Do I care about university rankings? Hmm. As I wrote the first draft of the Faculty of Arts Strategic Plan, (“A Place and Promise for Arts” – more about this soon), I included a page on our various rankings and how to understand them. I encountered some understandable criticism: rankings are imperfect, based on suspect weightings of criteria, and they vary quite a bit from list to list. They can be viewed as superficial and competitive. But I argued that people (prospective students and their families, faculty hires, the public and government) read these and they make an impression. So I’ve always thought it was better to engage with the rankings, try to improve them, and live with the consequences. I just don’t think it’s the right strategy to ignore them.
The recent ascent for UBC to #22 in the Times Higher Education (T.H.E.) World University Rankings constitutes an impressive recognition for UBC. Having become the most research-intensive university in Canada (measured by the amount of Tri-Council grants per research faculty member), UBC has also emerged as the one major Canadian research university making considerable gains over time in the T.H.E. rankings. This reflects a dynamism and a restless spirit of self-improvement that I’ve encountered in my one year here at UBC, and so I think T.H.E. has gotten it about right.
I’ve always advocated for institutions like ours to stay hungry – there’s no more dangerous attitude for a university to adopt in the contemporary world than self-satisfaction and complacency. Following the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, his 2005 commencement address at Stanford University was widely circulated and read. To conclude, he cited the final two sentences from the seminal Whole Earth Catalogue by Stewart Brand: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” (see the entire text and a video of the speech at http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html). This is just as great advice for a university as it is for an individual. It might be redundant, but we could add: “Stay nimble.”
There are lots of ways to slice and dice these numbers. The T.H.E. rankings make it clear that there are three great Canadian universities that stand in a class by themselves: University of Toronto (18), UBC (22), and McGill (28). Other very strong universities (McMaster [65], Alberta [100], and Montréal [104]) constitute a second tier, with Queens (173), Victoria (177) and Ottawa (185) rounding out Canada’s entries in the top 200 global universities, according to T.H.E.. In Canada, west of Ontario, UBC is the main game in town.
Another way of looking at the rankings is to consider how UBC stacks up against its principal “competitor” universities, the top tier of North American public research universities. And here we look even more impressive, coming up at # 5, following UC Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, and Toronto. So here’s an upstart Canadian university outpacing the venerable American state flagship universities such as Wisconsin, Washington, Virginia, and Texas. Interestingly enough, UBC finds itself on a major upward trajectory despite historically meager funding. Speaking of which, I tried to explain our funding model last spring to an American professor who was visiting as part of an external review team. After I described our tuition and provincial grant, he asked, “So where do you get your funding?” “That is our funding,” I replied.
In the end, what does a number like 22 it mean for us? First of all it means that our students and their families can expect that an investment in a UBC education and degree will be recognized and valued worldwide. Second, it means that any faculty member looking for a great home to teach, pursue their research, and have an effect on the world can be additionally reassured that she or he will find it here. These kinds of rankings, sustained over time, produce subtle, positive shifts in applications, faculty recruitment, and in confidence. I’ve been in other institutions that were obsessed with being “world class”. What I like about UBC is that we focus on what we do best and just do it, and that we don’t obsess about it. Now that we’ve looked at the numbers, we can get back to the task at hand – making this a great place to learn, teach, research, and produce positive change in the world.
And after all, a number like 22 gives a lot of room to grow and stretch – it allows elbow room for aspirations and support for staying hungry — and that’s a good thing.
Given my job at this university, you might be forgiven for thinking that I have had an intentional and a planned life and career, although in reality, it was far from this. In thinking about the paths that our students will take into their unknown futures, I considered my own path from undergraduate student to becoming their dean. This is supposed to be a blog, and not the great Canadian novel, so I’m going to have to serve up the abridged version about how a former tenant organizer, tractor driver, and musician finds himself as dean of a leading Arts faculty.
This story should probably start when I dropped out of college. I was a forestry major at the University of Wisconsin, but had transferred into landscape architecture. Increasingly I found myself too energized to sit in class, too concerned about the state of the world to put off my interventions in it, and more and more in love with music and its ability to move people. And so I dropped out of school, determined to travel, devote myself to community organizing (I became the director of a statewide tenant’s union), kayaking, and most of all, music, which was now clearly an overriding passion. I joined a traditional and Irish rebel music with a band, launched a world music radio show on community radio, and started to organize festivals. After the unexpected death of my sister, I felt the need to regroup, I found myself working as a tractor driver and foreman of an apple orchard in New England. But a life of apple harvests wasn’t in my future either, because in tipping an apple bin one day, my back exploded in pain and I found myself incapable of physical labor or even of sitting for any length of time for some years until back surgery corrected the problem.
What was I to do as an ex tractor driver and tenant organizer with a bad back? First I tried selling Time Life Books. Let me describe the scene: I sat in a room full of telesales people with a call list and a script for selling, say, “The Wild, Wild West” series; and like others, I hoped to be called in front of the room to win a salesman of the week award. Instead my supervisor called me in to say that my verification callbacks had produced the lowest rate of confirmed sales in the history of the Seattle office. Fired from even this lowly job at the age of 28, I was already a failed Time Life Books salesman, which was a sobering proposition.
As a tractor driver and apple orchard foreman, age 27
I stumbled on another job possibility. A coffee shop in downtown Seattle, called Starbucks, was going to open a second branch – imagine that, a second branch of Starbucks – What were they thinking? — and they needed an assistant manager. Now, I had worked for a year in Wisconsin in a coffee house, so I brushed up on my knowledge of coffee and tea, but failed to be interviewed for the job.
