Installation Address

of

BONNIE MARIE PATTERSON

President and Vice-Chancellor

Trent University

October 2nd, 1998

"EDUCATIONAL EXCELLENCE - MAKING IT HAPPEN"

Chancellor, Members of Parliament, Her Worship, Distinguished Guests, Members of the Board and Aboriginal Education Council, Members of the Faculty and Staff, the Student Body of Trent University, and Alumni; Ladies and Gentlemen -

It is my distinct privilege and pleasure to welcome you to Trent University today - and indeed to have your attention for the next few minutes. This is a very special moment for me in my academic career and personal life as I officially take on the responsibility of leading such a fine institution as Trent. Luckily for you, my administrative duties for the last few years have precluded my being in the classroom and so the three-hour lecture format seems a thing of the past! Besides, at Trent, it is clearly not the preferred model of delivery, as my colleagues will attest. So you will be spared!

Thank you for taking the time to join in celebrating this happy occasion. I want to begin by extending my personal congratulations to our honourary doctorate recipient today, Grand Chief Matthew Coon Come. We are so very pleased, Matthew, that you have accepted Trent's highest award, and we are touched by the involvement and interest of your family and friends who are here with you today. You are a great Canadian and a great leader. An institution's proudest accomplishment is the success of its alumni, and we are fortunate to have you within their ranks, which number over 20,000 at this point in our history.

We are also particularly honoured that so many special guests have been able to grace us with their presence today. Colleagues from across the country and indeed from south of the border, are here with us and we are delighted to welcome you. It is rare that a small university has the honour of so many distinguished academics and administrators visiting, all at once! Many of the people who are here are special in my life--my parents, extended family, mentors, friends and colleagues. I hope you will have the opportunity to meet each other as the day progresses and that you can take a little time to enjoy our campuses-- here and downtown, the city, and indeed the beautiful surrounding Kawartha region.

There is an important and relevant lesson in Trent's history that I would like to talk about---a lesson about the way in which our institution was founded and has evolved---that will serve us well as we look to the future.

Trent's University charter was conferred by an Act of the Legislature of Ontario that received Royal Assent March 6, 1963. While its 35 year history places Trent amongst the country's younger universities, over this relatively short timespan, it has built great depth in its programs and faculty activity because it has evolved within its Liberal Arts and Sciences niche, focussing fundamentally on interdisciplinary approaches in its program content. In 1963, 105 young people selected this University to pursue their academic interests. Today, approximately 5,200 students participate in this rich learning environment, 150 of whom study at the graduate level in Master's and PhD programs.

At the root of our academic evolution is a commitment to focus on the study of Canadian civilization--its history, literature, art and institutions, its people and its sciences. As an aside, the Journal of Canadian Studies, produced and edited here at Trent, continues to be a foremost publication for academics around the world who have an interest in Canada.

History tells us a great deal. As her worship, our mayor, once said to a local group: "Trent University did not just happen, did not just arrive in Peterborough by some act of fate or act of the Ontario government, however farsighted it may have been at the time. Trent came to Peterborough because there were citizens in this community who desperately wanted a university here." As I learn more about our beginnings, I marvel at how this effort mobilized local industrialists who championed business and civic leaders to support its establishment. In addition, the mayor of the day (Colonel Dewart) formed a citizens' committee to investigate the feasibility of a university in Peterborough. The broader community refused to become discouraged by the lack of support up front in the provincial ministry or amongst existing universities. Rather, under the Corporations Act of Ontario, it took charge of its own destiny and formed Trent College Limited, secured from the city $100,000 as a result of the sale of a gas distribution system, formed the first Board of Directors, and the rest is history.

Ultimately, it also took the support of three long established Ontario universities (Toronto, Queen's and Western), and their willingness to form a Liaison Committee, to choose the first president and guide the critical appointment of the first faculty and administrative personnel to make Trent a reality.

