I recently had the opportunity to discuss a survey that has just come out with The Fulcrum, one of our student newspapers on campus, and to reflect on our university’s situation and reputation, as well as on the challenges ahead. Here is some food for thought for you:

On surveys and rankings…

Some surveys give the University low marks when our students are asked to rate their experience. We have spent a lot of time examining the issue, because these results are disappointing and trouble us a great deal. Every single professor, every member of our staff and everyone here in the administration wants more than anything else to provide our students with an experience they will look back on as among the best years of their lives. While the University of Ottawa is among the very best in Canada in many respects, these surveys tell us that there is still work to do. We will not turn this around overnight, but we have made a good start.

Several related factors are involved. The first is our very rapid growth in student population over the last few years—a rate of growth so rapid that our building plans haven’t been able to keep up. This has presented challenges across the campus and especially in our heavily attended undergraduate programs. Large numbers in the early years of study can also create an impersonal atmosphere in which our students do not feel that they are valued as individuals.

As far as the physical environment is concerned, we set dollars aside every year to upgrade and expand existing buildings (Lamoureux is a recent example) and we are moving as quickly as possible to create new spaces for students as well as more classrooms and labs (the new Social Sciences Tower along the canal will help a lot). We are working with the deans to prepare and sequence a five-year building plan.

We should not underestimate the importance of food services on campus, and I hope you'll agree with me that there has been a vast improvement this year, with more to come. On the academic side, we have discussed with the deans several innovative approaches to enrich our students’ learning experience, and we will continue to look for ways in which we can support our professors in providing the high quality of student experience in the classroom they are working towards.

On student-faculty interactions…

This is an example of the challenge I’ve just referred to: greater numbers of students, especially in the early years in our undergraduate programs, have meant more sections in many courses and often more students per class. Although our professors are sincerely committed to providing every student with the best possible experience, circumstances make that very difficult to achieve. Among the innovations we have discussed with the deans are greater use of smaller, seminar-type instruction as a supplement to larger classes, and strategies that would create more mentoring opportunities for students. It is up to us to provide our outstanding professors with the support and the facilities they need in order to furnish the excellent student experience they want to create.

On our environmental initiatives…

We have amazing environmental initiatives on campus, such as the ban on the sale of bottled-water and the numerous recycling and composting facilities that we have installed in the last few years. I believe that the University of Ottawa is among the most environmentally focused universities in the country. Our sustainable development team is working hard to promote new initiatives on campus, and we are witnessing a growing awareness from our community concerning what we are doing on the environment at uOttawa.  This will certainly continue to increase in the coming months, as we continue to invest in a better environment for all.

On our university’s reputation…

I hope that my responses make it clear that the University of Ottawa takes survey results into consideration. We know that there is work to be done to improve the student experience, especially at the undergraduate level in the larger faculties. As I have emphasized, we are developing an understanding of the issues and we are creating plans to address them as quickly as possible.

That being said, reports and surveys about universities in Canada are hotly debated, because they do not always take into account the complexity of the university environment.  We will never be able to provide at our university the same kind of experience a student can have on a small, rural campus that focuses heavily on one-on-one engagement. On the other hand, we have all the advantages of a bustling, dynamic urban setting with a highly diverse student population, along with professors and scholars that have achieved worldwide recognition and play a leading role in their fields. My number one objective is to improve the quality of the student experience right across the campus: to combine world-class scholarship with excellence in teaching to produce a campus experience that will truly create lifelong memories of the excitement of learning.