LOCAL VIEWPOINT: Serving our community as Canada’s finest regional university

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/03/2022 (1457 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

This coming week, Brandon University will formally launch its new strategic plan. If you were at the Brandon Chamber of Commerce luncheon that BU sponsored earlier this month, you will have gotten an early taste, but I’m excited to first share the full document with our campus community, and with the wider community in the weeks to come.

Here’s the short version: our Strategic Plan orients BU squarely as a regional university, primarily serving Brandon and wider Westman, and we aim to be recognized as Canada’s finest regional university.

A regional university is different than some other universities, and one of the ambitions of our plan is to help recognize the importance of regional universities in Canada’s post-secondary environment.

We are universities that are not found in Canada’s largest cities. We are universities with a diverse student population, including international and Indigenous, but also primarily serving our regional population. We provide greater access to education, by welcoming students who might not be able to attend larger or further-away institutions and by maintaining a focus on quality education without sacrificing affordability.

We are intellectual, social, cultural, and economic hubs for our regions and sources of pride for our community. Our campuses are choice meeting places for cultural, social, recreational, sporting, and academic events. Great regional universities become that focal point for the community and a gathering place for excellence.

Alongside our regional focus, we are also a bridge between our region and the world. Our researchers tackle local problems, but also conduct first-class research on global issues. Our students have the opportunity to participate in practical work experience in local hospitals, local schools, and local businesses, or to broaden their horizons on exchange.

We attract students, research funding, and talent, from around the world, and share our own successes with other regions. Upon graduation, our alumni head into the world with the skills to succeed anywhere, but we know we’re serving our region because the vast majority choose to invest their skills right here in Manitoba.

In short, as a regional university we are a focal point for our home, we help develop our communities’ resources and we connect Brandon and Westman with the world. This is Brandon University today, and our Strategic Plan sets us up to be even more so in the future.

Our plan was recently gifted the Michif name of Mamaawii-atooshke aakihkiwiin, which means “working together and growing.” Among the many communities we serve in Treaty 1 and 2 lands, Brandon University is proud to be located in the homeland of the Red River Métis and honoured to have been gifted this name for our Strategic Plan, which reflects the partnership and community action that is woven throughout.

I choose the word woven because we’ve done something new with our Strategic Plan: we have done away with the traditional conceit of pillars or buckets. Instead, we have chosen an Indigenous image, a braid, to represent the many strands that make up our campus. Along with students, and our faculty and staff, the third braid we have chosen as an essential part of our makeup is community. That’s you!

The process of braiding creates greater strength and flexibility than any one strand could produce on its own, and it reflects how we see the strength and flexibility of campus being interwoven with all of Brandon and Westman.

Braiding is an intentional action, and we have embraced the idea of action throughout the plan. We call on everyone at BU to Be Agile, to Be Courageous, and to Be Inclusive. While I could go on for pages about the plan, the challenges and opportunities it identifies, and the goals we’re setting (future columns will write themselves!) I’d like to focus briefly on the idea of agility.

Being a smaller institution means we can move more quickly when we put our minds to it. I’ve championed that advantage ever since arriving at BU, and we learned its value well at the start of the pandemic. That quick pivot happened two years ago, and at that time, we thought we were getting close to finalizing a draft Strategic Plan. So much changed, so quickly, that we knew we needed to adapt the plan as well. Well, we made adaptation — that is, empowering everyone at BU to act agilely, a centrepiece of the plan.

It means our plan doesn’t lay out a detailed roadmap for the next five years. What would be the point of that, when the world changes dramatically in the course of a few weeks, and we know that we must, and can, change just as quickly?

Instead, our plan emphasizes process. We know we work well with community. We know we can be agile. We know we have the strength and resilience of a braid.

This is already serving us well. In late February, we were one of the first universities in the country to express shock and horror at the invasion of Ukraine, and to step forward with resources to support Ukrainian students at BU. We were also one of the first to raise the Ukrainian flag in support, and have continued to play a leading role in the community as we prepared for the expected arrival of Ukrainian refugees.

What will our support look like? That depends on what’s needed. Once again, we know we will come together as a community, that as a braid we will support each other, and that we will act quickly, and with compassion, to do what’s needed.

That’s “working together and growing.” And that’s what it means for Brandon University to be Canada’s finest regional university.