Surveys of local high school students to ascertain their interest in pursuing higher education in their community, the support of the local Labour Council and unions, fundraising drives that included a high level of participation by everyday citizens in our community, a generous gift of land from a leading Canadian corporation (Canadian General Electric), open minded politicians and strong leadership from within were all key success factors in establishing our university.

As was the case in its beginning, Trent is based upon the conviction that education is inescapably an individual experience - individual to each student, to each member of the teaching faculty, and to every scholar who becomes a part of delivering its mission.

The lessons from our founding and early years are as relevant today as they were then, and in colloquial terms, I would express these lessons as follows:

• best beginnings are important - founding values and actions are critical to future success
• engagement with the communities that we serve, public support and generosity are the cornerstones of financial viability
• vision and leadership in all sectors are important to advancement
• partnerships with other educational institutions are not only possible but necessary conditions for success. You cannot always do it alone. And finally
• defining and remaining true to a niche, and ensuring that quality forms the core of that niche, are hallmarks of success

At the official opening ceremonies of Trent University, the Right Honourable Georges P. Vanier, Governor General of Canada said:

"A university is a vibrant, living thing. Like all life, it grows and develops, casting out branches…of learning, always seeking the light." An interesting vision given today's challenges but true nonetheless.

A university is, first and foremost, a community of scholars where faculty and students join in exploring the frontiers of knowledge and learning, in a climate of academic freedom, where the search for truth is the central activity. But, a university, in highly practical terms, can also have a huge impact on its regional community. Both the societal and economic impact are clear. The annual public investment in Trent is approximately $20.5 million. Using a conservative multiplier effect, this amount generates, in turn, approximately $86.5 million on the local economy--a $66 million return on investment. In simple terms, for every dollar invested in Trent from public money, four dollars is returned in local spending.

Perhaps, of necessity, we have not fully tended to our local community, in building a world competitive institution, and in our pursuits to internationalize our campus and learning experiences. But local involvement is nonetheless as important today as it was in the creating stages of this university. Trent is, and must remain, an active part of the Peterborough regional community. Its faculty and staff play leading roles in all arts organizations, and on many voluntary boards, committees, and in local government. So too, we must maintain meaningful and mutually beneficial connections with the private sector, enriching the local quality of life.

Our partnership, for example, with York University and Durham College, enables us to bring what we do best to communities beyond the greater Peterborough area-- in this instance to the Durham region. Our co-operative agreements with Sir Sandford Fleming College in our own city, Loyalist a little further east, and Arctic College in the far north, all reflect the importance and benefits of extending our communities of interest in our own education sector. Longstanding partnerships with Queen's University remain an integral part of Trent's commitment.

Does that mean we should limit our outreach to our immediate community? Not at all, if we are to fulfill the objects of a university. We must do more. We have a long history of successful international engagement. Of note is our more recent internationally profiled $4.9 million, tier one CIDA project. This co-operative and pioneering project, between communites and universities, is examining the environmental rehabilitation of watersheds in Ecuador and Mexico.

Incorporating an international dimension into the academic and organizational systems and structures of Trent, better prepares our students to function in a world dominated by transnational corporations, some of which are bigger than many nation-states. As changes in communications technology have radically increased the speed of interaction on the world stage and massive cross-border movements of people and capital occurs, internationalization becomes a more critical activity. Global citizenship requires a reasonable understanding of the interconnectedness of the human race, in political, social, economic, cultural, and ecological terms. We are fortunate in a smaller community such as Peterborough to have a number of organizations that, over the past few years, have developed a highly marketable knowledge base and product lines that enable them to deliver their technologies, expertise and products all over the world. We know Trent contributes to that success through its graduates' capabilities - by producing valuable human capital, if you will.

A liberal education seeks to cultivate knowledge, reason, aptitude, and taste for what endures. In a society where extraordinary technological development and relentless cultural change seem to be the norm, it is important to anchor these changes in values that are enduring, seeking to understand the world, to teach who we are, and how we can evolve our thinking.

