What's happening at UNB
ALUMNI NEWS MAGAZINE | Summer 2024
The managing editor of Alumni News sat down with UNB president Paul Mazerolle to talk about his first term as president and what’s in store for his second term.
The UNB community had to pivot quickly in March 2020. Looking back, how did the pandemic influence your tenure?
It was really a major turning point for us. When I started in July of 2019, we were doing a lot of planning around the strategic vision. Our Board of Governors had approved it unanimously two weeks before the pandemic hit. It was a grand pivot for us, and we had to mobilize. We adopted what I call a principled approach to managing the university through the pandemic. We identified three principles: the safety of our community, the accessibility of the university, and the need for flexibility. We applied those principles to all the major decisions. COVID didn’t define us as an institution. If anything, it magnified our leadership opportunity. We’ve used the principled approach in other big projects, identifying core issues — where do we have to focus and how do we stay true to who we are? That has allowed us to say focused on our mandate, which is to implement a strategic vision. And ultimately, for me, that’s about how we change the world through UNB.
UNB’s strategic vision, UNB Toward 2030, has evolved during your tenure. Can you give us a quick progress report and outline any new priorities or areas of focus for your second term?
It’s a very ambitious plan, with growth and impact as high-level objectives. We’re making great momentum, but we still have a lot of work to do. We’re making great progress on the research pillar, with research income growing by about 20 per cent. Our goal is to achieve 100 per cent growth, so we still have a lot more work to do. In the area of transformative education for our students, we have developed more programs and are welcoming more students to UNB. We’re growing as an institution, around 5 per cent a year. Last year, it was 4.5 per cent, and this year, we should be at 7 per cent. This growth means more students will experience the UNB environment, which we believe is excellent. Our experiential learning and experiential education opportunities have expanded significantly, so more students are having placement opportunities that often lead to their first job. We are excited about that. Additonally, we have more students who are taking advantage of opportunities overseas.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion have been important themes during your presidency. How do you plan to continue advancing these values in your second term?
I’m proud of the achievements we’ve made. We have great leadership in place. We’ve had the office reviewed a number of years ago under the strategic vision because we wanted to look at bringing equity in education awareness into the Human Rights Office; and being an institution where people can be themselves and be comfortable and be accepted. We have a role to play in raising awareness across various issues and to make people feel that UNB is a welcoming institution. I think we’ve made great progress there. We’ve made good progress in the area of First Nations issues. We now fly First Nations flags on our campus and that was an important symbolic initiative. But we have a lot of work left to do. We have new leadership in place with Cheyenne Joseph, UNB’s Piluwitahasuwin, and she’s doing a terrific job, and we’re doing more with campus efforts in the First Nation space, working with our council of Elders.
Collaboration and partnerships have been a key priority under your leadership. How do you envision strengthening these partnerships?
Partnerships are fundamental to our ability to operate as an institution. Our Strategic Partnerships Office has been expanding. So, we’re working with more big employers and that has implications for student placements and for industrial research. So, whether it’s with OSCO or McCain Foods, we want to be doing industry-focused research with them but also provide opportunities for their staff to come and study at UNB.
What initiatives is UNB undertaking or has undertaken to promote sustainability and environmental responsibility?
We’re making really good progress. We have LEED-certified buildings on both campuses now, with a new one that’s being built in Saint John. We’re looking at sustainability all the time and how we can reduce our carbon footprint. Economically, we’re living within our means, and heading into our third year of balanced budgets and investible surpluses. So, in terms of the vision, it’s a big vision. With some of the priorities going forward, we’ve had to do a major restructuring to enable the vision. But some areas where we’re a little bit behind are around research architecture. So we’ve developed a new Institute on Data Science and Artificial Intelligence that was launched last year. This year, we’ll be launching a new Institute on Population Health. But we have three more in development. One is on climate change, one is on entrepreneurship, and one on public policy. Those will probably be 2025 initiatives. Finally, we’re focusing our research on four big, grand challenges around health, security, future energy, and environment and water.
What are the main issues students are bringing to you?
They are concerned about affordability at the moment, that’s a big issue affecting many students. Food security is a big one. We were very fortunate this year to work with our student union and students’ representative council on a couple of initiatives and fundraisers, which provided more food security and availability of food. Students are also concerned about housing, and about what’s happening in the world. They’re worried about what’s happening in Gaza and in Ukraine. They’re worried about climate change. We want to make sure that we’re a university where people’s voices can be heard. We want to be an open university. We want to be an advocate for open dialogue, so we’re hosting events like Diversity Dialogues and the Shaping the Debate series to facilitate discussion. Students are also looking for flexibility in their course offerings. So we’re looking at some of our programs and how to build flexibility for choices. How do we make sure that if students want to take courses around Indigenous history, they can build it into the program? They want to take courses around artificial intelligence, how do we make that available?
