Our story begins with who we are and where we have come from. UPEI is proud to be the University of, and for, Prince Edward Island, putting our University and our province on the map—regionally, nationally, and internationally. Over the past decade, we have seen a 40 per cent increase in enrolment with 4,600 students attending UPEI today. We’ve grown our graduate programs, we’ve expanded lifelong learning, and our international students now come from 59 countries around the world. In research, we have had a five-fold increase in external funding in the past 10 years. That result puts us at the top of all universities in Canada for growth in research income and in research intensity from 1999-2009. UPEI is a platform for our community to come together for social and cultural events of every order. In 2009, there were almost 600,000 people who attended events on campus. People with long-time, close associations with UPEI, and with PEI, contributed more than 90 per cent of over $52,000,000 raised for the University by the Building a Legacy campaign. This spectacular achievement came from our own hearts and pockets, and from our commitment to build a great university. Over the past decade, we have more than doubled our total activity as measured by our budgets at UPEI, which has meant increased employment, increased support for students, and increased support for educational and research programs. And not least of all, we have expanded, enhanced, and renewed our campus as an amazing platform for success for our University and for our province. UPEI’s greatest achievement in the first decade of the 21st century: Raised Expectations.

Raised Expectations

by Marian Bruce

Produced by Integrated Communications (IC) Coordination, editing, design, illustration and photography by IC

unless otherwise credited.

June 10, 2011

H. WadeMacLauchlan, CM

President and Vice-Chancellor

University of Prince Edward Island

1 9 9 9 – 2 0 1 1

Dedicated to

Wade MacLauchlan is a native of Stanhope, PEI. Following his undergraduate studies at UPEI and 23 further years of achievements as a student, teacher, scholar, and academic administrator, Wade became UPEI’s fifth president in 1999. During these 12 years, the University has seen remarkable progress in program development, enrolments, research activity, campus infrastructure, and community engagement. Wade says that the greatest overall achievement has been “raised expectations.”

In addition to his work as president, Wade has played leadership roles in provincial, regional and national bodies and collaborations. In recognition of his contributions, he has been named a Member of the Order of Canada (2008), the 2010 recipient of the IPAC Award for Excellence in Public Service, and an honorary member of the UPEI Student Union (2011). On May 12, 2011, the Prince Edward Island Legislative Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution recognizing and thanking Wade for his service as president.

“MacLauchlan Salute” by Bert Tersteeg

Contents

“A place you can get your arms around” 2

“Defying gravity” 6

In pursuit of excellence Part One: Teaching 12

In pursuit of excellence Part Two: Research 18

A sense of place: “We stand on tall shoulders” 24

“Don’t look back; don’t look down” 30

“Making a difference” 36

Message from the president 42

Raised expectations awards and medal 42

2

“A place you can get your arms around”

3

On an October afternoon in 1999, in an auditorium packed with gowned academics, politicians and other dignitaries, an 11-year-old boy marched up to the podium, speech in hand. Looking freshly scrubbed in a crisp, white shirt and red tie, and apparently entirely unfazed by his huge audience or the weight of the occasion, Timothy Cullen began a tribute to a friend of the family—Wade MacLauchlan. The occasion was MacLauchlan’s installation as the fiffth president of the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI). MacLauchlan had just given an address pledging, among other things, to do his best to reverse the “brain drain” that had plagued the region for so long. It was time, he said, to start thinking in terms of a “brain gain.” Timothy Cullen, the last speaker of the day, began by assuring the audience that the new president was “a really great guy” with “big and great ideas,” who could be counted on to turn a small university like UPEI into a great, small one. (Timothy hastened to add that Wade was also “a fun person” who “threw some neat parties.”)