On a more individual level, we need to say to our young people, to our students, "take your time--trends are important but you also need to learn about what endures," and we need to offer some grounding from which to pursue life's learnings.

A colleague of mine recently captured in an article, an explanation of what we actually do here at universities. In short he said: "We tell old stories and make up new ones; the first is teaching, the second research." And, I thank him for that simple reminder.

Some stories are clearly more elegant and elaborate than others, some are expressed through the pursuit of scientific discovery, others through poems or performance. Our stories are sometimes about people and sometimes about things--the stories of science. But all are the product of imagination, of curiosity, contradiction, and the capturing of ideas.

We attempt to understand and articulate our discoveries through our teaching and research, navigating in so many different ways through the rough waters of societal change.

At our institutions we must be forever "thinking"--thinking about

• economic security
• social fairness
• the early education of our children
• the health of our population
• strategic investments
• public policy, and
• sustaining a democratic society

Today, we are moving through one of the most extraordinary transitions of our times, thought by many to be as significant as the industrial revolution.

Our world is undergoing a change from an industrialized economy to one that is based on ideas, knowledge, and innovation. Once the wealth of our nation, predominantly based on natural resources, seemed certain and lasting. Today, our ability to maintain the wealth base to sustain the publicly financed sectors of our society--including post-secondary institutions--is in question.

As we reflect upon the importance of one of our universities' core mandates--that is fundamental research-- we must as a society be concerned over the fact that the primary sources of funds for this activity are diminishing. So too, it must be recognized that for those who have the capacity, who control the largest pools of wealth, it is risky to invest in uncertain exploration that may or may not produce real returns in reasonable timeframes. But we must generate new financeable ideas. New technologies often pave the way for our tomorrows. Maintaining the talent base to fuel an ideas-based economy becomes essential to the future wellness of this country-- a high quantity of well-educated individuals is part of the solution and thus we must ensure access to higher education in the Province.

Ensuring that a highly motivated and inspired professoriate thrives within those who comprise our university communities is a key to our transition. They are the great sources of innovation that a modern economy and civic society needs.

In a dinner address honouring five science Nobel Laureates almost a year ago now, I was struck by the words of Dr. John Palanyi, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Toronto, he himself a Nobel recipient, when he said:

"To have an idea is to be held in the embrace of a tiger." He would know.

And, in discussing the power of ideas and acknowledging that they are surprisingly scarce, he went on to speak of the tragedy of an idea half-conceived. Some things in life cannot be accelerated. It may be a surprise to some of you that Nobel Prize winners such as Professor Polanyi are rare -that is Canadian Nobel Laureates who actually stay and do their work in Canada. More Canadians, or former Canadians, will continue to win Nobel Prizes abroad than Canadians at home because the people we are losing to more competitive jurisdictions are the people who in fact stand some chance of competing for Nobel prizes. We must reverse that drain. To do this, fundamental investments in our innovation capacity must be made, and I believe that includes nurturing the minds of our youngest citizens.

In preparation for citizenship, the liberal arts assure us that as human beings, we have faced and surmounted obstacles before; they illustrate how people have managed badly and managed well. Access to the humanities curriculum helps our students cross social boundaries in their imaginations. Questions of culture and society continue to dominate in Canada as in many nations, and in so very many cases, they are connected to advancements in science, technology and medicine as well as the increasing complexity of our diverse communities.

Arts, humanities and social science researchers advance the debates on major social issues--health, ethical issues around new reproductive technologies, immigration, the implications of cyberspace, globalization, distinct jurisdictional approaches to global environmental issues, social fragmentation and wealth creation, are examples.

So too, understanding our histories is essential to our well-being, not to enable us to do things as they have been done in the past, but rather to enable us to choose how to apply the knowledge of our past, of our heritage, to our lives today and tomorrow. Knowledge, in other words, is a gift, and if we are to fulfill our responsibilities as human beings, we must see the world and the knowledge that we acquire about it as a wonderful voyage wherein discovery occurs through a lifetime of study.

