If you’re a member of the UBC community (and you probably are, if you’re reading this), you’ll be very aware that UBC released its new strategic plan yesterday, all shiny and nice and approved by the Board of Governors.

The keys to this plan, which is designed to “shape UBC’s next century”, are

• the themes of Inclusion, Collaboration, and Innovation;
• the core areas of focus of People and Places, Research Excellence, Transformative Learning, and Local and Global Engagement;
• and ten goals, including “Inspire and enable students through excellence in transformative teaching, mentoring, advising and the student experience”, “Lead globally and locally in sustainability, wellbeing and safety across our campuses and communities”, “Significantly expand student access, alumni networks and institutional partnerships to reinforce global and local connections”, “Achieve agility in academic support and administration through thoughtful systemic change and simplification”, and “Lead as a model public institution, fostering discourse, knowledge exchange and engagement”.

I’d argue, as someone who’s worked (and works) in the Research Commons, in Koerner Library, and as a UBC grad student, that having the fourth and fifth floors of Koerner become the host of the new dedicated Research Commons space would go a long way towards fulfilling all of these ideas.

The whole purpose of the Research Commons is

• to foster collaboration, research excellence, transformative learning, discourse, knowledge exchange and engagement;
• and to support people – grad students in particular, but people from across UBC and its related communities more generally.

Grad students talk about how the Research Commons’ services and people are important to their wellbeing, helping them through the stresses of grad school, providing empathetic ears, and reminding them that even though they may feel alone sometimes, they’re part of a community that wants to support them and help them succeed. Because of this, they can do excellent research, engage globally and locally, and have an inspiring and enabling student experience.

So far, the Research Commons has been doing all of this without a dedicated space – but clearly, as shown in the areas of focus, “Place” can be just as important as “People” in creating a world-class research university.

Will administrative offices fulfill all of these ideas? Well, they’ll house a select few people who get paid a lot of money to write up fancy strategic plans espousing them. They certainly won’t be open to the masses of grad students who are trying to live these ideals on a day-to-day basis, or the other researchers – undergrads, postdocs, and faculty – who also use the Research Commons’ services.

And really, is grabbing space that was already promised for another purpose really the way to “achieve agility in academic support and administration through thoughtful systemic change and simplification”? Or is “agility” admin-speak for “opportunism”, and “thoughtful” for “hey, look what we think we can do without anyone raising a fuss”?

Just like UBC has, I’ve put in years of involvement and consultation with many, many stakeholders to come up with my plan – and as far as the 5th floor of Koerner goes, I think the Research Commons space is the way to go.

What do you think?