Opposite: New student orientation welcomes first-year students to campus every fall

Top: This 1778 map of L’Île de St. Jean, based on Captain Samuel Holland’s 1764 survey, hangs in Wade MacLauchlan’s office. It was a gift from Chancellor Emeritus Norman Webster and Pat Webster

Bottom: “I hope to be in the Class of 2010 at UPEI,” said 11-year-old Timothy Cullen when Wade MacLauchlan was installed as UPEI’s fifth president in 1999

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“I hope to be in the Class of 2010 at UPEI,” Timothy continued. “Wade might not be there by then. He may have moved on to something else. His great ideas will still be there, though, and me and my friends will be really proud to join ‘the brain gain.’” Then Timothy reached under the podium, hauled out a baseball cap with the slogan “Join the Brain Gain,” and shook hands with the new boss. Indeed, at that moment, UPEI was on the threshold of an interesting era. Despite the addition of the much-coveted Atlantic Veterinary College (AVC), which had injected new life into the campus 13 years earlier, UPEI was still primarily a small (2,439 students), undergraduate institution. Like the small province it served, it was, in MacLauchlan’s words, “a place you can get your arms around.” As Timothy pointed out in his speech, there was “something special about being small”—a friendly, family-like atmosphere being one example. But there were drawbacks, too, including a limited number of programs and facilities. On the positive side, the University could boast a tradition of student-centred education, a relatively young faculty, and a few graduate programs: the veterinary college had introduced master’s and doctoral degree programs; the faculty of science began offering a master of science degree in 1999; and that year, a new master of education program was launched. A number of buildings had been constructed since the University opened, including the veterinary college in the mid-1980s, and a sports centre, dining hall, and chemistry building in the 1990s. Other buildings reflected the history of the campus as the home of the former Saint Dunstan’s University—the red-brick Main Building (1854) and Dalton Hall (1917) being the two oldest. They gave the campus an air of stability and gravitas, but, after years of government cutbacks in the 1990s, the administration was faced with close to $20 million in deferred maintenance. New construction needs were pressing. Students had been crying for years for a new student centre; AVC was bursting at the seams; classroom space was at a premium. The University’s reputation could have used a little burnishing, as well. In the annual Maclean’s rankings of primarily undergraduate universities, UPEI had climbed from a low point of thirty-ninth during the 1990s, but, at fourteenth position in 1999, was still below the top-ten reputational ranking that many on campus believed it deserved.

Top: Main Building, St. Dunstan’s College, circa 1885 Bottom: Timothy Cullen graduated from UPEI in 2010 after serving as president of the Student Union

Archives of the Diocese of Charlottetown

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In his installation address, the new president promised to honour the commitment, effort, and talent of his predecessors, including those who had founded and maintained Saint Dunstan’s University and Prince of Wales College; promote partnerships with the broader community; and advocate for the value of knowledge. It was time, Wade said, to reinvest in higher education in Prince Edward Island. “If Prince Edward Island and the Atlantic region are to do well in the knowledge age, UPEI will have to do well.” By the time Timothy Cullen graduated from high school in 2006, UPEI was in the midst of a “coming of age” phase—an unprecedented growth spurt that James Randall, vice-president academic, later described as “a university in its adolescence.” UPEI was, in fact, growing up—transforming the campus skyline, adding programs, expanding its research component, increasing its student population, recruiting top-notch faculty, and fifnding creative ways to encourage the “brain gain.”

As it turned out, Timothy Cullen was, as he had predicted, part of that brain gain. After spending his freshman year at the University of Ottawa so that he could join the House of Commons Page Program on Parliament Hill, he returned to Charlottetown and enrolled in UPEI, armed with a Wanda Wyatt scholarship, and served as Student Union president in his fifnal year. The University apparently fulfiflled his expectations. “I loved UPEI,” he said. “You can build all the buildings you want, but it’s the people that truly make the place wonderful. It gave me, and I’m sure others, the opportunity to really shine.” Wade MacLauchlan, having agreed to stay on past the original length of his contract, was still president at UPEI. But he had long since stopped referring to it as “a great, small university.” It was simply “a great university.”

