TIME TO PUSH THE WESTERN VEHICLE

This new guy is prett y impressive. Soft-spoken, unpretentious, hard to rattle. I asked him a question about the University of Waterloo, where he was vice-president (academic) and provost, that was designed to knock him back on his heels. (I hinted that Waterloo’s reputation might be bigger than its measurable achievement). He didn’t blink. He conceded part, but not all, of my point. Then he added that a hefty reputation is not a bad thing for a university. It might be good if Western’s were to improve along similar lines.

 

To simplify a bit, that’s a big part of the assignment Chakma has set for himself since he became the 10th Western president just over a year ago. From 1994 to 2009 his predecessor Paul Davenport worked to transform Western from a comfortable middleweight institution into a university with the infrastructure and faculty that could make it competitive with the best in the country.

 

Chakma wants that to continue, but for that to happen, perceptions need to catch up to the new reality. The rest of the world needs to start realizing that Western is a more formidable institution than it used to be. And, indeed, Western’s faculty, students and alumni need to catch up to facts too, and calibrate their ambitions for the future accordingly.

 

One thing I learned at lunch is that Western’s student recruitment has an odd middle-distance quality to it. We do quite well at attracting students from Toronto. We don’t do as well at persuading students from the London area to stay home for university.

 

And we aren’t really even on the map for international students. Barely four per cent of current students are international students. The latter two phenomena don’t seem to have much in common, but to me they’re linked. University is an adventure for young adults. You’re not likely to stay home unless you realize home can be an adventure. And if you’re traveling halfway around the world, you will select your targets based on their reputation and the noise they’re making.

 

Chakma has set about making noise. He published an article in the UK’s Times Higher Education Supplement this summer touting Canada’s attempts to lure top talent to Canadian campuses. Thanks to some recent good news in high-stakes recruiting, he was able to begin his article about a national trend with a local success story: “The announcement that world-renowned neuroscientist Adrian Owen was moving with most of his research team from the University of Cambridge to the University of Western Ontario in Canada shocked some of the British media. We should expect more such surprises from Canadian universities.”

 

Chakma wants to triple the representation of international students in Western’s undergraduate population. And he wants to sharply increase the number of our own students who get out of London, and Canada, to experience at least one term of study in another country. That reflects his own life: he was born in Bangladesh and studied in Algeria, France and Canada.

 

But this isn’t just a case of management-as-memoir. It also reflects the reality that broader perspectives encourage higher ambition. You can’t coast when you’re somewhere strange. You can’t assume the way they did things back home is the only way. And you start to realize you’re able to think and act beyond the horizons you used to take for granted.

 

At lunch we all had a good debate about how perceptions of Western can be brought into line with its lately improved reality so the university’s progress can continue and accelerate. What’s already obvious is that, in encouraging Western students to notice the world and in seeking to draw the world’s attention to Western, Chakma is attempting to kick Western out of its regional base and into the international arena.

That won’t be easy. I think my alma mater is ready. So I dusted off my credit card and, for the first time in too long, made a donation. I learned that Western’s Make a Difference campaign is a litt le more than one-third of the way to its $500,000,000 goal for 2014. That’s ambitious, but our alma mater is becoming a place where ambition is expected.

 

If anyone reads my column here regularly, they’ll know I never use it as part of a fundraising drive. My lunch with Dr. Chakma led me to make an exception this time. Many of us have watched from a distance as Western transformed itself, from a wonderful place for collecting undergraduate memories, into a contender. Now’s a good time to stop watching and help push.