Concordia University Annual Report 2016

2016·3.5 MB·English

BIG
THINKING
ACROSS
DISCIPLINES
BIG THINKING FOR THE NEXT GENERATION
CREATIVE.
URBAN. BOLD.
ENGAGED.
MOVING
IN NEW
DIRECTIONS

T t’s with pleasure and pride that I invite you to A diverse atmosphere. Community leadership.
N
E read this year’s report on the momentum we Alumni engagement. Strong and growing pride.
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SI continue to build at Concordia. All these Concordia hallmarks continue to help
E
R Concordians make a difference in the world.
P

HE As we cap off our best year ever for research funding
T
and for university rankings in Canada and around the To share your ideas with me or learn how you can
M
O globe, like all universities, we face big questions about help Concordia and our growing network of partners
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F
the role of higher education in the 21st century. achieve our mission, I would love to hear from you at
E
G
A [email protected].
S
S Are we here to provide qualifications or a broad
E
M
education? What’s the best way to deliver Bonne lecture!
2 instruction? How should we engage with our 3
local community? The international community?
Our planet’s biggest problems?
All of those questions informed our Strategic
Directions planning process. After consulting with Alan Shepard
faculty, students, staff, alumni and outside experts, President
we boiled their inspired input down to nine directions Concordia University
succinct enough to print on a coffee cup.
As you can see in this report, these Directions chart
our future while honouring our past. Top research
and scholars. Hands-on experiential learning.
OUR
STRATEGIC
DIRECTIONS

NINE
THE NINE DIRECTIONS:
DOUBLE OUR RESEARCH: Pursue bold goals in research that reflect our talents and our ambition to tackle big challenges.
TEACH FOR TOMORROW: Deliver a next-generation education that’s connected, transformative, and fit for the times.
GET YOUR HANDS DIRTY: Use rich experiences outside the classroom to deepen learning and effect change.
MIX IT UP: Build agile structures that facilitate intellectual mixing and internal collaboration.
EXPERIMENT BOLDLY: Be inventive and enterprising in creating tomorrow’s university.
GROW SMARTLY: Add capacity where our strengths and emerging enrolment demand intersect.
EMBRACE THE CITY, EMBRACE THE WORLD: Achieve public impact through research and learning.
GO BEYOND: Push past the status quo and go the extra mile for members of our community.
TAKE PRIDE: Celebrate successes and be purposeful about building a legacy.
hat’s next for Concordia? What kind of Faculty, staff, students and others were invited to
university do we want and need to be? contribute to the strategic directions process. One
venue for that input was the Ideas Cafés, headed by
These questions were the launching pad for a Rosemary Reilly, associate professor in Concordia’s
process that resulted in Concordia’s newly Department of Applied Human Sciences.
unveiled Strategic Directions.
4 The one quantifiable direction is the first, “Double 5
The new plan lays out nine directions for the our research.” Shepard believes that’s a realistic goal.
university to travel over the next decade. It was “It isn’t all about money, either,” he says. “It’s about
approved by Concordia’s Senate in May and other impact that we might have on the community.”
Board of Governors in June. Strategic Directions
reflects a return to the university’s roots — Shepard reports that the ninth direction, “Take
while also looking forward. pride,” elicited the most positive feedback. “We
heard repeatedly that people who were graduates
“All universities need some kind of statement of Concordia, current students, people who work
that describes where the university is going,” and teach here, all wanted to have more pride in
says Concordia President Alan Shepard. the institution and to be proud of its achievements.
And there’s a lot to celebrate.”
The spring 2015 series, called “The future of
the university and the future of learning,” brought For more, visit concordia.ca/about/
18 experts from outside Concordia for 15 talks strategic-directions.
at the university.
ccording to Jennifer McGrath, associate Her funding success is an achievement in itself
professor in Concordia’s Department of –– more than $12.9 million since she first arrived
Psychology and director of its Pediatric at Concordia in 2004. Currently, McGrath is the
Public Health Psychology (PPHP) Laboratory, when principal investigator of four grants from the
it comes to certain adult health outcomes, a child’s Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)
understanding of his or her social and economic worth over $5.8 million in funding, and a co-
status may prove to be a more significant factor investigator of three other grants totalling over
than the reality, past or present. $1.45 million –– placing her in Canada’s top five per
cent of funded health researchers.