Students in front of the second Prince of Wales College building, circa 1919

6

“Defying gravity”

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In the days when the Island was neatly divided between two religious camps, and higher education choices were limited, it was assumed that Protestant students would gravitate to universities such as Acadia, and Roman Catholic students to universities such as St. Francis Xavier. Loyalty to a particular off-Island institution persisted through the generations. Of course, relatively few Islanders went to university in those days. Even by the time UPEI was founded, only about eight per cent of young Islanders of high-school age went on to post-secondary education, and, although 82 per cent of students at the new university were Islanders, the total student population was only 1,566. When Wade MacLauchlan was an undergraduate at UPEI in the 1970s, many of his friends were still heading for mainland universities. By the time he took over as president in 1999, enrolment at UPEI had climbed to 2,439, but he had a more substantial fifgure in mind. He was aiming at “the next level up.” Reminding faculty, students, staff, alumni and others of their potential as recruiters, he said everybody should bring in at least 20 new students apiece. For his part, he remarked, possibly tongue-in-cheek: “I’d row to Newfoundland for two good students as long as they’d row back.” From the beginning, MacLauchlan made a practice of waving the university flag on every possible occasion: in the media, in annual visits to every senior high school in the province, in addresses to various

service organizations, and in making and maintaining connections overseas. And the student population did grow, almost every year, even though retention of students in the early years of the degree programs remained a seemingly intractable issue. The completion in September 2002 of the new W.A. Murphy Student Centre, and in 2004 of the CARI recreation complex next door, certainly made the University more appealing. So did a number of fifnancial incentives: the Wanda Wyatt scholarships, established in 2001 and valued at $5,000; the University’s Inspiring Excellence Awards, created in 2002, an automatic $600 scholarship (later increased to $1,000) in fifrst and second years to students with an 85 per cent high-school average; and the George Coles bursaries, established by the province in 2008 for Island residents entering UPEI or Holland College. And undergraduate tuition at UPEI remained one of the lowest in the Maritimes. While enrolment continued a sharp upswing in the early years of the decade, it then leveled off. In fact, the Maritime Provinces Higher Education Commission (MPHEC) reported in June 2007 that enrolments throughout the region were declining—the reasons being high tuition fees, increasing demand for community college programs, high out-migration, and the appeal of the workforce. And the future looked even worse. The demographics of the Atlantic region—smaller families, later-starting families, outward migration, and comparatively

Opposite and above: Built on the site of the old Alumni Gym, the W.A. Murphy Student Centre opened in 2002 as the dynamic new hub for student activities and services. It replaced the familiar red barn where students formerly gathered

Above: President MacLauchlan clears a hurdle during the opening of UPEI Alumni Canada Games Place in 2009

Photo: Patrick Callbeck

Photo: John Sylvester Photography

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little immigration—would affect the universities for many years to come. In 2005, a projection developed for the UPEI Senate signaled a drop-off of more than 25 per cent in Grade 12 students in Island high schools in the decade that followed. The bleak demographics, combined with an expected decline in government support, would determine the fate of the 17 universities in the region, MacLauchlan warned in a 2005 newsletter. In fact, he predicted, one or more could close within a decade. “The forces of gravity are at work,” he warned. “At UPEI, our only option is to decide that we can and will defy gravity, and that we can work together with others in our community to shift the demographic and economic direction for Prince Edward Island.” The picture was slightly brighter in the last two years of the decade, when most, but not all, Maritime universities saw their enrolments rise, apparently because of aggressive marketing and a weak job market. According to a March 2008 MPHEC report, UPEI had come through the lean years better than most. And by the end of the decade, in percentage terms, UPEI remained at the head of the pack. Still, retention of students, especially males, during or after their fifrst year, remained a serious issue. “In this light,” MacLauchlan observed in a June 2007 newsletter, “our focus on student engagement, notably for our fifrst-year students, is an absolutely crucial initiative.” A commitment to support students with necessary academic, technical and study skills lies at the heart of the mandate of the Webster Centre for Teaching and Learning, a place that promises: “Everyone can succeed at university.” The Centre opened in 2005 with fifnancial support from Chancellor Emeritus Norman Webster and his family. Before that, UPEI had a faculty-development program and one to help students with math and writing. By 2011, the Webster Centre offered 12 academic support programs—for students with learning and physical disabilities; students needing help writing papers or assistance in math, science, study skills, or time management; and international students needing remedial work in English. Director Barbara Campbell described the

