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Highlights
UBC tops global university impact rankings
I am proud to announce that UBC ranked number one in the world for taking urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts and ranked one in Canada for making cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable, according to Times Higher Education. UBC’s achievements in these rankings is a clear reflection of the great work of our students, faculty and staff who combine their expertise to ensure UBC is a leader in creating vibrant, sustainable and connected communities and campuses.
Gairdner Prize
I would like to congratulate UBC’s Dr. Connie Eaves, who has been awarded the 2019 Canada Gairdner Wightman Award. The award recognizes scientists who make transformative contributions to research that impacts human health. Dr. Eaves received the prestigious award for her pioneering work and leadership in the study of hematopoietic, mammary and cancer stem cells, as well as for her dedicated advocacy for early career investigators and women in science.
Research Funding
I’m happy to say that UBC Okanagan has achieved a 90% increase in research funding since 2014/2015, and a 239% increase in MITACs funding. UBCO has high success rates for NSERC and SSHRC grants, exceeding national averages. These great results were presented by UBCO Vice-Principal Research Dr. Phil Barker, at an April 1st town hall. Dr. Barker’s presentation can be found at https://research.ok.ubc.ca/welcome.html.
Development and Alumni Engagement
This year, we have surpassed our goal of achieving $200 million in fundraising, and reached a total of 75,788 alumni engagements (exceeding our initial goal of 72,000 alumni). These results include $84 million raised from 15,103 donors for the Blue & Gold Campaign. I would like to congratulate Vice-President Development and Alumni Engagement Heather McCaw and her team for these outstanding results, which I will elaborate on at Thursday’s Board meeting.
Juno Honours
Congratulations to pianist James Parker (BMus’85) and baritone Tyler Duncan (BMus’98) for their wins at the 2019 Juno Awards last month! Parker and his trio won the 2019 Juno Award for Classical Album of the Year: Solo or Chamber for their album The End of Flowers: Works by Clarke and Ravel (Analekta). Duncan (BMus’98) appeared as a soloist on the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s Vaughan Williams: Piano Concerto; Oboe Concerto; Serenade to Music; Flos Campi (Chandos), which won the Juno Award for Classical Album of the Year: Large Ensemble. The album was earlier nominated for a Grammy Award.
Strategic Plan Discussions
I spoke about UBC’s strategic plan at the American Council on Education (ACE) meeting in Philadelphia in March. ACE is the major coordinating body for colleges and universities in the United States and it was an honour to discuss our strategic plan with such an influential group. My presentation was well received, with participants expressing particular interest in how UBC is implementing the strategic plan.
Later that month, I again spoke about implementing the strategic plan during my annual address to the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, with particular reference to how the plan affects the Metro Vancouver region. You can read a transcript of my remarks here.
International Strategy
UBC’s international strategy is a key part of the strategic plan. The strategy is centred around how global engagement can help UBC achieve its goals as outlined in the strategic plan: fostering global citizenship, and contributing to building a better world. Two key themes have surfaced through the consultation process: the global citizenship of UBC students and of UBC as an institution (our social purpose); and contributing to building a better world through addressing issues of global relevance and through support and celebration of our capacity-building activities.
Key actions that have garnered support at all levels of the community include: 1) facilitating internationalization at UBC through curricular and co-curricular activities to meaningfully engage and connect domestic and international students; 2) expanding our current set of partnerships to include communities, corporates, cities, and countries, and build networks to broaden our impact both locally and globally and connect with pressing global challenges; 3) creating a heat map of current global engagement to identify areas of expertise and overlap, and convene multidisciplinary teams of researchers to engage on issues of global relevance; and 4) developing a communications strategy to highlight and celebrate the significant capacity-building activity being carried out by the UBC community.
McGill-UBC Collaboration
Last week, McGill Principal Suzanne Fortier and I announced the creation of the Peterson-Wesbrook Scholars Program to support the reciprocal exchange of students between McGill and UBC. The program is named in honour of Sir William Peterson, Principal of McGill University (1895 to 1919), and Frank F. Wesbrook, founding President of UBC (1913-1918). The Peterson-Wesbrook Scholars Program will facilitate the exchange of students for scholarly work and will allow students to benefit from the special facilities and courses found at each university. Both UBC and McGill have provided seed funding for the program. I’m so grateful for the long history of collaboration between our universities.
Community Housing Roundtable
On April 8, I cohosted a President’s Community Roundtable on supporting non-market housing innovation in Metro Vancouver. Housing and community advocates and experts came together with myself and Dr. Penny Gurstein of the Housing Research Collaborative to discuss UBC’s role in non-market housing in the region. In the coming weeks, the UBC Community Engagement team will draft a report that includes the thoughts and ideas that were shared, opportunities for future collaboration, and how UBC may contribute. Conversations have already started about how to move toward tangible outcomes. I will inform Board members once the report is available.
Canada-CIFAR AI chairs
Four UBC computer scientists have been appointed to chairs as part of an expansion of the Canada-CIFAR AI Chairs program. The AI program, funded by the Federal government with $86.5 million over five years, provides researchers with long-term, dedicated funding to support their research programs and help them train the next generation of Canadian AI leaders. The new UBC Science Canada CIFAR AI Chairs are Leonid Sigal, Kevin Leyton-Brown, Mark Schmidt, and Frank Wood. They join UBC statistician Sara Mostafavi, appointed to the program in 2018.You can read more here.
Welcome to Robin Ciceri and Ainsley Carry
Finally, I would like to welcome the two newest members of the executive team to UBC. Robin Ciceri joined us as Vice-President External Relations on March 1, and Ainsley Carry joined the team as Vice-President Students on April 1. I look forward to working with both of them, and the entire executive, as we implement the strategic plan and lead UBC into its next century. |