With the University of British Columbia wallowing in the depths of a legitimacy crisis of administration, the longtime Ontario and BC Liberals deputy Philip Steenkamp was appointed the University’s new Vice-President, External Relations and Communications. Obviously, his communication with the BC Liberals will be easy.
VP Steencamp’s real test is communication and PR with the community, including, most locally, faculty, staff and students, and media who have lost confidence in UBC’s senior and middle executives and managers. That’s a tall order.
So we shall now see what a $300k+ salary buys an administration in crisis. We shall now see if the new VP can rescue UBC, basically his Office of Communications and Community Partnership and the Public Affairs Office, from its PR bloopers and blunders, including the handling of Chair Montalbano and BoG in the press.
MacLean’s called out the Public Affairs Office as a PR “disaster” while the Ottawa Citizen says UBC’s sunk deep into “damage-control.”
The previous VP Communications, Pascal Spothelfer, came and went in two years.
In the meantime, interim President Piper has yet to shake up PR and the senior admin. Something has to give…
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