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The University of Regina is working on a path to recognition as one of the country’s top research-intensive comprehensive universities.
But while doing so, it has to navigate major changes to its world, including a steep decline in international student enrolments and the rise of artificial intelligence.
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On Wednesday, the school released its latest 10-year strategic plan. Entitled “Together, We Serve,” it’s built on five pillars: Together, We Learn; Together, We Discover; Together, We Build; Together, We Put Things Right; and Together, We Innovate.
It follows consultations that involved more than one thousand people, and Aziz Douai, chair of the strategic planning steering committee, said that makes it a challenge to meet the expectations of everyone.
“I think the challenge for us since the beginning was to make sure that we or the final product, the final document, reflects all the voices that we have heard,” Douai said. “The contributions – the significant contributions from the community, from faculty members, from staff, from students, from Indigenous communities and partners, as well as the colleges, the regional colleges, the federated colleges.
“It was an extensive process. The challenge with an extensive consultation process is that you have lots of rich feedback. How can you reconcile all these kind of visions and dreams and hopes in one document?”
University of Regina president, Jeff Keshen, said the new strategic plan becomes even more important during the new reality facing Canadian post-secondary institutions, as changing government policy leads to far fewer international student enrolments.
“We’ve seen, with the vicissitudes and the mishandling and the chaos of federal government policy over the last two years, that in our case, we have declined from 2,400 incoming international students to 600,” Keshen told reporters. “So this plan is taking place in the context of our institution losing some $20 million in revenue.”
The Strategic Planning Steering Committee is chaired by Aziz Douai, Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research. (Geoff Smith/980 CJME)
He said so far, the university has been able to absorb that figure in its budgets as it worked on the new strategy, but warned that if the situation continues, it will have to find the money somewhere else.
“As this strategic plan is being finalized and is being launched, we’ll undertake a three-year plan on the budget, because, again, we don’t want to sort of be reactionary, because we’ve seen international drop, we’ve seen it come back,” he said.
Part of that process is ensuring the proper investments are being made in research.
“That’s another area where we’re seeing progress being made on nuclear, progress being made on energy transition, health and human resources, where the provincial government has given us extra funding as an institution, so we’ve got to take advantage of opportunities,” he said. “We have to know where our expertise is. We have to be able to show that that has a real impact on the province.
“And we need, above all, to ensure that we provide those quality programs for students. We’ve done that. We’ve managed to do that so far. We’ve identified priorities going forward that speak to those areas of expertise, to enhance them.”
AI creating new challenges for university
Concerns about the use of artificial intelligence apps, such as ChatGPT, are also something the school is working to address.
Keshen compared it to past developments like calculators and Wikipedia, and explained the response varies from one faculty to another.
“Some areas of the institution are far more comfortable with the use of artificial intelligence than others,” he said. “I happen to be from the humanities. I’m a historian by background, writing traditional essays, but then students having access to ChatGPT, it poses a problem of their ability to compose essays.
“That said, our professors are being innovative in the way that they’re responding and some of the ways that they’re changing their assignments. For example, ChatGPT can’t help you if you do an oral presentation (and) if you’re doing in-class exams.”
Reconciliation a focus throughout plan
One of the five strategic pillars relates to Truth and Reconciliation, but in fact, it’s woven throughout the entire plan.
“It’s our collective responsibility not only to implement the calls to action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but also to make reconciliation a lived reality within the institution,” Douai said.
“There’s aesthetics at the university, making people feel at home,” Keshen added. “We have about 2,300 Indigenous students. It’s professors, he, she and they, adapting aspects of indigeneity in the course.
“Some areas, it’s able to do that a little bit more than others. It’s ensuring in the Faculty of Arts, Social Work and some others, that they have requirement of Indigenous courses and knowledge going forward. It’s ensuring that students – Indigenous students – have the support they need when they come to the university.”