Centre as an informal place where students feel free to grab a coffee, use the microwave, and chat with the staff—some of whom, incidentally, are students themselves. “Once students come in the door,” she said, “they seem to have such a good experience that they will come back, because they see this as such a positive way to support their learning. A lot of them stay on to work as student tutors or mentors.” And no one is ever made to feel as if they shouldn’t be asking for help, she added. “Years ago, at university, you were made to feel you had to cut the mustard or you shouldn’t be there. That’s just plain wrong, because every one of us learns at a different level, in a different style, with different modalities. It’s not a cookie-cutter form of education we offer any more. Nor should it be.” Karen Gillis of Eldon, who enrolled at UPEI as a mature student, found that the extra support she obtained in the Webster Centre’s transition-year program helped her learn to study, to read faster and more effectively, and to make better notes. “It helped me update my computer skills. It even taught me how to write a resumé and cover letter, and make a learning portfolio.” The Webster Centre and Student Services both offer support for the growing cadre of international students on campus. In the spring of 2011, business student Lusi Chen of Nanjing, China was upgrading her English-language skills at the Centre. Another business student, Ahmed Zaki-Us-Saleheen of Bangladesh, didn’t need remedial English when he arrived on campus in the summer of 2010, but he knew no one. He made friends and adapted to a different culture partly through organized meet-and-greet events and outings such as ski trips, and a visit to an apple orchard. “All these programs get us accustomed to the Canadian way of life and remove the stress we go through,” he said. “The best thing about UPEI is that it often makes me forget that I am living thousands of miles away from my family and home, and always makes me feel that they are preparing me for something ‘big’ in life.”

9

Making international students happy was important not only in a moral sense but also in the interests of the University’s reputation: word-of-mouth and online searches—the way Ahmed found UPEI—are the main ways overseas students check out prospective universities. The competition is stiff among Maritime universities for international students, especially when the regional demographics are so dismal. Students from other countries not only add to the cultural richness on any campus, but also pay signififcantly more in tuition fees than Canadian students. At UPEI, internationalization had its roots in the former occupant of the campus, Saint Dunstan’s University, which regularly enrolled students from Hong Kong, New England and Quebec. The Hong Kong students included Albert Young, for whose father the Chi-Wan Young Sports Centre is named, and Alfred Tsang, who established a scholarship fund. At the start of MacLauchlan’s fifrst term, the University set a goal to have 10 per cent of full-time students come from outside Canada. In the mid-1990s, when Vianne Timmons was dean of education, that faculty developed a specialization in international education, and Timmons set up a campus-wide committee on internationalization. The program that followed included recruitment, scholarships, and space on campus for an international students’ association. MacLauchlan recalled that, in the early years of his presidency, one of his colleagues with small children had remarked, “Unless we have a more diverse student population by the time they’re ready to go to university, I don’t see how I could encourage them to go to UPEI.” Through the years, the makeup of the student population did change, and on schedule. By 2005, international student enrolments had reached 231, and by 2010-11, there were more than 500 students from 59 countries on campus, representing a 339 per cent increase since 2000. Walking around the campus, you could hear a veritable “United Nations of languages.” The number of graduate students also increased—from 119 in 2000 to 324 ten years later. Master’s and doctoral degree programs were fifrst introduced through the Atlantic Veterinary College, and in 1998, Ernest

Top: By 2010, there were 500+ students from 59 countries studying at UPEI, a 339 per cent increase in international students since 2000

Bottom: The Webster Centre for Teaching and

Learning provides support and resources to help students achieve academic success