But here, my chaotic narrative begins to take shape, because on the very next day in August, the Seattle Times newspaper carried a story about a shortfall in University of Washington admissions, noting that they would take applicants off the street for the semester that was going to start in two weeks. I headed down to admissions and signed up. As my finger ran down the list of possible majors to declare, it stopped at “ethnomusicologist”. Here was a term that seemed to resonate with my interests in world music, Irish and Caribbean music performance, and maybe even progressive internationalism. My finger kept coming back to this major, like a compass needle finding magnetic north. I had stumbled on my calling in life.
You have to understand that every conversation with my mom for the last ten years had come around to the question: “When are you going to go back to school?” So the first person I called was my mom to tell her that I was now enrolled to get a BA in ethnomusicology. After asking what that was, and what in the world I would do with a BA in it, she got around to the crux of her concern, “Aren’t you a little old to be in school?
Okay, perhaps I was. But I had committed just to the two years that it would take for me to finish a BA. However, my professors had other plans for me and nominated me for a Mellon Fellowship for graduate school. I hadn’t planned on graduate school, but the Mellon was a powerfully persuasive tool. And Mellon required a 5-year commitment to teaching. Five years of study and 5 years of teaching add up to a ten-year plan! I had never planned more than 6 months ahead in my life, so this kind of timeline was something new to me.
I wish I could say I planned any of it, but back injuries, university admissions cycles, and the failure to earn my fortune with Starbucks had led me to something about which I was passionate and to which I could devote myself fully and for the remainder of my life– this was a clear case of serendipity at work.
Allow me to take a quick digression concerning serendipity. It was in 1754 that Horace Walpole, the 4th Earl of Orford and cousin of celebrated Lord Nelson, wrote a letter in which he coined the term “serendipity”, from the Persian name (Serendip) for the island nation now called Sri Lanka. He wrote, “It was once when I read a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of.” The term has come into popular usage especially because so many revolutionary products, inventions, new pharmaceuticals, and scientific discoveries have occurred as a result of serendipity. Viagra, for instance, was being tested for the heart condition known as angina – it showed little efficacy in treating angina but had an odd and unanticipated side effect on male users that became the basis of an immensely profitable new industry.
My own dissertation topic? Well, again, accident and serendipity. I hoped to work on Cuban music, but couldn’t get a permit from the U.S. to study in Cuba. I designed a project to work on a processional music from Haiti called rara, learned Haitian Creole, and got a Fulbright grant, but then came a revolution in Haiti, which made the political and security situation unstable and Fulbright pulled back all of their grants to the country. I cast about and landed on another topic: a form of popular music in the French Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe called zouk with an interesting relationship to the question of Afro-Caribbean vs. French identity. But a week before I left for Guadeloupe, I called a French Canadian colleague for travel tips, and she said, “I can’t believe this, but SSHRC has just given me a grant to pursue the same research project!” Catastrophe turned into serendipity when my colleague suggested I turn my attention back to Haiti and to collaborate with her on a book about popular music in the Francophone Caribbean, and I found myself embarked on a research project that was far more interesting and productive than any I had conceived of before.
Did I intend on becoming a music journalist on the side? No, but I complained once to the Miami New Times that they ignored Haitian music in Miami and they asked me to do a story. That story caught the eye of The Beat magazine, which asked for a single article and then, without consulting me, assigned me to be a regular columnist, writing a column called “Haitian Fascination”. And these columns caught the attention of record company executives, film directors like Jonathan Demme, and festival producers, and I found myself producing record compilations, writing liner notes, running festivals of Haitian music, and so on such that I developed a sideline career to my academic work. I later found out that this kind of work was being called applied and public ethnomusicology. I teach this now, and write on it, but it was, like most aspects of my career, something onto which I stumbled while I was pursuing something else.
My second major research project was perhaps more accidental than the first. As I visited my mother on the west coast of Florida before my first trip to Haiti, I was lugging a trunk full of research equipment with which I needed practice. So I set about trying to find a music group to record, but the pickings in the retirement villages on the west coast of Florida were slim. However, the Fort Myers Sun, a local paper, had an announcement for the opening the Thomas Edison Shopping Mall at which a local men’s barbershop chorus, the Caloosahatchee Chorus, was going to sing. They invited me afterwards to a party called an “afterglow” and that encounter with a barbershop group morphed into a 12-year research project on the social history of American barbershop harmony!
So, if any of our students are reading this blog, and thinking about the possibilities in your lives and careers, please don’t think that the Dean is telling you not to prepare well or to plan ahead, because luck and serendipity strike much more frequently for those who are prepared and who work hard. But also please recognize that many of the transformative moments in your lives, many of the opportunities that open up for you and paths that you travel down will be the ones not planned for; the serendipitous products of, as Horace Walpole said, “accidents and sagacity” while you are searching for something else.
When I was driving my tractor around the apple orchards 30 years ago, I didn’t have my current life in mind. Nevertheless, here I am, and I count myself immensely fortunate to serve as dean. So whether you call it luck, happenstance, accident, serendipity, fate, or the will of God, I hope that you too will be able to recognize and be open to taking advantage of the opportunities and chance encounters – that your life too will be the beneficiary of productive accidents and unexpected discoveries. (first conceived for a convocation speech, 2008, revised)
This was a banner week for Arts – on Monday we welcomed over 2000 new students from over 100 countries, with the largest number of international students in our history. We also admitted nearly 900 transfer students. We are now using broad-based admissions (a holistic approach to looking at the qualifications of our applicants) on more of our students and will move in the years ahead to a fully broad-based approach to admissions. In a future blog, I’ll explain why this is a great thing for Arts.
On Imagine Day, our new and transferring students joined me, our Arts Undergraduate Society Executive, and Associate Dean-Students Professor Janet Giltrow at the Chan Centre for an enthusiastic Meet the Dean gathering, followed by the always-incredible Pep Rally at the Thunderbird Arena, where the dignitaries on stage and all of the students broke the record in the Guinness Book of World Records for most simultaneous high fives.
