The new university plan: Usask moves in a bold new direction
The university plan, The University the World Needs, is an innovative and inspirational document designed to shape the University of Saskatchewan over the next seven years, to 2025.
“It is a bold new direction for us and I think it is unique as plans go,” said Usask President Peter Stoicheff. “We talk a lot about boldness in the plan, and about our three key commitments: courageous curiosity, boundless collaboration and inspired communities. And when we use that kind of language, it is not meant to contradict the humility that is so important to the institution.
“To me, humility is always knowing that you could be doing better than you already are. It is language to suggest that we can and should be working to take our rightful place among the greater institutions in the country and, in select ways, in the world.”
The plan drew on extensive consultation from on and off campus, and was approved by the Board of Governors, Senate and University Council. It builds on the 2016 Mission, Vision and Values document, and is rooted in the principles of connectivity, creativity, diversity and sustainability.
“As we were building the Mission, Vision and Values, I was struck by the fact that 60 per cent of our faculty have been hired in the past 10 years,” Stoicheff said. “So, this plan is not just about people like me who have been here for many years now, it’s about our new faculty. It’s about the people who are en route to tenure or are newly tenured, and they are the ones who were saying specific things about what they wanted this university to be. I found that really compelling and those are things that were incorporated into this plan.”
One of the key pillars of the plan involves Indigenous impact, guided by contributions from Indigenous Elders, traditional Knowledge Keepers and Language Keepers, who gifted the plan its Indigenous names during a special ceremony. The names, nikanitan manacihitowinihk (Cree) and ni manachihitoonaan (Michif), translate to “Let us lead with respect.” In addition to its ambitious goals and commitments, the new plan provides guideposts and targets to drive priorities and progress, while featuring a fundamental commitment to reconciliation and Indigenization.
“Indigenization is not a separate commitment on its own, it runs through every single commitment we have,” Stoicheff said. “And that’s the university of the future. As we talk more and more about reconciliation and Indigenization, the people who really know what that needs to look like include the Indigenous communities and the Indigenous leaders and the Indigenous students and the Indigenous Elders. And they have played, and will continue to play, an integral role throughout this entire process.”
Goals of the plan include increasing enrolment and peer-reviewed funding, improving academic rankings, enhancing alumni engagement and being recognized as a leader in Indigenization.
Stoicheff highlighted five key areas of impact the university will aspire to achieve: transformational work leading to reconciliation, productive collaboration, meaningful impact, developing distinguished learners and earning global recognition.
“We want to make a difference in the world, based on what we are doing at this university,” Stoicheff said. “We want to have an impact, and not just the impact that we believe communities and the world needs, but the impact the world needs us to have. And that led to the formulation to become ‘the university the world needs.’ We are determined to be an engaged university, a university that is boldly exploring the major challenges of our time, that we are equipped to explore and help solve.
“One example of that is our Global Institute for Water Security, which is ranked by the Shanghai Academic Rankings of World Universities as No.1 in the country, No.6 in North America and 18th in the world. And I would strongly suggest that those numbers beyond Canada will even improve.”
So how will the university define success in 2025? For Stoicheff, the institution will be firmly focused on the future, designing disruptive technologies and preparing students to take their place in an ever-changing workplace environment.
“We will be a university that not only trains students for the workplace, but prepares them for the challenges that the future workforce will face,” Stoicheff said. “Disruptive technologies are leading us to the point where we need to understand that we are training students now in skills for jobs that neither the students, nor we, can imagine. By 2025 we will be a university that is comfortable with disruption and comfortable with disruptive technologies, and that is also contributing to it in the research that it does.
“To that end, we will govern ourselves not only on the basis of what we want to be, but what the world needs us to be.”
– James Shewaga is communications specialist and editor with University Relations, University of Saskatchewan.