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Hovingh became AVC’s and UPEI’s fifrst PhD. The next year, master’s degrees through the faculties of science and education were added. The number of graduate and undergraduate programs increased throughout the decade: master of arts in island studies in 2003, master of applied health services research in 2004, bachelor of integrated studies and master of business in 2008, bachelor of business studies and PhD in education in 2009. In 2003, Tracy Doucette of St. Louis became the fifrst “all-Island” PhD, having completed her entire education on Prince Edward Island. She was subsequently hired to teach in the biology department. Despite all that growth, the campus retained a reputation as a student-centred place, with class sizes below the national average. Students in a popular fifrst-year course might be surprised by that claim, but classes tend to shrink drastically farther up the degree ladder. And, as history professor Edward MacDonald pointed out, it’s all relative. In his department, classes run from nine or 10 in the upper levels to close to 100 in the introductory courses. “Some students will say, ‘I thought classes were supposed to be small here, but I was in a psychology class with 180 students.’ Well, the thing is, at the University of Toronto, that class might be 800 students. Here you will actually get to meet your prof.” James Randall, vice-president academic, said that a better indication (than class size) of the quality of education at UPEI is the relationship students have with faculty. The 2008 National Survey of Student Engagement, which provides feedback about curriculum, student services, and campus life, indicated that 83 per cent of fifrst-year students and 88 per cent of fourth-year students rated their educational experiences at UPEI as “good” or “excellent.” On relationships with faculty, 83 per cent of fourth-year students rated their professors as “available, helpful, and sympathetic,” compared with 73 per cent in Atlantic Canada as a whole, and 66 per cent across the nation. “I think there is a culture that’s been built up over the years—and I’ve heard this from a number of faculty members—where professors will go out of their way to do anything they possibly can to assist students,”

Above: Professors go out of their way to do anything they possibly can to assist students says VP Academic Jim Randall

Below left: Family and Nutritional Sciences majors were among the 88 per cent of fourth-year students rating their educational experiences as “good” or “excellent”

Below right: Tracy Doucette of St. Louis was the first “all-Island” PhD

Photo: John Sylvester Photography

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Randall said. “This really is a reflection of the fact that—it sounds trite, but—teachers here care about their students.” In Randall’s view, being ‘student-centred’ also means trying to provide the kind of programs students want. “The last count I heard is that we have introduced 30 new programs in the past fifve to seven years. That, to me, is being as student-centred as what takes place within the classroom.” Not all students, of course, consider the campus a perfect world. The retention rate at the end of fifrst-year studies remained a concern at the end of the decade. And in a Globe and Mail student survey released in 2010, UPEI received a C- on course availability/variety and a C for campus food services. (Randall’s concern over the unloved meals was tempered by the fact that students across Canada were similarly disgruntled about their campus food.) UPEI did better in other areas: it got an A on small class sizes and A- on the quality of education, the level of student-faculty interaction, and the ease of course registration. In the annual Maclean’s ranking exercise—this one based not on student opinions but on factors such as the size of the University budget, the number of professors holding PhDs, and the number of faculty research grants—UPEI made intermittent gains through the years when compared with other primarily undergraduate institutions. From a low of eighteenth in 2000, it climbed to a high of fiffth in 2006 and settled at eighth in 2009 and 2010. In terms of its reputation, however, it still was not ranked within the top ten. Universities tend to take these surveys seriously, partly to measure how well they’re doing and partly because they know that a good reputation attracts students and top-notch faculty, and also affects everything from the employability of graduates to the level of donor support.

But MacLauchlan has pointed out that there is more than one way to advance a reputation, and more than one way to measure it. The size

of the student population at the end of the decade, for example: 4,600, a record high, representing an increase of more than 40 per cent since 1999. By 2010, about 30 per cent of Island high-school graduates were enrolling at UPEI. “That’s a remarkable fifgure,” MacLauchlan said. “I don’t suppose the number of PEI students who go to all the other universities combined would be equal to that.”

It was quite a change, indeed, from the days when spreading one’s wings off-Island was almost the expected thing. The University had become old enough, and admired enough, to have become “the old school.” In 1976, Charlottetown businessman Tom Cullen graduated from UPEI with a degree in business administration, and later served on the Board of Governors. In 2010, his daughter, Kathleen, graduated with an engineering diploma and went on to take chemical engineering at Dalhousie University. His son, Tim, graduated from UPEI the same spring with a bachelor of arts degree in French and political studies, and then began graduate work at the University of Ottawa (law) and Carleton University (international affairs). That fall, Tom’s youngest son, Patrick, began his freshman year in business at UPEI. “I think people are feeling a lot more pride in UPEI these days,” Tom Cullen said. “People are recognizing that you can graduate from UPEI and go anywhere you want.” Fred Hyndman, chair of the Board of Governors, concurred: “People see UPEI as a winner. And people like to be associated with a winner.” And Wade MacLauchlan summed up a whole decade and a half in an interview in January 2010 with the Globe and Mail. “It wouldn’t have been uncommon, if you had talked to Grade 12 students in PEI fiffteen years ago, to hear them say, ‘I’m just going to UPEI.’ The ‘just’ is gone now.”

