U of W president outlines strategic plan

By Tom Morrison

 

The president of the University of Windsor wants to attract more students by making enrollment more appealing for new students and finding ways to promote ongoing developments at the school.

University president Alan Wildeman addressed a crowded lecture room at the university’s new Centre for Engineering Innovation with a speech titled, “The Future is Never What it Used to Be.” He said the university should focus on attracting students because unlike other Ontario universities, Windsor went through two periods of decline in enrollment between 1994 and the present.

Undergraduate enrollment has dropped about four per cent since 1994, but Wildeman also said the university has had a total gain of about 500 students in that period because graduate enrollment has increased.

“As a result, our university has not been a recipient of additional government funding for a number of years now, with the province in fact saying that we’ve been under-enrolled and we have to catch up,” said Wildeman.

Some ways the university will attract more students is by renewing facilities, establishing the new downtown campus, creating new programs and investing in Massive Open Online Courses.

“I believe that the University of Windsor should, within three years be offering MOOCs in subjects that we have some unique capacity to be known for. They would be a way of us transmitting to a broader audience,” Wildeman said.

MOOCs have been used at Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other schools. Depending on the course, people who complete these online classes can receive a certificate but can’t earn credit towards a degree.

Wildeman said he wants the university to be known as “the place that’s about healthy Great Lakes, viable communities that are safe, sustainable industry (and) understanding borders.”

Members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 1001 distributed flyers outside the lecture hall before the speech that expressed displeasure with the university contracting out certain jobs. CUPE members also protested the December ceremony in which the university received the keys to the former Windsor Star building.

“When universities contract out important functions like food service, custodial and maintenance, you don’t even get a lousy t-shirt,” the flyer said.

Recording secretary for Local 1001 James Kehoe said he hopes this practice will change.

“We hope the university that likes to say that it’s committed to social justice and makes it one of its pillars will actually be good to its word and not try to make our local community worse by joining the rush to the bottom that our U.S. counter-parts are doing,” said Kehoe.

Kehoe also said some universities are using contractors to cut costs, but are increasing tuition and faculty salaries and positions.

During his speech Wildeman said the creation of new faculty positions is meant to build on “student-faculty interaction.”

“It is a move that is about our future. It is my desire that we can collectively bargain respectfully, responsibly and reasonably within the fiscal constraints that we have,” Wildeman said. “It’s my desire that we can avoid any precipitous shocks that affect the livelihoods of people who work here.”

For more information about the university’s future, the school’s strategic plan can be downloaded at www.uwindsor.ca/president.