Today@Dal

All members of the Dalhousie community are cordially invited to join academic leaders on June 19 (12:45 pm to 1:45 pm, room 1011 Rowe Bldg) for the keynote address delivered by Mr. Allan Rock, President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ottawa and former Ambassador of Canada to the UN (see registration link below for full bio), who will speak to:

• learning humility by having to start at the beginning in coming to understand how a modern research university functions
• learning to work with the deans, faculty, Board and Senate—all alien to a newcomer, and yet each with a role to play
• realizing that the view of universities from afar is distorted, and that expectations had to be adjusted to fit reality
• finding out how decisions are made and how leadership is provided in a community that works on consensus, not “command and control”, and contrasting that environment to other workplaces
• discovering the meaning of academic freedom, and why it is important not just to professors and universities but also society
• trying to figure out why “customer service” is such a difficult notion to promote on campus, to the detriment of our students; and
• despite everything, how universities are the last bastion of the idealist, and places that encourage the highest aspirations of the human spirit. We are therefore privileged to spend our working lives in such an environment.

Register here: https://events-eod.dal.ca/workshop.php?id=634

NOTE: This keynote is part of a two-day conference for Dalhousie academic leaders. Although the other parts of the conference are targeted specifically for academic leaders, all interested faculty and staff are invited to attend the keynote.