Total student enrolment at UPEI increased 40.7 per cent from 1999 to 2010, compared with a 12.5 per cent increase in

total enrolments for the Atlantic region

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In pursuit of excellence

Part One: Teaching

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One day, during her fifrst year of teaching, history professor Susan Brown brought into her classroom a lesson plan, a superannuated computer, and a baseball bat.

At the time, Brown’s second-year students were studying the Luddite rebellion in Britain during the industrial revolution. To help them relate to the frustrations and visceral anger of the Luddites, she began the class by introducing modern, parallel concepts. Machines were replacing bank tellers, factory workers, and telephone operators, she reminded the class. Even history professors could be replaced by online courses! Brown is an animated lecturer, and as she warmed to her subject, she worked herself into a pseudo-rage. In those days, she had a reputation as something of a technophobe, and she also had experience in theatre, both of which enhanced the credibility of her performance. Finally, she whipped out the baseball bat and proceeded to smash the computer keyboard. “It really scared them,” she recalled later. “They thought I had lost it—and I felt bad about that. I didn’t want to unduly alarm them.” They relaxed after she turned and wrote on the board: “Ned Ludd was here.” Ned Ludd was the inspiration for a fifctitious rebel leader who left notes behind warning that he would return, and that the machine-destroying might be more serious next time. “And then they saw the connection, and we were able to engage in a more in-depth discussion of the issues,” she said. Brown’s creative lead-in to a serious and sophisticated interaction with her class is a dramatic, and probably unique, example of the way she and some colleagues have been avoiding the stereotypical lecture-note-taking-regurgitation rut. “Our goal is not to give students a lot of informative and entertaining facts,” said Brown, chair of the history department and winner of a UPEI teaching excellence award (the Hessian Award) in 1999. “Our goal is to empower them with a whole set of learning skills that they

are going to continue on with. Whether or not they remember the details of my Victorian Britain course, they should know how to access information, make a presentation, communicate their ideas clearly, analyze something, and critique it, and you’re not going to learn that by passively sitting and taking notes.” “That’s the kind of teaching that requires considerable self-motivation,” said Edward MacDonald, associate professor of history and another UPEI teaching award winner. “They don’t teach you how to be a teacher if you’re a professor. If you’re going to teach Grade One in Prince Edward Island, you have to go through extensive professional training. But if you’re going to teach university students, you just need to prove that you have the signififcant knowledge base. And then you have to fifgure out the teaching on your own.” If regional and national recognition is any indication, a number of teachers at UPEI have fifgured that out, whether on their own or through help from colleagues. Four professors—Shannon Murray, Brent MacLaine, Brian Wagner, and Philip Smith—have won prestige-laden, national teaching awards. The awards are presented by 3M Canada and the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. Only 10 are given out across Canada in any given year. They recognize not only teaching excellence, as judged by colleagues and students, but also leadership in enhancing teaching and learning at a university. Murray is an English professor, was assistant director of the Faculty Development Office, and a recipient of the UPEI award for teaching excellence. She won the 3M Award in 2001. MacLaine, chair of the English department, won a university teaching award in 1997, the Student Union Faculty of the Year Award in 1998, the Atlantic Association of Universities (AAU) Distinguished Teaching Award in 2001, and the 3M Award in 2002. Brian Wagner, chemistry professor and assistant vice-president graduate studies, received the University’s teaching excellence award for 1997-98 and the 3M Award in 2005. Psychology professor Philip Smith won a University teaching excellence