I snapped a shot of some of the students at Meet the Dean and said that I’d include the shot in my blog, so here it is! I’m also including a shot of our students relaxing in the new Buchanan Courtyards after Meet the Dean.
Arts Students at Meet the Dean
Students relaxing after Meet the Dean
I wanted to include as much of my Meet the Dean talk in this blog, but of course a lot of what I do on stage is improvised in the moment. So I’ve gone back and tried to capture what I said, and it came out like this:
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Why Arts Kicks A__
You’ll have to pardon me while I take this shot with my camera — I wish you could see you as I do now; what a great shot. I’ll try to put it up on my blog tonight, so maybe you’ll see yourself out there is a sea of excited faces. I expect I look pretty excited today too. This starts my second year, my sophomore year, as Dean of Arts at UBC and I can tell you that nothing in this job rivals the feeling of being with our first-year students on Imagine Day. So it’s really a treat to say to you all: Welcome to the Faculty of Arts at UBC!
Now, as you were filing into the Chan Centre the stage manager was playing some funk and disco, and I found myself wondering which of the various tunes you were relating to the most: was it “Staying Alive”? “That’s the Way (un-huh, un-huh) I like it”? Or was it, “Freat Out! (Le Freak)”? Yeah, I know, it was freak out!
You’ve chosen UBC’s largest—and I dare say best – faculty, with almost all of our departments rated in the top 20 or 30 in the world. Arts is an incredibly lively and diverse Faculty with 16 departments in the Humanities, Social Sciences and the Creative and Performing Arts. We also have four schools: Social Work, Journalism, Music and Library, Archival and Information Studies; one of the world’s great museums of world arts and cultures at MOA; the Chan Centre; the Belkin Gallery; the Freddy Wood Theatre, the Old Auditorium and the Barnett Recital Hall in Music. And look at where we’re located – on the edge of the Pacific amidst ocean, forests, and mountains in one of the world’s most livable cities.
As I was walking here across Main Mall, I heard one of our group leaders telling her group: “If you remember nothing else from the chant, remember “Arts kicks ass!” Maybe that will be a theme in my talk today – just why “Arts kicks ass”.
Last year at this time, I knew I was in the right job when I was told that our opening day event was called “Imagine Day”! I remember giving a welcoming speech to students in a previous job, and one of them came up to me and asked, “Do you realize that you used the word “imagine” seven times in your speech?” I suppose I did use it a lot, but that’s because our ability to imagine is the necessary first step to change and innovation – our imagination is our bridge to the future. So if we’re going to meet the challenges that lie ahead over the next four years, to say nothing about the rest of your lives, then we better fire up the old imagination.
Speaking personally, I’m most inspired when I imagine the contributions that our students will one day make to their communities, to Canada or their nation, and to the world, and it’s heartening to know that UBC Arts will play a role in helping you to do that. That, in fact, is what I love most about my job: that we might help you to imagine a new future and create or do something amazing. I imagine a great ripple effect passing out of this hall and into the future, making a difference in the world for the better, and it’s a great feeling to be a part of that.
Right now, in fact just last night, I’ve been involved in a big act of imagination— crafting a 5 year plan for the Faculty of Arts. And guess what? I’m going to give you a little taste of what’s in it. And let me start with the ripple effect I just mentioned. We have a new reflecting pool in the Buchanan Courtyard, and in it are etched great sayings from the history of humankind in a ripple-like pattern, and we’ve taken that pattern and made it our logo to signify the effect that we hope all of you will have on the world. Along with our new look, we hope we will communicate better with you through our new website, our blogs and social media, the new digital signage and wayfinding. You should be able to access all the information you need when and where you need it. And if you have to search for it, we want you to be able to quickly access it online rather than having to wait in line.
I spend the first section of the plan talking about the kind of transformative education we hope you will experience here. What do I mean by transformative? The principal reason you’re here is to learn and discover, and it’s my deep hope that you’ll be inspired by discoveries in and outside the classroom, that you’ll open up to new ideas, that you’ll interact with committed professors who will help you to grow and to find your unique path in the world, that you’ll have profound encounters working or studying in the community or abroad, and that you’ll discover new things about yourselves as well as about the world.
I mentioned travel and work in the community. These are two of the many kinds of experiences we’re calling Enriched Educational Experiences, and these include experiences in community, global travel, student governance, small-class experiences, and directed research, all of which we think can enhance leadership, interpersonal skills, teamwork, real-world problem-solving experience, career preparation and responsible global citizenship, helping to make you just the kinds of people that graduate schools and employers are looking for. Of course, an Arts education at UBC still helps to foster critical thinking, communication, reasoning, and intellectual curiosity – we want you to be aware individuals, capable of making sense of the world and ready for a lifetime of learning — but we also want to provide you with additional experiences to help you emerge from here “life-ready”. In our strategic plan, I make it clear that we start with the students and plan from there to create a great student experience.
Did anyone perk up when I mentioned employers? Unlike vocational diplomas or even something like chemical engineering which has an obvious career track, the Arts degree can generate some anxiety among students and especially their parents. Okay, level with me – can I see hands of anyone who has had a discussion with his or her parents that started with a question like “What will you ever do with an Arts degree?? “
Yeah, I know – you’re wondering that too! You just won’t let-on your parents. ! In my experience, an Arts degree is the degree for the new economy. Let me tell you a family anecdote – my Cousin Bobby, who lives in Pennsylvania in the U.S., came back from service in the Army and landed an office job with a manufacturer and has worked his entire life in that job and for the same employer. This must sound quaint these days – statistics show that you’re likely to change jobs an average of 7-10 times over your careers and that many of you will change careers as well. The information age and the economy that accompanies it render ideas, knowledge, practices and methods obsolete at a frightening rate. If you are trained for a specific skill, there’s a high likelihood that your skill will no longer be useful or relevant in 10 years or that if you memorize enough information to land a certain job, that that information too will be obsolete in a decade or less.