As you know Trent's niche focuses on the arts and sciences. Two common themes link our arts and science faculty at Trent - a desire to establish new ways of understanding the world, and a keen interest in pursuing one's work even when it defies accepted theories and practice.

But are these pursuits enough to carry us into the new millennium? Increasingly society, parents, and members of the general public, express their skepticism. Our system of public universities has experienced financial challenges as provincial governments have lowered funding levels and sought a new balance between the public good and private good, public cost and private cost that has historically shaped our resource base. Tuition increases have far exceeded inflation, as universities have struggled unsuccessfully to find ways to fill the funding gap. Partly as a result of these changes, quality has come under question. At Trent, we have maintained our smaller class sizes, our intensive interactive learning models and our collegiate system of academic advising and social learning. But it has been at a price that can no longer be sustained.

The actual employment rates of liberal arts graduates are not that far off those in more applied fields at the undergraduate level such as business or engineering, according to surveys of university graduates three to five years after graduation. Unemployment rates for those with postsecondary education are half of those of individuals without higher education.

Given the increased focus and expectation of us related to the graduates preparedness for the labour market, we know that a public understanding of the value of the liberal arts and sciences, will be one of our key challenges and opportunities. Internships and other work place opportunities can be a more significant part of a liberal arts education at Trent. We can and will build on the success of a new promising venture in applied learning--an initiative that places students in work place assignments in community based social agencies and organizations.

Examining the core competencies defined by the Conference Board of Canada as necessary for the workforce of the 21st century, you will see an exquisite match to those developed in a liberal arts and science program--critical thinking; analytical and reasoning skills; problem solving; verbal, written and on-line communications capabilities; research abilities; and most importantly, learning to learn. Personal management skills that are the combination of skills, attitudes and behaviours required to keep and progress on a job are part of the liberal education experience. And finally, the skills needed to work with others in a multi-cultural context, in group decision making, and leading where appropriate, are part of what the richness of a Trent experience ensures.

If there is an area for new focus, it will be helping our graduates show employers why they are needed. We may need to augment some of their employability skills to enable them to better understand, speak and write the languages in which business is conducted, but their essential capabilities will be obvious.

Since its inception, Trent has had a profound influence on the development and character of Peterborough and the surrounding region. More than economic impact related to spending, employment and population growth, I'm told by employers (such as NHB Industries and Fisher Gauge) that our very existence helped secure their decision to locate in Peterborough and their ability to attract the talent they require. So too, the Ministry of Natural Resources recognized Trent's strengths in environmental research when it chose to consolidate its locations in the city and indeed its researchers and labs, here on the Symons campus in the university's science complex. Beyond economics, the university attracts a broad range of people whose artistic sensitivity, intellectual discipline and technical competence strengthens the consciousness of the entire community. As David Morton, the president of Quaker Oats said to me recently, "our access to a rich cultural life in this community is very much tied to the presence of a considerable community of scholars and artists associated with Trent."

For our part within the university, new levels of knowledge, a broadening range of interests and diverse connections with other parts of the country, the continent and the world, are brought to the community through our academic pursuits.

We must continue and indeed strengthen our accessibility to the community--from our rich library resources, to our scientific knowledge and expertise, through our heightened awareness of history, our people and cultures.

We have a beautiful natural environment at our disposal - rich with nature areas, wetlands, drumlins, and marshes. Straddling the historic Otonabee River for nearly two miles, on the edge of the Canadian Shield, Trent's Symons Campus is one of the most picturesque settings for a university in this country. And it is named after a great leader, our founding President, Thomas H. B. Symons.

A most recent gift of some 260 acres of property on the edge of Pigeon Lake will soon see the establishment of the James McLean Oliver Ecological Centre - a field station for environmental and biological research and for examination and preservation of the ecosystem of the Kawartha Lakes Region - a marvelous addition to our properties for scientific research and teaching, consisting of pasture, mature hardwood forest woodlots, a maple syrup bush, lakefront, wetlands--many diverse habitats. Teaching and community outreach programs will be developed over time that provide the opportunity for partnership in an interdisciplinary way, building again on our strength and history. And it will take a new partnership, involving the generosity and foresight of individual citizens, the intellectural curiosity of our faculty, the engagement of our students, and support of business, industry and government to fully realize the potential of this gift in decades ahead.