McGrath, a principal member of the university’s
Centre for Clinical Research in Health, is Socioeconomic inequality is a significant global health
distinguished for her innovative interdisciplinary issue. According to McGrath, four million Canadians
approach and statistical modelling expertise. (or more than 11 per cent of the population) report
before-tax incomes that fall below a threshold used
AT CONCORDIA’S PEDIATRIC
by Statistics Canada called the Low Income Cut-Off.
PUBLIC HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY
Ultimately, the big question linking much of
McGrath’s current research is “How does
LABORATORY, JENNIFER MCGRATH
socioeconomic status get under the skin? The work
we’re doing shows that it’s likely through the stress-
AND HER TEAM ARE DISCOVERING
response pathways,” she reports.
THAT CHILDHOOD FACTORS CAN
McGrath will also be investigating how
neighbourhood factors contribute to children’s
LEAD TO ADULT HEALTH ISSUES
lifestyle behaviours as part of her most recent
grant funded by CIHR.
“There’s fascinating work
demonstrating that even if your McGrath is a passionate advocate
socioeconomic status changes over for interdisciplinary public-health-
6 tinimgrea,i nbeedh advuioriunrgs cahnildd hpohoedno,”m sheen as agyest. niversity intervention research. DOES 7
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“Low socioeconomic status during ordia But where does personal responsibility
nc
early childhood not only affects child o for one’s own wellbeing come into play?
C
health, it jeopardizes future health.” JENNIFER McGRATH McGrath says “the silver lining” is that
individual choices play a role, too.
McGrath looks to untangle how self-perception
PERCEPTION
may relate to health status. However, she also points out that these
choices occur in the context of a larger societal
Most recently, she was awarded the inaugural environment. “The society sets up access to different
PERFORM Chair in Childhood Preventive Health things: services, green spaces to play in, access
and Data Science. McGrath has published more than to fruits and vegetables. It’s about the safety and
40 peer-reviewed articles and with her students has cohesion of your neighbourhood, socioeconomic
MATTER?
presented at over 100 conferences. She also won status and thinking about income and equality.”
the Canadian Psychology Association’s Mentorship
Award in 2009 and was recently nominated to the
Royal Society of Canada College of New Scholars,
Artists and Scientists.
‘CITIES WILL
rban centres have long been the driving One route is through establishing sustainable
forces that propel culture and the global and substantial farming capabilities within urban
BE CRUCIAL
economy. Now, cities will have to take the centres, as Ghana has done for irrigated vegetable
lead in responding to humanity’s greatest challenge: production within its cities. Here in Montreal, Lufa
climate change. Farms has demonstrated the potential for high-yield
rooftop farming.
Montreal is already taking action, says Paul
IN THE Shrivastava, a professor in the Department of PAUL SHRIVASTAVA, CONCORDIA
Management at Concordia’s John Molson School of
PROFESSOR AND EXECUTIVE
Business and executive director of Future Earth.
DIRECTOR OF FUTURE EARTH, HONES
In 2015 Future Earth released its five-year plan to
strengthen infrastructure and develop an emergency
GLOBAL
IN ON WHAT MONTREALERS CAN DO
response to deal with catastrophic weather damage.
Montreal is also looking into how to We have to rethink our urban
leverage the expertise and know-how of transportation systems to reduce our
the business and university communities carbon footprint, says Shrivastava.
FIGHT in urban centres to respond to the Designing cities around cars is an
cbhiga ltlheinngkein ogf w claims tahtee acihman ogfe .M Tohnist rteyapl e of niversity oceuntdtuartye.d C mitoieds enl efreodm to a pplarenv aionuds
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Thinkstock Summit on Innovation. Concordia itmrapnlsepmoerntatt lioown -aenmd iisnsvioenst p inu bbliicc ycle
Led by Concordia in collaboration with PAUL SHRIVASTAVA lanes and walkability.
AGAINST
Montreal’s Quartier de l’innovation
and the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal, Montreal has already announced an encouraging
this gathering was an important call to action on initiative to add electric buses to the STM fleet.
