It is good to be back on campus, especially in the springtime when it is so beautiful and vibrant, and it is so good to see so many of you in person once again.
I would like to acknowledge that UBC Vancouver campus is situated on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the Musqueam people, and that UBC Okanagan is situated on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the Syilx Okanagan Nation. I would also like to acknowledge that many Board members and UBC community members may be joining us remotely today from many places, near and far, and acknowledge the traditional owners and caretakers of those lands.
At the outset of the meeting, I would like to congratulate student Governors Max Holmes and Georgia Yee on their recent re-elections to the Board of Governors, and also congratulate incoming Okanagan Student Governor Tashia Kootenayoo on her election to the Board. Tashia’s term will begin on April 1st and we look forward to welcoming her to the Board. Members may remember meeting Tashia as the outgoing president of the SUO. Congratulations all!
With Tashia’s welcome, we will also be saying goodbye to our current UBC Okanagan student Governor, Shola Fashanu, for whom today will be her final board meeting – and for good reason. Shola is graduating from UBCO with a degree in Mechanical Engineering, and recently received her iron ring, marking her commitment to ethics and professionalism, traits that we have seen her demonstrate while she served on the Board of Governors. We wish you well as you transition to new opportunities and thank you for your service to UBC through two terms on the Board.
We also welcome new Governor, Ms. Miranda Lam, who was recently appointed to the Board by Order in Council. Miranda is the Chief Legal Officer & Senior Director of Business Development at Acuitas Therapeutics, and was previously a partner with McCarthy Tetrault. Miranda is currently a member of the board of directors of BC Cancer Foundation and has served on a number of community boards, including as chair of the boards of the Vancouver Foundation, and, as a UBC Alumna, she is the former Chair of the UBC Alumni Association Board of Directors. Welcome Miranda, we are very pleased to have you join us.
I would like to offer the Board’s congratulations to our new incoming student leadership presidents – Eshana Bhangu for the AMS, Sam Kenston for the GSS and Jakson Pashelka for the SUO – congratulations to all of you and we look forward to engaging with you in your new roles.
I would also like to welcome Rehan Sadiq to the role of Provost and Vice-President Academic pro tem for the Okanagan campus and Gage Averill as Provost and Vice-President Academic pro tem for the Vancouver campus. We look forward to working closely with you.
I would like to acknowledge and thank Vancouver campus Provost and Vice-President Academic Andrew Szeri for his service and impact upon the UBC community during his tenure here, and to thank him for his engagement with the Board on many important issues. We wish Andrew well in his future pursuits.
Finally, thank you to Governor Kavie Toor and members of UBC’s move-u crew for keeping us moving over the past year while we have been meeting mostly online. Those long days can be very hard on the body without some movement.
I’d also like to inform the community that yesterday, the Board of Governors had an informational session on collegial governance, led by our faculty governors, where we learned more about their perspectives on this important topic. Thank you to Governors who participated in that discussion.
In structuring today’s agenda, we are taking a bit of a different approach with the aim of providing more time for important discussions, such as those regarding the approval of the budget for the upcoming fiscal year. We will be making greater use of the consent agenda, and will be taking written reports from the Chairs of our committees on what occurred during their open sessions, rather than the previous practice of receiving verbal reports.
On our agenda today is an update from President Ono on the UBC strategic plan in support of UBC’s vision to inspire people, ideas and actions for a better world. That update will then lead nicely into our annual budget review and approval process, as the budget is structured to ensure investment in the core academic mission of the university while also enabling investments in strategic priorities over the short and long term. The Administration has put a lot of work into engaging with the community and presenting to us a budget that prioritizes the wide range of interests of the community and the strategic objectives of the university. I look forward to carrying on the discussion which began in the Finance Committee meetings earlier this month.
We will also receive a presentation from Dean MacDougall, which will highlight how the Faculty of Dentistry is advancing the university’s strategic plan.
Now, before we move into the agenda, as we always do, I would like to acknowledge three faculty members of notable distinction:
- In the research category we have Professor Hannah Wittman from the Faculty of Land and Food Systems, who won a Sustainability Award from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. Professor Wittman’s research projects examine the ways that the rights to produce and consume food are contested and transformed through struggles for agrarian reform, food sovereignty, and agrarian citizenship.
- In the service category we recognize Professor Annette Henry, Professor of Language and Literacy Education in the Faculty of Education, who has been recently listed in the 2022 book of 100 Accomplished Black Canadian Women. Professor Henry’s scholarship examines race, class, language, gender and culture in socio-cultural contexts of teaching and learning in classrooms and especially in the lives of Black students and Black women teachers’ practice in Canada, the U.S. and the Caribbean.
- In the teaching category we congratulate Mary De Vera, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences on her UBC Killam Award for Excellence in Mentoring. Professor De Vera is known for supportively inspiring individuals to reach their full research and academic potential. A Canada Research Chair in Medication Adherence, Utilization and Outcomes, she is an expert in population studies of treatment adherence using administrative databases.
To these distinguished faculty members, and the others whose research, scholarship, teaching and other academic contributions have recently been recognized, we offer our recognition and appreciation.
