{"id":263058,"date":"2011-09-01T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-01T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/issues\/the-creation-of-an-innovative-university\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T20:29:53","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T00:29:53","slug":"the-creation-of-an-innovative-university","status":"publish","type":"issues","link":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/2011\/09\/the-creation-of-an-innovative-university\/","title":{"rendered":"The creation of an “innovative university”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The truth is I didn’t start out to create a so-called \u201cinnovative university,\u201d nor a university of any description. Let me take you back to the beginning. On September 23, 1988, I made my debut as president of Durham College in Oshawa, Ontario, having just concluded my rookie presidency at Red River College in Winnipeg. Olympic buffs may recall that was the night Ben Johnson won gold. As a \u201cserendipitist,\u201d I took that as an omen \u2014 which I rescinded the next morning. I’ll return to serendipity later.<\/p>\n

The record shows I was \u201ca college guy\u201d all my working life\u00a0\u2014 42 years to be precise. I started at the forerunner institution to Confederation College in Thunder Bay in 1964, shifted to Confederation in 1969 and remained in a college’s employ until I walked out UOIT’s door June 30, 2006, having remained on Durham College’s payroll in the latter years for pension purposes. I was also president of Durham until March 31, 2006, being the only Canadian to serve as president of a college and a university concurrently (2001-06).<\/p>\n

So I’ve always loved colleges \u2014 their diverse student body, their applied mandate, their market-tested faculty and their close connection to their community (they’re known as \u201ccommunity colleges\u201d for a reason). So when I moved to Oshawa, my intent was purely to be the best college president I could be.<\/p>\n

So why UOIT?<\/p>\n

Step one of the UOIT journey began several months after I arrived at Durham College when a (male) faculty member dropped in and burst into tears because, as I learned, he and his wife had had to tell their youngest of four children the night before they could not afford to help send her to university. They already had three children in post-secondary education out of town, were both working two jobs, were living in a townhouse to save money \u2014 and the cupboard was bare.<\/p>\n

The daughter also worked hard but didn’t earn enough to cover tuition, books and out-of-town costs, nor was she eligible for the Ontario Student Assistance Program as her parents (a teacher and a secretary) earned over the limit.<\/p>\n

To secure a yes from Premier Harris, the ultimate authority in\u00a0approving something as huge as a new university, we had to\u00a0propose something new, something \u201cinnovative,\u201d that had\u00a0nothing to do with geography but everything to do with\u00a0preserving and growing Ontario\u2019s economic base. And so the\u00a0phrase \u201cMIT of the North\u201d came to mind.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Coming from northern and western Canada as I did, I couldn’t help reflecting that this would never happen in comparable communities there. After all, Durham Region and Northumberland County (which includes Pickering, Ajax, Whitby, Oshawa, Clarington, Port Hope, Cobourg, Uxbridge and Port Perry) had 400,000 people back then (today, it has over 600,000 and will reach a million within a generation). Compare that to much smaller communities such as Brandon, Regina, Saskatoon, Lethbridge or Prince Rupert \u2014 or indeed, to communities in Ontario such as Kingston, Peterborough, North Bay, Thunder Bay, Kitchener, Waterloo or Guelph. Somehow, Oshawa and environs had missed the boat.<\/p>\n

Step two is that I got to know the community and noticed it had no daily newspaper, no local TV channel, no performing arts centre, no professional theatre \u2014 and no university. By contrast, my hometown of Thunder Bay (and Brandon, etc.) had all of these.<\/p>\n

Step three was the emergent role of knowledge as the undeniable passport to an individual’s and community’s success.<\/p>\n

So I decided to improve the overall quality of life for my fellow citizens, starting with a university, believing if that happened, other shortfalls (e.g., a performing arts centre) would self-correct. Actually, this isn’t quite true. I didn’t start out to create a university per se but rather to import university programming from Trent, York and Ryerson. This served a purpose for about five years but as the population exploded to the scale of Winnipeg and Hamilton, these arrangements proved inadequate.<\/p>\n

The next step, therefore, was to try to create a university. I knew this was virtually impossible, involving many years and abundant rejection, but I had been through that before (as chair of the board that built the Thunder Bay Community Auditorium) so that my patience, persistence and resilience had been hardened.<\/p>\n

Task one was to make this a community project, not some individual’s. So, I invited 40 leading citizens from Pickering to Cobourg \u2014 leaders from business, education, other professions, labour, politics, religion, multicultural groups, the media \u2014 and described the dream, including its inevitably tortuous trajectory. When I then asked if they were in, they all answered yes, knowing that our probability of success was less than 1 percent. This group continued to meet throughout the journey, two to three times per year, and was instrumental with good advice and key advocacy at strategic times.<\/p>\n

Task two was to define the \u201cdream.\u201d Because we knew that everyone outside Durham\/ Northumberland would hate the whole idea viscerally, we started with the least imposing concept possible \u2014 a university that was modest in every way: enrolment, programming, research agenda and so on. I quickly realized it didn’t matter what sort of university we were proposing, as everyone else from afar \u2014 educators, civil servants, politicians, media \u2014 was fundamentally opposed. No one bought the \u201cgeographic fairness\u201d argument (because universities deem themselves universal). Some, those who were closest, feared the new competition. And all worried that the already thin operating and capital pots would be diluted.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, we persevered through various cabinet ministers, deputy ministers, premiers, governments \u2014 until the above-mentioned serendipity happened with the election in 1995 of the Progressive Conservative government of Mike Harris, which many will find ironic and\/or offensive, given his disdain for much in universities. However, all six MPPs from Durham\/Northumberland were Tories, with five of the six in cabinet! \u2014 including Janet Ecker and especially Jim Flaherty (without whom there would be no UOIT).<\/p>\n

To secure a yes from Premier Harris, the ultimate authority in approving something as huge as a new university, we had to propose something new, something \u201cinnovative,\u201d that had nothing to do with geography but everything to do with preserving and growing Ontario’s economic base. And so the phrase \u201cMIT of the North\u201d came to mind \u2014 jobs, careers, commercializable research.<\/p>\n

So how is UOIT allegedly \u201cinnovative\u201d? Let’s start with three words in the name: \u201cInstitute of Technology.\u201d In the US and elsewhere, those are prestigious words in a university’s name but not in Canada. So we took a risk, the first of many.<\/p>\n

A second risk was to impose a \u201cmandatory laptop\u201d model on our learning philosophy as well as \u201cmandatory learning pedagogy\u201d for all professors. We wanted our students to graduate as genuine technology experts, regardless of their profession, and we wanted our professors to excel as enablers of learning.<\/p>\n

A third risk was for UOIT to share a campus with Durham College in truly innovative ways, including shared facilities (e.g., library, student centre, residences, athletic facilities), joint student newspaper, joint student government, and clubs and associations open to both institutions’ students. In fact, since Trent also had students on campus, all of the above was a three-way venture (one year, the student president was actually from Trent University in Peterborough).<\/p>\n

A fourth risk was to commit to have the university up and running in two years (instead of the usual five or six).<\/p>\n

However, the best way to assess a university’s philosophy is to read its Act and then use it as a benchmark to judge its performance. The<\/p>\n

UOIT Act declares a special mission for career-oriented education and seamless credit pathways for college grads. The objects go on to require that the university be innovative, meeting the individual needs of each student and the market needs of employers; be of the highest quality in learning, teaching, research and professional practice; and relate to the Durham\/Northumberland region but also Ontario, Canada and the world.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

From the Act stemmed the plans, actions, decisions, budgets, processes, programs and projects to make the Act real. Some of these included:<\/p>\n