8 finding ways to not only mitigate climate change but Building on the lead of various European cities and 9
establish new pathways for collective prosperity modelled on Montreal’s own Bixi bike share system,
and wellbeing. the Chinese city of Hangzhou has now established a
CLIMATE
vast bike rental system of 66,500 vehicles.
Though national strategies are fundamental, shifting
to low-carbon economy will require a direct and The expansion of scalable models into developing
massive contribution from cities, which in turn need countries gives developed countries an opportunity
to be granted regulatory powers to implement to export knowledge, while allowing the most at-risk
CHANGE’
actions that will reduce carbon emissions. population to gain access to valuable resources.
Urban dwellers often depend on food products
that come from thousands of miles away. A move
to locally produced foods, in which small quantities
of food are collectively grown and produced, can
help mitigate the disruption of food supplies as a
result of extreme weather. A rethinking of the rural/
urban relationship to agriculture is also needed.
FOCUS ON
t’s been a big year for aerospace NSERC has awarded $1 million in funding over five
at Concordia. years under its Chair in Design Engineering (CDE)
program for the NCADE. Contributions from
In an op-ed published in La Presse and the industry sponsors will bring the total value of the
Montreal Gazette, Concordia professor Nadia NCADE program to $4.4 million over five years.
Bhuiyan and green aviation expert Sylvain Cofsky
AEROSPACE
wrote that growth in air transport is inevitable, and Catharine Marsden has been appointed senior
that we need to ensure it is also sustainable. chair holder at Concordia. She will be responsible
for leading the development of innovative
This means embracing innovations that will allow undergraduate aerospace design engineering
for greener air travel. The aerospace industry as a curriculum, teaching and learning strategies and
whole can be credited with strong environmental targeted postgraduate training and research.
stewardship but, with far more to achieve,
universities, governments and industry must continue The NCADE approach will promote practical,
to collaborate to aggressively meet the needs of hands-on experience and increased experiential
tomorrow, today. learning through project-based content,
increased laboratory experiments
One example of such collaboration is and the introduction of a final-year
the Concordia Institute for Aerospace multidisciplinary Aircraft Design Project.
and Design Innovation (CIADI), which
brings together aerospace research In research news, a study from
and education activities within the Ward Concordia might just level the playing
university and pursues a significant David field for the costs of flight management
amount of collaboration with industry. CATHARINE MARSDEN systems (FMS). For the airline industry,
the costs are not a problem. For the
CONCORDIA WELCOMES
owners of small personal aircraft, prices
can be prohibitive.
NEW CHAIR IN AEROSPACE
10 11
In a study published by the American Institute of
DESIGN ENGINEERING
Aeronautics and Astronautics, Concordia researchers
Luis Rodrigues and Jesus Villarroel set out a
There, world-class researchers study the use of mathematical formula that accurately recreates the
composite materials and advanced coatings in aircraft, calculations an FMS makes for a cruising Airbus 320.
biofuels in aviation, waste reduction in design,
manufacturing and the supply chain, and improved “Our formula can easily be adapted for smaller
airport operations, among other innovations. aircraft — and then run in an app on a smartphone,”
says Rodrigues, who is an associate professor in the
Also at Concordia, a new Natural Sciences and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and a member of the CIADI.
Chair in Aerospace Design Engineering (NCADE) has
been established to ensure a continued increase in the
quality and quantity of design engineering graduates.
CONCORDIAN
t was 10 years in the making — and worth As a 19th-century newspaper baron in Montreal,
every minute. Jean-Philippe Warren’s engaging Beaugrand was wealthy. Perhaps more importantly,
JEAN-PHILIPPE biography Honoré Beaugrand : La plume et l’épée he was a liberal republican, an erudite world
(1848–1906) won the 2015 Governor General’s traveller, an outspoken education reformer and
Award in the category of French non-fiction. anti-cleric. He was also a champion of Quebec
sovereignty and a twice-elected city mayor in the
“Receiving this award is a huge honour,” says late 1880s. That explains the metro stop bearing
Warren, a professor in the Department of Sociology Beaugrand’s name.
WARREN
and Anthropology and Concordia University
HIS BIOGRAPHY OF HONORÉ
Research Chair for the Study of Quebec.