Times of crisis are always interesting and those of you who have followed our more recent history will know we have had our times. Economic historians point to them as the times in which new infrastructures for later success are put in place, at the same time as inflexible existing systems collapse as a result of their inability to perceive that times have changed and the old modus operandi is no longer sustainable.

At Trent, we have real advantages and as such we have a great opportunity before us in the way our world of higher education is reshaping itself. And many of our strengths are undervalued or not known. The days of "silent achievement" must end.

• We have come to grips with a defined niche, and that has helped us build great depth in our programs and faculty areas of expertise.

  This past year alone, faculty here have been awarded several prestigious awards--a Killam Scholarship, a Guggenheim, a Fulbright, another of six Royal Society memberships and a Royal Society Award for Excellence; the latest Royal Society membership brings our Society totals to the largest number within any small university in the province.

  And the continual infusion of new talent into our classrooms and research activity continues. In the last two years alone, we have hired 17 new tenure track faculty members.

• In national competitions, we continue to achieve the highest success rates in grant applications for research support from granting agencies amongst institutions of comparable size.
  
  
• We nurture interdisciplinary academic and research programs and are proud that we will introduce the first PhD program in Native Studies in Canada with first students entering the program in the fall of 1999; only the second PhD program in North America.
  
  
• Our research and teaching endeavours, from what some might call a precious but remote community, are carried out in national and global frameworks with international partners.
  
  
• And we have achieved pre-eminence in several fields including Canadian Studies, Environmental Sciences, Modelling and Native Studies to name just a few. These are all strengths we will build on, given our interdisciplinary interests.

As we envisage our preferred future, I ask you to join me to create a picture.

1. Trent will be an autonomous, learning centred, competitive university that includes preparing our graduates for success in the workplace of the 21st century.
   
   
2. It will continue to focus and build on its strengths and potential in liberal education, thus maintaining its distinctive mission.
   
   
3. Trent will strive to create the very best learning environment possible that enables faculty, students and staff to reach their full potential.
   
   
4. It will embrace technology to enhance the interactive learning process and augment professor/student engagement
   
   
5. The existence of a collaborative business-education network that supports innovative partnerships will be a critical modus operandi of our future--a commitment to partner with sister universities, colleges and private enterprises without compromise to our essential character or academic integrity, and as such we will be financially viable.
   
   
6. And within our institution there will be an awakened entrepreneurial spirit and sufficient flexibility to adapt to change quickly.
   
   
7. Our focus will remain on learning for life, compatible with lifestyle and career needs.
   
   
8. Balances in access, excellence and labour market demands will be reflected in how we meet public expectations and needs.
   
   
9. We will strive to be in a university that follows best practices in accountability, transparency and efficiency.
   
   
10. And finally, Trent will continue to attract and maintain the best and brightest of teachers and scholars who make the difference for our students.

Ladies and gentlemen, you have heard my forecast on the "Trent Top Ten" hallmarks of our preferred future -a future that celebrates Community and Excellence. Fundamentally, I believe we will determine our own destiny.

The essence of an organization with depth and meaning is a relationship with both the past and the future.This relationship comes to life through its stories (old and new), created in an environment that values ideas and learning. This is the essence of Trent, and I am honoured to be among the newest members of this outstanding university.

On a more personal note, I appreciate greatly and thank the Board and search committee of faculty, staff, students, alumni and board members for their unanimous support and confidence in me as I assumed the presidency of this fine institution, July 1st.

It has been a true pleasure preparing and presenting this installation address today. Please enjoy our outstanding natural environment and hospitality here at Trent, and come back to visit often.

Thank you, merci and meegwetch.