Increasingly, employers are saying in the media – and I hear this directly from them all the time – that they want smart, flexible workers who will continually evolve with the times. They want good and literate communicators, people who can read reports, write and speak persuasively in public. They want inquisitive and critical employees who can analyze problems come up with new and creative solutions. And they want people who can work in teams, cope with cultural diversity, and deal with the extraordinary flow of new information that informs every field in the world today. The people they describe are Arts students – they’re you in four or five years.
To give you an example, Damon Horowirtz, Director of Engineering for Google, the leading tech company in the world, recently spoke about why Google hires mostly humanities and other Liberal Arts students. Out of the 6,000 that they hire this year, 4-5000 of them will be Arts students. As he said, they’re looking for people who are “smart and get things done.” It will still be important to avail yourself of the career counseling that we provide, and to try to make use of tools such as our Co-op program, internships, community research courses and other means by which you can expand your horizons in AND OUT of the classroom.
I met recently with a group of recent Arts grads who were from an amazing variety of professions – some were entrepreneurs, one was an actress (working actress), one was a publicist, one helped run a Creative arts organization and so on. All were very successful, however, and all of them stressed the importance of the co-op experience.
I talk to our graduates as they cross the stage to get their degree, and I often ask them a quick question, sometimes “What’s up next for you?” or “What are your plans now.” Of course I do get the occasional answer of “dude, unemployment” or “I don’t know – take a year off I guess and travel,” – not a bad thing to do after university if you can afford it — but a stunning number are off fascinating careers. Some are starting businesses, some go off to graduate school, some are going into Law school or Medical School; some, especially the economics students, are going into banking, finance, or accounting; the film and theatre students are often headed into careers as actors, directors, cinematographers; many go into communications; some go to work in the government at places like StatsCan, and many go into education. Along with those more obvious choices, a few last year were training for the Olympics, one was becoming an air traffic controller, and one was going into politics, working for a party. It’s incredibly varied, but the most impressive part is that they have choices and that they’re headed off into careers in which they can progress and meet new challenges.
So I think you’ve made a great choice and you’re in the right place– I’m very optimistic about the success of our graduates.
Let me get on my soapbox: The Arts are essential to human survival. Take any of the headlines from the media on a given day, and it is likely that our arts professors are involved in some related angle. If you’re concerned about poverty, the water supply, national elections or the civil war in Somalia, it’s likely you can find scholars, graduate students, and undergraduates who are researching the topic and applying the knowledge gained—often through cutting edge interdisciplinary teamwork. In Arts at UBC, we provide a foundation for responsible global citizenship that let’s our students make a difference in the world.
I’m not going to give you a lot of advice on your first day. You’re overwhelmed, maybe a little scared, and probably not processing half of what you’re hearing! But I will say this about your time at UBC: Make the most of it – attend concerts and plays, visit MOA, stroll the Nitobe Japanese Garden and hike the canopy walk in the Botanical Gardens. Get involved in sports, clubs, or societies. One of our new international students asked last week how he might stand out at UBC. I said: meet your professors, attend office hours and ask questions in class; join in activities that you enjoy and you may find yourself called upon to lead; make the most of our advisors in CASS to make sure you’re being smart about your choices for study. Take advantage of those enriched opportunities for study and make sure you get a small class and some research experience, community experiences and if possible, study abroad. Learn good time management skills so that you can plan your reading and assignments and not find yourself scrambling. Seek out advising, yes, but take charge of your program here at UBC. You are the authors of the rest of your lives, and I want you to start writing a very interesting story for yourselves.
And most of all follow your interests and passions. If you’ve chosen something you love and for which you have a real passion, your chances of excelling are that much greater, as are your chances for finding a meaningful career and life path. I’m not telling you to avoid practicalities, but I am saying that this is a good time to explore and to follow your curiousity. You’re life will be immeasurably richer for not having been afraid to do so.
Thanks for choosing Arts at UBC – we’re honoured to have you here and we’ll do our best to make this an extraordinary academic experience for you. I encourage all of our students to stop by at the Meet the Dean sessions I’ll schedule throughout the year with the Arts Undergraduate Society, and feel free to let me know how it’s going. And remember: Arts kicks ass!
Perhaps the best part of being Dean is standing on the stage to congratulate our graduates as they wrap up their most recent educational journey. Someone who doesn’t understand the meaning of these events might imagine that shaking two thousand hands in eight different congregations (what some schools call “commencements”, “convocations” or simply “graduations”) might be some form of advanced drudgery. But for each of our congregations, I find it hard to wipe the smile off my face. This is a day that brings families together to mark a significant life cycle passage and to honour the transformations that have taken place in students lives and outlooks. It’s a day to thank the families for their sacrifices and also to celebrate the extraordinary fact of postsecondary education in the modern world, to be grateful for this mission and the opportunity to touch students’ lives. It’s a day of medieval pomp and ceremonial seriousness but also of improvisation and delightful accidents.
I take the few seconds afforded me with each student as they cross the stage to ask them a question or two. This is my chance not only to remind them that we appreciate the work and commitment of each and every one of them but also to take stock of the meaning of UBC and Arts to their lives and to sample the plans they have ahead, if any. And so I’ll commonly as about what’s next for them, or how they saw their years at UBC, or where they’re off to next, or really whatever I’m inspired to ask.
