An open letter for both new and continuing university students in B.C.
COVID-19 may well be the defining event for your generation of post-secondary students. To help slow the pandemic’s spread, protect our health-care system and save lives, B.C.’s research universities joined institutions across our province and country to shift courses and programming online. It took enormous effort and patience on the part of tens of thousands of staff, faculty, and all of you. We look forward to reopening our campuses to you and offering classes in person when health officials advise it is safe to do so, and we remain as committed as ever to providing high-quality education in a safe environment.
Most of you will experience an online learning environment this fall, except for those situations where in-person participation is essential to learning outcomes and can be managed safely. While many of you, your parents and loved ones have let us know you are grateful that we have prioritized your health and safety, we also know some of you are concerned about the quality of learning that will occur outside the conventional classroom or laboratory.
We take your concerns very seriously. As university leaders charged with ensuring academic and teaching excellence, we want you to know that we are confident that our faculty and instructors will provide you with quality learning experiences that will help you build relationships, develop a sense of community wherever you are located and give you the academic foundations you need to succeed in your studies and for your life ahead. We also want to reassure you that the thousands of committed staff who support you through counselling, academic advice, emotional and spiritual support, volunteer opportunities, career information, learning supports, financial aid, and in so many other ways, are gearing up to stay connected and accessible in this new, primarily online environment.
If you are uncertain about what to do in the fall, know that we remain committed to providing you with the best learning experience possible. We have learning and teaching centres preparing to support you with navigating the online learning environment, including IT support, and most literature and learning resources can be obtained through our network of virtual libraries. Your opportunities to learn from leading experts in your field and broaden your intellectual horizons will still be available to you, regardless of where you are.
We also know from talking with many of you that you value education and see it as a key step in gaining skills, experiences and knowledge for a fulfilling future. Your learning experiences this fall will also provide you with opportunities to explore different forms of communication, to engage with classmates and instructors in new and interesting ways, to build bridges to other cultures, and to experience the opportunities that technology can provide in connecting people, issues, and ideas. We look forward to exploring these possibilities with you and involving you in creating new ways of discovering knowledge, examining ideas and thinking critically. Whether you are connecting online or attending in the classroom, know that the learning experience and the knowledge you gain from it remains one of the most important and enduring assets you will take away when you graduate.
Obviously, this is a very uncertain time for you and everyone planning to begin or resume university studies. We thank you for your patience and resolve. You worked hard to gain admission to university and your determination to earn a degree is a measure of how important post-secondary education is to you, our communities and to our collective future. We want you to know how excited we are to welcome you and how determined we are to provide you with the support you need to get the most out of your courses and programs.
University education is one of the best investments of time and effort that you can make for your future. We look forward to welcoming you in September.
Andrew Szeri, provost, University of B.C.; Jon Driver, provost, Simon Fraser University; Valerie Kuehne, provost, University of Victoria; Dan Ryan, provost, University of Northern B.C.; William Holmes, provost, Royal Roads University; Christine Bovis-Cnossen, provost, Thompson Rivers University; Ananya Mukherjee-Reed, provost, University of B.C.-Okanagan