process, and to indicate in broad terms a possible strategy for achieving them.

I look forward to the conversation.

Submit your contribution to the conversation online: queensu.ca/principal/join-conversation.*

Originally published in the 2019 Issue #4 of the Queen's Alumni Review.

*submission period closed