cent.

that, frankly, the president should be visible to students at large. And indeed one particular commitment I made during the presidential search process,

7 not to get the job, but because I believe it, is that as president I should be able to, at some time during each student’s 3 or 4 or 5 years at UPEI, give at least one lecture to each student.

KB:I guess this informs the last question; how do you make university less a process, less a destination than a journey? How do you show students, who are here with loans piling up, and four years to get a degree and quickly find a job that matches that degree, that these four years are critical in the development of the rest of their lives, so as not to rush through them?

WM: That’s a very nice way of putting it to say its a journey, or a process; its something that continues and indeed what one does during the 4 years or what time spent here as a student is about building skills for life, is about engaging in a relationship with colleagues, with other students, and with the university as an institution that won’t go away. That has to start with orientation, and indeed one of my standards on this is that I think a lot of what students get over there 4 years depends on what impression they have of the place when they go to sleep their 2nd night. So there is a lot that rides on those first impressions. And there’s a lot that rides on the messages that are sent and the relationships that are begun during those early days. Beyond that there are so many facets to the academic, and what I call the para-academic, and the social life of the university and we really have to work every day and on every front to make those as rich, and as engaging and ultimately to make them

into a part of the students, and I say students in the collective sense, life so that they really see them as their’s; and when they are contributing and giving and bringing to them, that’s when we won’t have to worry about the destination.

KB: Now, lets discuss the administration at UPEI. To take the Dean’s council, which is made up of yourself the deans, and a couple of VPs; I’m wondering if that power base is almost exclusionary without the director of student services, so I guess my question really is, how do you open up the university process so that the decision making is, maybe not open to everyone to have a vote, but at least everyone understands the process, ‘this is why we’re doing this’ or ‘this is the direction we’re going’?

“T think a lot of what students get over their 4 years depends on what impression they have of the place when they go to sleep their second night.”

WM: It’s a good question; how an organization has a mind, how people have a say.

KB: Because I know that when I was first here I had no idea, and a lot of my friends had no idea where the decisions came from.

WM: And now here you are in charge of the 5th estate. A university is a very distributed operation. In a sense that there are a lot of positions, a lot of initiatives taken and I don’t really see it as hierarchical operation, and I mean that in a very important way. And that’s true in terms of academic decision

a

making and in terms of whether the place has life or doesn’t have life. That can’t be done by the senior management group that you refer to.

“It seems to me the issue is not

whether every constituency, ultimately every person is part of that particular decision making body but whether as a organization we have systems in place so that people do understand; and have an opportunity to take part, have a say and contribute.”

On the other hand there still has to be a decision making capacity in the place. It seems to me the issue is not whether every constituency, ultimately every person is part of that particular decision making body but whether as an organization we have systems in place so that people do understand; and have an opportunity to take part, have a say and contribute. Yesterday I spent an hour with the manager of the student union and the president talking about issues of importance to them.

When they left I had a meeting with three of the leading researchers in a particular area.

I have just last week wrote a letter to all the faculty and staff saying ‘first day on the job, here’s my impression of the place. Please send me a one-pager telling what you do and what gives you a sense of achievement and that’s not just about human relations it is actually recognizing in university’s it comes down to the level of what the individual, the student, the person who is esponsible for the upkeep of the place, the secretary, the professors, the deans and the