Let me share just a little very unscientific sample of their responses to “what’s next?” And what an amazing variety of responses there are to this. Some will put the question into the immediate present and respond with something like “a nap, and then rooting for the Canucks!” Many shrug their shoulders with a look of contentment and say, “Dunno” or “Whatever life holds” or even “unemployment”. Many have jobs already: accountant, bank receptionist and account reps, counselor, publicist, intern with an NGO, telecommunications in Afghanistan [!], work for StatsCan (I promised to get my census finished soon) and other government service and even the Liberal Party, and one will run a restaurant. Two that I talked to are preparing for the next Olympics (swimming and sailing) – good luck, we’re rooting for you! Some are starting businesses, such as one student opening up a yoga school, and others are looking for work. I talked to two that were going into flight school, two that were joining the RCMP, one who is training as a firefighter, and one becoming an air traffic controller (I asked him to go get some sleep and please stay awake).
A huge number of our students are off to travel, often for a whole year, with South America, Southeast Asia, China, India, and Europe (Switzerland, Italy, France, and Spain) as the most popular destinations. One student told me she’s off to sail around the Caribbean for a year. I have to say that I was often feeling equal amounts of pride and jealousy about these plans.
Perhaps a third of those I spoke with are looking at graduate school and second entry programs, either next year or the following year, and many are pursuing that abroad, although I think UBC seemed to be the favorite destination! A surprisingly large number of the Economics grads were headed to the London School of Economics). Law school was a favorite destination of the PoliSci grads, but also (surprising to me) of our Psychology grads. Students were determined to make films, to keep acting, to continue their social work, to be journalists, and as one put it, “do great things and travel the world.”
Honorary doctorate recipient Kenneth Lyotier, who founded the organization “United We Can” in Vancouver’s Lower East Side, shared lessons he had learned while searching bins for recyclable waste, including the importance of getting up early, digging deep, and sharing what you find. Singer, actor, and activist Leon Bibb, also an honorary doctorate, sang a lovely rendition of “This Little Light of Mine” in tribute to the graduates. I came out of each congregation more energized and inspired, and certainly renewed in my conviction of the importance of the work done here at UBC. My humble thanks to our students for this.
Addressing the attendees, string trio to my left, underneath the Pavilion.
Today, we got to celebrate the arrival of our newly designed Buchanan Courtyards, which will have a transformative effect on our use of the complex that’s at the centre of the Faculty of Arts. Below is a loose version of my speaking points on this occasion. It was great to see students, faculty, emeriti faculty, administrators, project personnel, our former Dean and so many others there to welcome the new spaces. Check out the article about the Courtyards on the Arts webspace. See: http://www.arts.ubc.ca/students/index.php?id=1231&home=casshomepage&index=1
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I want to extend a warm welcome to our alumni, students, faculty, staff, friends and family as we celebrate the opening of Buchanan Courtyards. And we must have properly propitiated the gods of constant drizzle to have obtained this rare glimpse of sunshine.
Plans for this project began several years ago when Buchanan Buildings A, B, C and D were selected to be completely renovated under UBC Renew Phase 1, a program jointly funded by UBC and the Province of British Columbia. I’ll speak more of the transformations underway in the buildings, but it became clear that as the vision for a renewed Buchanan block came to fruition, we would have, at the heart of the Buchanan Complex, two decrepit spaces, underutilized, uncared for, and having decayed significantly from the original architectural and landscape vision that produced them. It was at that point that interested students, emeriti faculty who had long advocated for courtyard renewal, and the former Dean and her team began to work with Campus Planning, the Campus Architect and others to radically transform the courtyards.
Early this year we inaugurated two new spaces for musical performance: the Roy Barnett Recital Hall and the New Old Aud. The opening of the Aud was a moment for many alumni and faculty and staff to reminisce about experiences in the building years ago, a building that was a central icon in the academic lives of many. These courtyards too will bring back memories, and we are delighted that the renovation of the space might provoke this interaction of the old and the new, new experiences and old memories, a vital intersection of past and present.
You may have also noticed some images cropping up around Buchanan and the Faculty of Arts buildings as we play with new ways of representing the faculty. Let me talk a bit about the genesis of the design you see on our shirts, our signs, banners, bookmarks and beyond. As part of the design of the courtyard, this reflecting pool and pavilion were conceived. And within the pond, it was envisioned that great thoughts of humankind could be inscribed in the bottom of the pool. All of the Departments, Schools and programs in Arts were polled, and each contributed a quote (all before 1922 for copyright issues) and these will be, in the weeks ahead, etched into stone on the bottom of the pool in patterns that look like ripples, extending out in broken and partial concentric circles. Public Design, which designed the pavilion, worked with us to extract this image as a mark and a part of the identity system for the Faculty of Arts. And all throughout the Buchanan Buildings, you’ll see new signage and wayfinding systems that use this image, a color pallet, a bold modernist a font, and the proportions of the white bricks that help to give this complex its identity. In everything we touched, we hoped to reinforce and clarify the elegant modernist lines, proportions, colors, and textures of the Buchanan architecture.
These are part of a wholescape transformation of academic spaces to create a seamless academic and social experience for our students. Our classrooms will connect to the world, our spaces will be universally accessible, they will be interactive and engaging spaces, and the spaces outside of classrooms will be open for students to eat, study, work, discuss, relax. Throughout the buildings, screens add information and news, and signage points the way and orients the visitor. Getting lost in the Buchanan Complex is no longer a participant sport.
Every great city has some kind of great public gathering spot at its core. My favorites of these kinds of squares and plazas and parks offer a range of experiences – from broad and open hardscapes for public gatherings to naturalscapes for contemplation and relaxation and renewal, from open and inspiring vistas to cozy and intimate spaces for reading and napping, and they incorporate water and light and various textures, details and surfaces. The two Buchanan courtyards incorporate this diverse set of options and experiences for our students and guests. They are connected by a waterway, which will capture storm run-off and direct it into the marsh section of the North courtyard. We have no idea yet how our students will use these spaces, but we offer them up for generations of students to bring to them their own creativity.