As a university with two campuses, how do you ensure a cohesive and unified experience for students while maintaining the unique identity of each campus?
One of the issues that we’ve been focused on through the strategic vision has been moving to a one UNB model, with two campuses. Our campuses are both unique and very distinctive, so they’re going to have a different look and feel in terms of the scale. Part of the reason why we did all the hard work in the last two years to develop a provost model and to move toward administrative integration was to embrace this one UNB framework, where there would be more equity in terms of opportunities for students and student services. We’ve been doing this by making sure we get the right structures in place. We now have an academic provost who has oversight of both campuses. Student services has one leadership team so that they can share ideas and best practices. The head of residential life is one person and has oversight and can look for consistency and equity. It’s a massive change for UNB.
Will there be any kind of impact on the academic side of things, as well? For example, students studying on the Saint John campus having courses applied to Fredericton?
That’s where we’re headed. One of the challenges that we faced previously, was that if you’re a student on one campus, it was not easy to take one course on another campus or transfer to another one. We were often treating our own students as if they were from a different university. So, we’re trying to blow all of that up. We’re looking at the advising model, the timetabling model. We’re looking at those course selection issues. And this will take a bit of time. Just building the provost model was big.
How does UNB view the role of disruptive technology and artificial intelligence in shaping the future of education? And can you give examples that are working for UNB?
AI has been with us for quite some time. For us as an institution, not at an academic level, but at an organizational level, AI needs to be embraced by UNB, and we’re probably late to the party on that. Recent leadership changes within our IT departments signal a proactive shift towards AI integration across various facets of university operations. For example, leveraging AI technologies to enhance efficiency and accessibility, such as optimizing parking systems and streamlining information dissemination. The second issue that we’re looking at is navigating the complexities of Generative AI, like ChatGPT, on academic integrity while balancing how students use this technology, how the classroom is embracing it, and the transparency in using it. And thirdly, our students as graduates will have AI in the future, and it’s going to affect their workplaces. And so, we need to make sure that weget AI modules into almost every program. So, whether you’re a history student or a physicist, what does it mean for your profession? What is it? What is the potential, what are the risks, and what are the ethical challenges? So, we’re looking to reform our curriculum, as well.
Can you elaborate on recent infrastructure developments or plans aimed at enhancing the overall student experience?
This has been something that we’ve been very excited about. It’s been part of our vision as we’re confronting some of the challenges as a university over 230 years old. We’re going to have a lot of deferred maintenance. In fact, it’s over $300 million, which is a big number. But for many universities of our age, it’s very reasonable. But the issue is how do you confront all these issues? Well, number one, we needed to grow as a university so that we can have investments, so we can have the investible surpluses to confront our built environment. So, what have we been doing? Number one, we’ve been growing residences. We’ve built a residence on the Saint John campus. And we’ve been renewing old residences on the Fredericton campus. We’re looking to update every year. On the Saint John campus, we have the Health and Social Innovation Centre that is under construction right now. That’s a $65-million building. The great challenge for us is that it was a $33-million building when we started the project five years ago. Things are a lot more expensive. Fortunately, we have support from the province and the federal government. But there’s still work that we’re doing with respect to fundraising and looking at ways to finance these things. That’ll be an iconic building on the Saint John campus and house many new health programs, along with some of the health researchers. In Fredericton, the big project that we’re working on is the Learning Commons, which is a new entryway to Head Hall. That’s really the first major infrastructure change to Head Hall in several years. But it’s part of a larger conceptualization of the future of engineering. So that’s a three-phase project and phase one is to be completed this summer. Collectively, this is about a $200 million set of initiatives that we’re undertaking. Within less than two years, we’ll be taking over the Justice Building in downtown Fredericton, where our law school will be located. That’s about a $60-million initiative, but we think that’ll be an iconic opportunity as well.
What steps do you plan to take to ensure that UNB remains adaptable and resilient in the face of future challenges?
Part of what I've been really interested in is not just growing the institution, not just looking at our impact, but looking at modernization. We are on a pretty progressive modernization track right now, and part of that is putting the right leadership in place. We have new leadership in the IT area that is pushing us ahead. We're looking at modernizing some of our policies as well, making sure that they're fit for purpose in their best practice. We’re also modernizing the whole EDI framework to strengthen the university, investing in education and awareness.
What would you like to say to alumni? If you had to leave them with one overarching message, what would it be?
Their alma mater is in very good shape and has enormous momentum. We’re one of the very few universities in Atlantic Canada that is growing. We have a very ambitious strategic vision; we’re confronting our challenges through our capital investments. We’re looking to enhance the student experience, both inside the classroom and outside. We’re focusing on being the University for New Brunswick, and we’re looking to advance the university for the public good. Of course, building knowledge is fundamental, but so too is translating the knowledge toward impact, and we want to be at the forefront of being an impactful university.
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