Opposite: Susan Brown provides a creative lead-in to a serious and sophisticated interaction with her class

award in 1993, was named Canadian University Professor of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education in 2000, and won the 3M Award in 2003. President Wade MacLauchlan said these honours signal a commitment by faculty to teaching excellence that is critical to students’ success as well as to their decision to stay in school. “No university in Canada can claim such sustained success in winning 3M awards,” he wrote in 2005. Other faculty members receiving recognition included music professor Karem Simon (the AAU Teaching Excellence Award in Instructional Leadership in 2001); veterinary cardiologist Etienne Côté (a number of awards, including the AAU Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2009), and English professor Jane Magrath (several awards, including the AAU Award in 2010). Observations from students and colleagues underscore those honours. Brian Wagner’s student evaluations included comments like “better than the best” and “Dr. Wagner, you are a chemistry god!” One of Magrath’s third-year students reported: “She has a way of making us feel like we are teaching her something new with every class, and she instills in us a desire to care as much about our work as she does.” Hundreds of students have flocked every year to Philip Smith’s early-morning psychology class. One comment spoke volumes: “This Dr. Phil deserves an A+!” Edward MacDonald described his colleague Shannon Murray as “a beacon of inspiration” in teaching. “I’ve been at workshops where students that she has taught have brought people to tears with their testimonials about how she has affected their lives in a positive way,” he said. “And I’ve also been at workshops where Shannon talked about her teaching. She’s constantly trying to fifnd a better way to do what she does.” Murray, who began teaching full-time at UPEI in 1991, said one of the challenges of university teaching is that it generally is a solitary enterprise.

Shannon Murray, Brent MacLaine, Brian Wagner, and Philip Smith have all won national teaching awards, and numerous other professors, such as Karem Simon, have received regional recognition for their leadership and teaching

Top left: Shannon MurrayTop right: Brian WagnerBottom: Karem Simon

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In the classroom, professors rarely get support from peers who can offer encouragement, energy, feedback, and solutions to problems.

That support is what the Webster Centre for Teaching and Learning has been offering for years, mainly through weekly or bi-weekly brown-bag lunches—informal gatherings where faculty can exchange ideas on everything from plagiarism to the use of technology. And since 1984, UPEI has presented the fifve-day Faculty Development Summer Institute, the only one of its kind in Canada. Hundreds of teachers from North American and overseas colleges and universities have taken part in the Institute, to be facilitated in the summer of 2011 by UPEI’s four 3M winners. “What we fifnd at the Institute and the brown-bag lunches,” Murray said, “is that people who attend desperately want to talk about this really important and really hard thing, which is teaching at the university level. That’s where we’ve grown in the past ten or fiffteen years—as a community of people who are so interested in teaching that we take it seriously when we hire, fifrst of all, and so interested in teaching that we support it through promotion and tenure. It’s now possible to get a promotion to full professor on the basis of excellence in teaching. That wasn’t the case 10 years ago.” At UPEI, Murray said, the lecture-note-taking-exam-writing process still exists, but so do more creative methods based on research on adult education. One principle, for example, is that students don’t really learn unless they actively participate in the process. “The more passive they are, the less likely they are to retain or make anything out of what they’ve learned. That means that even if there is a lecture, the students have an opportunity to use that lecture: they have to talk together, write, think, draw, present, do some teaching themselves.” In Susan Brown’s class, active participation is part of the plan. So is the use of technology, by the professor and her students. Despite her early difficulties with overhead projectors and aberrant computer mice, she

has grown to consider the internet a vital part of her program. Students in her British history course, for instance, get to work with original, handwritten, online documents from eighteenth-century workhouses, prisons and courts. “The Old Bailey online is a great collection of all the trials of the central criminal court in London from the late seventeenth century. So students can go and see the trial of someone who pick-pocketed a handkerchief worth one shilling and then was transported to Australia, or executed. Students can immerse themselves in these primary-source documents that they were never able to access before. But it requires even more work on the professor’s part to fifnd the stuff, make it available to students, and put it online.” Her hard-won facility with computer technology might diminish Brown’s credibility as a keyboard-smasher. But she hasn’t abandoned that piece of theatre entirely. “I scared the pants off them every time,” she said. “I might bring it back.”