We will of course animate the spaces in Buchanan Courtyard. We are deeply grateful for an anonymous gift of $250,000 from two UBC alumni to support programming in the courtyards, and I’m happy to say that Professor Ira Nadel has been engaged to schedule events and to animate the space in its first year. I understand that Arts Wednesday presentations are already coming to the Stir It Up Café and the Courtyards. Speaking of Stir It Up, I had an interesting moment last week. I was being interviewed by Jian Gomeshi for Q on CBC about the 30th anniversary of Bob Marley’s death and the impression that his legacy has been commercialized and diluted. As they got ready for my interview, they played “Stir It Up”, and I confessed first off that I too had been guilty of using Bob’s legacy for branding as I had just helped name a café “Stir It Up”, after the great Marley anthem. But I have to say that I think it’s a great name: not only does it pay tribute to Marley and serve as a sly pun about stirring up coffee, but it suggests that this will be a place for lively, transformative, provocative exploration, a place to truly stir it up.
The programming funds will support transform this new public space where the diversity and the interdisciplinary conversations of the Faculty of Arts will come alive; this will be a space perfectly suited to the creative and performing arts: music, theatre, poetry, outdoor films and visual and video art; a place where economists and philosophers can hang out debate; an outdoor home to creative writers and for discussions in foreign languages; a place for protest and activism; a place where scholars and learners connect with friends, and find ways to make a difference, a place to stir it up.
And now I want to acknowledge some of the people who have made this possible.
Acknowledge contribution
Conceptual Planning and Design (in addition to above)
Space2place Landscape Architects (produced original concept plans)
School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA)
Co-Design (facilitated workshops)
Consultants and project management
Landscape Architects – Phillips Farevaag Smallenberg (Prime Consultant), especially Andrew Robertson and Chris Phillips
Architects – Public Design, including Brian Wakelin, John Wall and Susan Mavor
Project Management – UBC Project Services staff, including Diane Foldi, and Building Operations Staff, Jeff Nolte, and Chris Skipper.
Architects and original landscape architect for Buchanan Renew Building Upgrades
Busby Perkins and Will (Prime Consultant)
Cornelia Hahn Oberlander
And our campus architect, Gerry McGeough
Construction
Contractor – Scott Construction
Faculty of Arts
I’m grateful to the faculty and staff for enduring the transformation and for participating in the many committees and sessions that helped create this design. Anne Marie Fenger has seen this project through for the Dean’s Office and we also want to thank Guillaume Houle and Dominique Lopez.
And especially my predecessor and friend, former Dean Nancy Gallini, whose energetic dedication to students helped to propel this project along, and who, when it ran short of funding, made the commitments that kept this project alive and intact.
I want to conclude by inviting you all back in September in Imagine week as we welcome our students into these courtyards and celebrate again. Thank you for coming out today.
Although I have poked fun at the Entertainment Industry’s obsessively self-congratulatory award shows for years, I have to say that it was a thrill (even if a hypocritical one) to attend the Grammys!
First, we were able to bring together nearly the complete team that worked on my project (Alan Lomax in Haiti, 1936-37, a 10-CD and DVD boxed set), from studio engineers to producers and even the fundraisers, along with family members; and some of us were meeting in person for the first time after years of phone and email collaboration. At our small luncheon at a Hollywood eatery, former California Governor Grey Davis surprised us with a visit to congratulate the team.
Second, it was a treat to bring my 7-year-old daughter and to have her as my guest nearly stageside for the evening awards show, which, with a cast from Jagger to Gaga and Eminem to Streisand and even Dylan, was an impressive smorgasbord of talent with lots of unpredictable moments. Among her favourites were the performance by the British band Muse and the colorful, Muppet-inspired Cee Lo Green duet with Gweneth Paltrow (F**** You). Not a fan of Bieber, she did enjoy the Eminem/Rihanna performance! My own favorite musical moment was Nora Jones’ rendition of the Dolly Parton classic, “Jolene”. Who knew? Of course there were lots of celebrity-sightings (a somewhat redundant concept when a good chunk of the audience have some claim on celebrity-hood): we were seated near to Elvis Costello and Dianna Krull, had Rihanna and Cyndi Lauper parading below us, and stood at the party with Esperanza Spaulding, the talented winner for Best New Artist. The Trustees Awards, presented at a ceremony the night before, allowed for more generous tributes for longer-term contributions to the industry (Julie Andrews, Dolly Parton, the Ramones, and even Roger Linn, the inventor of the drum machine).
Although it is an industry in its death throes, its professional organization, The Recording Academy, puts on a good show, and the Grammys remains one of the last award shows to cover the gamut of genres (from country western, to hip hop, to classical and world music). The Academy clearly wanted to link generations through tribute pieces and performances with mentors. And they keep the telecast highly performance-heavy and award-light, leaving most of the awards to the earlier, pre-telecast ceremony next door to the Staples Centre in the Los Angeles Convention Center (which is where my categories were announced).
Oh, and we lost in our two categories (!), but it was only about 5 minutes of disappointment, and then it was back to enjoying the show (and in one category we lost to The Beatles, so who’s going to complain?). So I came away with a medallion and not a statue, but glad that my project (and Haiti) got some recognition.
