Dr. Wanda Costen was out for a stroll on Dal campus last month — the same week she completed her move to Halifax — when someone she didn’t know stopped to say hello. A short time later, it happened again.
“Hey, aren’t you Dal’s new provost?’” was the general gist of the conversations, she recalls.
While she was still a couple weeks away from beginning her role officially, Dr. Costen was already making connections — and she couldn't have been more thrilled.
"I am an off-the-charts extrovert,” she says. “I need to connect with people. I want to know people. And to really get to know a community and what it is about, you have to know the people."
Dr. Costen, now settling in as the university’s provost and vice president academic, will be doing a lot more of that over the coming weeks and months as she familiarizes herself with Dal and Dal gets to know her.
To really get to know a community and what it is about, you have to know the people.
As dean of the Smith School of Business at Queen’s University, Dr. Costen prioritized building personal connections with students and colleagues, going so far as meeting each new class of incoming students in every program over her three years or so in the role.
Dr. Costen will oversee a considerably larger swath of academic and administrative portfolios as provost at Dal, supporting a diverse research-intensive university of 13 Faculties, 21,000 students and more than 200 programs. Still, she says her general approach will remain much the same: “To meet people where they are. To go into their spaces and talk to them.”
A university for all
In some ways, Dr. Costen has been getting to know Dal for a while already. Shortly after moving to Canada in 2018 from the U.S. (where she was born) to be a dean at MacEwan University in Edmonton, she travelled to Halifax to attend a Dalhousie-hosted conference. Her first Dal experience left a deep impression.
“I can’t explain it, but I’ve had a deep affinity for Dalhousie ever since,” she says. “The vibe it has, the connection to community, the integration of the people, the type of students that come here — it just resonated with me. It struck me as a university that is aligned with my idea of what a university is supposed to do.”
She sees that purpose as, at its core, creating possibilities for positive change.
“At the end of the day, you’re providing talent for this country but really citizens that are hopefully informed, who make good decisions and hopefully challenge the status quo, and who are willing to be engaged in their community to effect change,” she says.
Dr. Costen traces her path into academia back to similar impulses. Though she'd already completed degrees in life sciences and business and worked in strategic human resources, she felt an urge to ask deeper questions.
"Someone asked me ‘Why are you here?’" she recalls after she undertook a PhD in sociology at Washington State University. "I said, ‘I just want to know why there aren’t more people who look like me in positions of decision-making power and authority.'"
Dr. Costen emerged from her education more committed than ever to reducing barriers to access everywhere for people from all walks of life. As Dal's provost, she says she’ll seek to ensure nothing gets in the way of people "coming here and getting the amazing education that we impart in this university.”
"It informs everything I do every day."
Tapping into Dal's strengths
Dr. Costen says her number one priority as provost will be ensuring the university remains focused on its core academic mission and attracting people from across Canada and the world to study here.
That means continuing to prioritize the development of programs that tap into Dal's culture and reputation as a university that accepts different ideas, challenges the status quo, and addresses society’s big questions.
She sees power in Dal's diverse range of Faculties and wants to enable them to come together in new ways to offer unique dual degrees, certificates, diplomas, and experiential-learning opportunities.
"Imagine an oceanographer, a biologist, a businessperson, and a sociologist coming together to solve a problem," she says.
At Dal, it's possible.
Dr. Costen says building upon and conveying Dal's unique strengths and value — including its civic impact — have grown especially important in a more challenging financial environment where governments are setting caps on international enrolment and tying funding to specific priorities. Universities across Canada are reporting budget shortfalls, reflecting a sector-wide challenge for the country’s post-secondary education system.
"The most important thing is for members of the Dalhousie community to understand is that this is real," she says. "And unfortunately, it’s not short term. It’s a fundamental shift in the types of support we are going to get financially and in, I would argue, the public demanding us to show the qualities we are developing in our students and graduates."
She encourages everyone at Dal to start asking: "What is your contribution to the greater good — not just to your faculty, but to the university and beyond? That’s how we have to start thinking."
The many sides of Wanda Costen
Dr. Costen says she'll be asking those same questions herself and engaging others in discussions.
"I ask a lot of questions," she says. "Don’t be intimidated by that. It’s fact finding. It’s to help me understand where people are coming from, so I don’t make a decision that doesn’t align."
In addition to being open to learning, she says she's committed to revealing her own thinking to others.
They’ll see me laugh, they’ll see me be happy, they’ll see me frustrated, they’ll see me cry — it’s all real.
“This is who I am. It’s not a game," she says. "I genuinely care about people, for real. They will see all sides of Wanda Costen. They’ll see me laugh, they’ll see me be happy, they’ll see me frustrated, they’ll see me cry — it’s all real. I know that’s uncomfortable for people sometimes, but you’re going to know what I’m thinking. My mantra is transparency, fairness and equity, and I honour that every day in what I’m trying to do. That’s my commitment to this community.”
There’s also a solid chance you might bump into her cheering on the Tigers at a game or kayaking on a lake near her new home in Beechville, a recent fascination. Just don’t expect to see her paddling on the open ocean.
“People are saying, ‘Well, now you can sea kayak.’ Yeah, no, I’m good with the lake,” she says, chuckling.