BEAUGRAND SHOWS AN
“On this occasion, I cannot help but think
of the professors and colleagues who helped
INFLUENTIAL ‘MAN OF THE WORLD’
me throughout my career. In particular,
WINS THE
Concordia’s staff and faculty have been
extremely supportive. I cannot thank Warren’s book is the first major
them enough.” biography on Beaugrand. There is no
Beaugrand archive and it is believed
André Roy, dean of Concordia’s that his son-in-law purposefully
GOVERNOR Faculty of Arts and Science, says he hern destroyed his private papers and letters.
was thrilled by the Governor General’s McEac Consequently, the research process for
n
Award announcement. “His book is an Alle the book was daunting.
astonishing accomplishment, and this JEAN-PHILIPPE
WARREN
prestigious award is well deserved,” “It meant reading 40 years’ worth
Roy says. of daily and weekly newspapers — not only
GENERAL’S
newspapers in Montreal, where there were 10
As Warren explains, “Beaugrand’s achievements dailies, but newspapers where he lived in New
12 have been neglected because he shatters every England, Ottawa and Louisiana,” says Warren, who 13
image of French Canadians before the Quiet credits Concordia’s librarians for their tireless help
Revolution, during the so-called Great Darkness during his mission.
AWARD — when French Canadians were supposed to be
ignorant, conservative, bigoted, poor and miserable. “He throws things into a different light,” says
Warren. “What I discovered is that he wasn’t a lone
“Beaugrand didn’t fit that picture. He wanted radical, as we thought, but he had many followers.
universal, free, compulsory education and We always thought of him as more of an intellectual,
suffrage for all. He was a man of the world. It was but I learned the true extent of his wealth and
unimaginable that he existed, but he was the Guy influence, which was enormous.”
Laliberté of his time.”
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HONORÉ BEAUGRAND hives ville
Arc
ontrealers and visitors to the city are “It is fitting that two close neighbours with
reaping the benefits of a new educational overlapping missions and shared social values
partnership between the Montreal strategically pool their talent and resources for
Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) and Concordia. educational advancement,” says Concordia President
Alan Shepard. “This groundbreaking partnership will
Professors at the university, including six from the serve not only scholars, students and researchers
Faculty of Fine Arts, are currently developing the but other Montreal communities as well.”
first in a series of courses and public programs in art
education, art history and creative arts therapies. The museum approached Concordia with the
Eight new programs will be offered through the idea of creating a partnership after it announced
MMFA’s new Michel de La Chenelière International the construction of the new Michal and Renata
Atelier for Education and Art Therapy. Hornstein Pavilion for Peace — expected to be
completed in 2016.
CONCORDIA RESEARCHERS ARE
“As a result of this collaboration, our permanent
WORKING WITH THE MONTREAL
collection will be enhanced by pedagogical content
designed by university researchers,” says Nathalie
MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS TO DEVELOP Bondil, director and chief curator of the MMFA. A ‘GROUND-
EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMMING
Rebecca Duclos, dean of Concordia’s Faculty of Fine
Arts, explains that collaborative research
They include a series of creative endeavours are in line with the faculty’s
arts therapies workshops on suicide goals to connect with, support and enrich
BREAKING’
prevention, an art history course the surrounding community.
that looks at interpretations of family
in fine art, a course that challenges “We share the same corner of
students to study art and consider oss downtown, we care intensely about
R
d
14 issues surrounding social justice and Davi the cultural life of Montrealers and we 15
PARTNERSHIP
peace, a program that will allow REBECCA DUCLOS believe in the power of the arts to affect
people suffering from eating disorders the soul of a city,” says Duclos. “This is
to reflect on the impact of art exposure and art more than a collaboration between Concordia and
therapy, an 18-credit graduate certificate program the MMFA — it is an alliance, a shared vision, and we
and an art hive — a unique community studio space commit to enriching civic life and the cultural health
— to be established at the museum. of our communities.” TO SERVE THE
As well, Concordia’s Centre for Continuing
Education will carry on providing prospective
volunteer guides specific skills to help them facilitate
group learning in the museum’s collections.
COMMUNITY
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