Sometimes my day job (being dean) and my commitment to Haiti come together nicely and unexpectedly. I heard the other day that the UBC alumni group in Toronto is gathering at the Drake Hotel on Friday November 26 from 6-9 for a Reception to Rebuild Haiti and a silent auction to build a school in Haiti. I was pretty inspired by this, and because I can’t go personally, I was asked to come up with a testimonial to be read. Here’s what I’m sending along:
“Honorary Consul General Dr. Pierre and Mme. Pierre; Alumni of UBC; and friends of Haiti – bonswa mesyedanm ak zanmi peyi dayiti yo [good evening ladies and gentlemen and friends of the country of Haiti].
I am honored to send this warm note of greetings and thanks to you tonight as you gather for a reception and auction to rebuild Haiti. I have only recently assumed the Deanship of the Faculty of Arts at UBC, having moved from Toronto to Vancouver in September. However, I am deeply gratified that alumni of this great university have dedicated themselves to raising funds for so essential and inspiring a cause.
As some of you may know, I have had the pleasure of working on Haitian music for the last twenty-five years as a scholar, a journalist, a festival director and activist. I am grateful to Haitian friends and colleagues for so much of what I hold dear and indeed for so much of who I am that it is impossible for me to imagine my life without this enduring engagement with Haiti and Haitians.
In the words of an old proverb found in religious songs in Haiti, “Jou-m tonbe se pa jou-m koulye” (The day I fall [as a leaf falls on the water] is not the day I sink). This phrase captures for me the enduring spirit to survive and to thrive in the most adverse of conditions. I urge you not just to be charitable toward Haiti, but to be inspired by the strength and beauty of Haiti; not just to help rebuild the country, but to learn from the ability of so many Haitians to face disaster with courage and tenacity.
Vreman, tremblemantè-a te kraze kay-yo men li pat kraze espri pep-Ayisyen-nan. Ansanm ansanm nou kab rebati peyi-a. Pran kouray; kenbe la pa lage’l. [Truly, this earthquake crushed buildings but it didn’t crush the spirit of the Haitian people. Together/united we can rebuild the country. Take courage, hold on (take care) and don’t give up.]
Onè – respè [Honor – respect]
Gage Averill,
Dean of the Faculty of Arts, UBC”
So, if you happen to be around Toronto on the 26th, please stop in and show your support. There will be a Mad Men themed silent auction (where among other things they’ll auction off two of my Alan Lomax in Haiti boxed cd sets and my book on Haitian popular music). Tickets are $23.00 — check it out at www.ubcto.com/events
Imagine that it’s your first day at the University. You know almost no one. You’re lost, and you have to ask directions everywhere you go. You’ve just moved into an apartment, and you’re surrounded by cardboard boxes and unpacked Scandinavian furniture. You’re deathly afraid of making a mistake, and of course you’re anxious about the challenges that lie ahead of you. But enough about me and my problems – I want to find out more about you!
Seriously, today IS the first real day on the job for your Freshman dean — and so the Freshman class and I will share a steep learning curve in the weeks ahead and go through our first 4 years together. I’m eager to meet many — if not all — of you and to share notes. As we progress along the way, I’m going to ask of you the same question of you that a former mayor of New York used to ask, “So how am I doin’?” And I’m going to look to you for an honest answer and for your feedback, suggestions, and ideas. Please come to the dean’s meetings with students that we’ll set up, starting in a few weeks.
I have to say that I’m honoured that you’ve chosen Arts at UBC as your academic home. You may notice that I’m wearing a purple button that staff from the Centre for Arts Student Services (or CASS) gave me. It says, simply, “engage”/UBC Arts. You should have received these as well, and I’m told that they get you a discount at the new café in the bottom floor of Buchanan A. Now, I couldn’t help but notice that the boldface part of the word spells out my first name. I don’t know if this is a coincidence or whether someone’s trying to flatter my ego. Still, it is a word that I know something about, and that I have always found appealing. To engage in a bit of etymology, “gage” is an old French word for a promise, a challenge, or a commitment. A slap in the face challenging one to a duel could be called a “gage”. A promissory note to pay off a debt would have an end date, called in French a “mort-gage” (the “death of the commitment”). But I digress! More importantly for our purposes today, to “engage” is to take part, to become involved, to commit. And this is the message that CASS and I want you to take away today. Education is not a spectator sport!! UBC Arts is your new home, your new community (just as it is my new community, too). We want you to take pride in being a part of this very special and important educational mission, and to participate fully. I hope you’ll find the Dean’s Office, the faculty, and the staff in our many departments and programs to be similarly engaged as partners with you in this educational journey.
Having chosen a major, you may experience a moment of dread or anxiety about that commitment. What if you don’t like it? What if it doesn’t lead to a job? What if you fail? I would like to encourage you to not worry too much about this right now. If it’s not right for you, you can change, and students do this all the time. And I know a little something about this, having dropped out of my university program in Forestry only to come back at another university eight years later as a major in ethnomusicology! If you’ve chosen something you love and for which you have a real passion, your chances of excelling are that much greater, as are your chances for finding a meaningful career and life path. I’m not telling you to avoid practicalities, but I am saying that this is a good time to explore and to follow your curiousity. You’re life will be immeasurably richer for not having been afraid to do so.
What do you get from an Arts degree? Your UBC liberal arts education will be both broad and deep. You will become a more articulate and informed communicator, know how to identify and solve problems – in other words to do research, and to develop a cultural and historical sensitivity that will enable you to work productively in a global and multicultural environment. Your critical skills and constructive reasoning will be enhanced, as will both your teamwork, and self-direction. All of this will prepare you for life after your undergraduate degree, whether that will involve graduate education or a direct path to a career. A liberal arts education provides the kinds of skills and competencies that are valued and sought after by employers, even as it helps to create more informed citizens with better judgment.
