uWaterloo president gives mid-course review of Sixth Decade Plan

 President David Johnston gave “an early mid-course review” of the university’s current ten-year plan at Tuesday’s meeting of the board of governors, and declared that progress is “good” on most counts.

“It was well conceived at the outset,” Johnston said about the Sixth Decade Plan, “and continues to serve as a good broad guide.”

The document — “Pursuing Global Excellence:  Seizing Opportunities for Canada” —was prepared by the senate long-range planning committee and approved by the senate and board of governors in 2006 as a plan for the years 2007-2017. It calls for “cultivating, nurturing and promoting excellence in all reaches of the enterprise by achieving an even greater degree of academic distinction, becoming more academically and socially relevant, and having its initiatives supported by the necessary resources.”

More than the Third, Fourth and Fifth Decade plans that preceded it, the Sixth Decade plan has been regularly cited as a guide for setting priorities and making decisions. Johnston reminded the board on Tuesday that the plan demands “a willingness to make choices . . . leadership in creativity, innovation and risk taking”, and told the meeting that with many unusual ventures over the past few years, “we have not had a resounding failure!”

Still,  he said, “I do worry that universities generally have a risk-averse culture,” and Waterloo has been “slow to move” in some areas, such as the adoption of learning technology.

Johnston said some of the specifics mentioned in the plan are “stretch goals”, such as the intention to have all undergraduate students involved in a research or “inquiry-based learning” project of some kind, as part of an emphasis on integrating teaching with research.

Other weaknesses, he said, are in student support services (he called last fall’s vote against paying for a Student Services building “a disappointment”) and student “engagement”. Progress is uneven in building research intensity (the amount of research funding per faculty member) and, thanks to financial hard times, “the trajectory is in the wrong direction” on UW’s goal to reduce the student-faculty ratio from the present 27:1 to 20:1.

The plan promises that Waterloo “will continue to strive to improve its resources through vigorous fund-raising efforts, and to improve its financial stability through diversification of its sources of income and the continued building of its endowments.”

That, Johnston said flatly, “is the weakest part of our plan. Can we obtain the resources to achieve our dreams?” Bringing in $100 million a year in gifts, which is what would be required to reach the plan’s target of “20% of the operating budget”, is another “stretch”, the president acknowledged.

In some areas, though, goals are near or have already been reached: “excellent students” are being recruited every September, academic integrity programs are being introduced, grants from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research have been doubled, graduate enrolment is rising (and undergraduate enrolment has already reached the 2017 goal), alumni programs are being expanded, and the budgeting system provides for regular “reallocation” of funds through an annual campus-wide cut and targeted increases.

Johnston said “engagement” with local governments — not just Waterloo and Kitchener but now also Cambridge and Stratford — is good, although “the current dialogue with Waterloo on housing strategy” is “difficult”.

The plan calls for individual academic programs to rank high in their discipline; any new program, for instance, should have “the potential to be one of the best in Canada and at least among the top quarter of similar programs in North America”. In most cases it’s “yet to be determined” how programs will be assessed, he said, adding that it’s not clear how the university will respond if a program is found not to measure up. However, “we have put in place the progress” for reviews, he said: “The ambition is significant.”

Some very positive notes: Waterloo’s “well-rounded graduates” are “our proudest accomplishment”. Campaign Waterloo will surely raise a billion dollars by the end of the decade (it’s more than half way there already). Waterloo enjoys “probably the best built and maintained of all 19 Ontario campuses”. And, Johnston boasted, “we have the best senior administrative team of any university.”