The Arts are essential to human survival. Take any of the headlines from the media on a given day, and it is likely that our arts professors are involved in some related angle. If you’re concerned about poverty, drug addiction and the sex trade, it’s likely you can find scholars in sociology, political science, geography, economics, women’s and gender studies, anthropology, psychology, social work, history or even philosophy who are researching the topic and applying the knowledge gained—often through cutting edge interdisciplinary teamwork. In Arts at UBC, we undertake the study of what makes us human, how we interact as a species, and how we express ourselves through creative activity. We provide a foundation for a lifetime of learning and responsible citizenship.
As one of the world’s great arts research units, we’re also a living laboratory. If we study governance, can we govern ourselves better. If we study sustainability, can we build a more sustainable culture here at UBC? If we study the psychology of learning, can we structure our educational pedagogy better for student learning? Let’s practice what we preach and build a better educational community.
I have never been more sure of being in the right place than when I signed on to be your dean and learned that orientation day at UBC is called “Imagine Day.” I remember giving my first welcome speech to students after becoming the Dean of Music at my former university, and after I finished, a student came up to me and asked me if I realized that I had used the term “imagine” seven times in my talk? I explained that our ability to imagine was the necessary precursor to our ability to change and innovate – and that imagination was the bridge to the future. If my former faculty was ever going to change, innovate, and transform itself, the process had to start with an act of the imagination.
I have some personal aspirations for UBC Arts, and they blend well with the goals of the university’s plan, called “Place and Promise”. I want to further our leadership in student- and learner-centred education. I hope that you’ll receive an education that doesn’t just fill you with knowledge but that helps you to transform yourself. I hope you’ll attend the workshop today on “High Impact Learning Experiences” led by Assistant Dean Allen Sens. I hope to renew our commitment to, and focus on, teaching, even as we continue to rise up the ranks of the world’s great research universities.
I want to increase our commitment to First Nations and Aboriginal studies and partnerships. I want to build our capacity to provide an intercultural and international education and experience for our students, and I certainly hope to increase our community involvement. A great public university needs to be dedicated to public service, producing knowledge and translating it or mobilizing it for public consumption, helping to solve the difficult problems we face as a nation and species. Through service learning, experiential learning, global learning, co-op, and a range of other means of enhancing the educational experience, we will help you to become leaders in your professions, fields, and communities. I’m inspired when I imagine the contributions that you (collectively) will one day make to your communities, to Canada, and the world, and it’s heartening to know that UBC Arts will play a role in helping you to reach these goals.
I said a few moments ago that I hope you have a transformative educational experience. What do I mean by transformative? Well, we have to be pretty pleased with you as you are, or we wouldn’t have accepted you into one of the world’s great research and teaching universities. However, and I’ll be honest with you, I’ll be pretty disappointed if you haven’t changed profoundly over the next four years. Some of that change will result from things extrinsic to your studies – from the web of relationships you form, from your continued encounter with family, physical activity, faith or with volunteerism and service. But the principal reason you’re here is to learn and discover, and it’s my deep hope that you’ll be inspired by discoveries in the classroom, that you’ll open up to new ideas, that you’ll interact with committed professors who will help you to grow and to find your unique path in the world, and that you’ll discover new things about yourselves as well as about the world. With luck and some hard work, you should emerge from this experience in four years more confident and accomplished, more focused on your future, more socially aware, tolerant, committed, and perhaps even more humble.
I’m not partial to giving lots of advice, but let me leave you with a few thoughts. You will need to take the courses required for your majors or minors, but even after you take our breadth requirements, take a course or two simply to introduce you to new subjects or to step outside your comfort zone. Don’t necessarily write off big lecture classes. Big lectures with great teachers can be life altering. But also consider our leading edge first-year programs with their smaller seminars. Take advantage of the opportunity to work on a research projects with a leading researcher and pursue writing intensive courses to improve your communication skills.
To put it simply, take at least one course just for the heck of it; get to know at least one professor well; and while you’re at it, learn at least one new language. And don’t forget the two terms at the heart of our orientation experience: Imagine, engage!
Thank you.
[Note: My first few blog entries will be a little post facto, as they’re being added late.]
I have to hand it to UBC – it’s an institution that surely knows how to make an impression. Within an hour of arriving for work, I was looking at the first of two groups comprising over 1,500 incoming Arts students arrayed from the first row orchestra to the top balcony of the Chan Centre. As I was introduced, I heard something about a $100 M budget and scores of departments, schools, and interdisciplinary centres, and it all became very, very real – and a little scary — to me.
Following the Chan “Meet the Dean” sessions, I joined some students sitting on the Main Mall for pizza. Then, after picking up my academic regalia, I tried to find my way to the Doug Mitchell Winter Sports Arena for something that the calendar on my iPhone was calling a “Pep Rally”. Talk about being under-prepared…. As the academic procession lined up I caught a glimpse into the Arena: 7,000 screaming students in the colours of their Faculty (and wow, so much Arts purple!), the theme from Star Wars playing, the Musqueum Warriors group drumming us in, hand slaps from students, videos playing on the stage and even a smoke machine! This was truly a rock band moment, all about welcoming our new students and capturing the palpable sense of enthusiasm and excitement. The event seemed to seemed to exemplify UBC’s sense of its strength and potential as an institution not afraid to speak of changing the world — an institution where the President was comfortable delivering a slam poetry address with the President of the student association. I have to say that while looking behind me at a video on the themes of Place and Promise, I had a strong sense that I was in the right place at the right time.
Finally, back on the Mall, the CASS folks had arranged for a booth to be set up with XBox Rock Band instruments to get the new dean jamming on trap set with students. For an hour or more, students walked up to the guitars and vocal mic and we ran through some Nirvana, Radiohead, and even Bon Jovi. My daughter, Fiona (7) joined us on guitar for a few tunes. A great jam, with a lot of UBC musical talent on display, and of course it was a killer way to start my new job.