Top left: Philip SmithTop right: Brent MacLaineBottom left: UPEI students in class Bottom right: Etienne Côté

Photo: John Sylvester Photography

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Photo: V. Tony Hauser

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See credit, page 44

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In pursuit of excellence

Part Two: Research

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Michelle Patterson, a 25-year-old PhD student in physics, was working alone in a laboratory in the Duffy Science Centre one evening in mid-February when she had her ‘eureka moment.’ Following her supervisor’s advice, she was experimenting with prostate-cancer tissue from a mouse. The technique, called opto-acoustics, involved fifring nanosecond pulses of light into the tissue, producing images that are much sharper than those produced by an ultrasound machine. In this case, though, there were not just images. The tumours were giving off frequencies that were different from those in the cells of normal tissue. And by taking the frequencies down to a range audible to the human ear, Michelle could actually hear the sound the tumour made. “That was probably the cool factor,” she said later. The breakthrough, though, lay in simply seeing the numbers relating to the frequencies. Wondering whether her fifnding might be too good to be true, Michelle printed off the graphs and rushed upstairs to the office of her supervisor, Bill Whelan, Canada Research Chair in Biomedical Optics. “I said, ‘You’ve got to see this! You’re going to be excited—I hope.’ And he was.” In fact, Whelan described the discovery in an interview as “probably the most exciting result I’ve ever had in terms of potential benefift.” What it means is that the signature sounds a prostate tumour makes may enable precise targeting of cancer therapy—without the dangers of ionizing radiation from a CT scan, the risks of invasive surgery, or the use of expensive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) equipment. In the scientififc community, opto-acoustics is generally regarded as “the new MRI” in terms of its potential impact. The next step in the research project will be to investigate whether tumour cells destroyed by thermal therapy also produce different sounds. If so, that may be a way of monitoring the effects of treatment. “Scientists are always a bit hesitant to say we’re ready to do something like this on patients right away,” Whelan cautioned. “There’s still a lot of research

Opposite: As an undergraduate, Ashleigh Allen contributed to biology professor Natacha Hogan’s frog habitat research

Top: Physics PhD student Michelle Patterson, supervised by Bill Whelan, Canada Research Chair in Biomedical Optics (bottom), is making important discoveries about the use of opto-acoustics

to detect cancer tumours

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required to move this forward to where we’d even think about doing it in a clinical trial. But the early results are very, very promising.”

Whelan, a native of Prince Edward Island who did his undergraduate work at UPEI, returned from Toronto in 2008 as Canada Research Chair in Biomedical Optics. His work, and that of faculty and students in labs all over the campus, has transformed the University. Fields being studied include the sociology of civility, the history of psychiatry and psychology, governance in small islands, brain function in relation to epilepsy and stroke—and many more. Faculty produced more than a hundred books in the space of a decade; businesses have sprouted from the seeds of UPEI technologies. In 2009, Re$earch Infosource Inc., a consulting fifrm that specializes in national research and development, ranked UPEI in fifrst place among Canadian undergraduate universities in growth in the previous decade in both research income and research intensity. The most recent achievement was Ian Gardner’s $10-million Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Aquatic Epidemiology. Gardner, a native of Australia, was professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of California Davis, and his published works are among the most cited in his fifeld. At the Atlantic Veterinary College (AVC), Gardner’s research group is examining health interactions between farmed and wild fifsh populations, and working on ways to prevent and control diseases in aquatic food animals. The CERC was one of only 19 awarded in 2010 by the federal government. When the announcements were made, the Globe and Mail observed: “The veterinary college at tiny University of Prince Edward Island made the fifnal cut and managed to recruit a candidate, while research powerhouses such as McGill University did not.” Ian Dohoo, a fellow epidemiologist at AVC who was key in recruiting Gardner, said his arrival was a coup, and not only for UPEI. “It’s really a huge affirmation of the excellence that exists at small universities in Canada,” he said.

At the time of Gardner’s appointment, UPEI already hosted eight Canada Research Chairs (CRC) and six endowed or industry-sponsored chairs. “These are some of the best researchers in the world,” said Katherine Schultz, vice-president of research and development, “and they work every day with our students. The energy these people bring to campus is immeasurable.”

Ian Gardner’s $10-million Canada Excellence Research Chair in Aquatic Epidemiology was one of only 19 such chairs awarded across the country in 2010

External research funding grew by 432 per cent in a decade and, by 2009, UPEI ranked first in Canada for Research

Income Growth & Research Intensity Growth at undergraduate universities

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In his office in the Regis and Joan Duffy Research Centre, Russ Kerr displays a piece of coral and a sea sponge on top of a small refrigerator. They are reminders of the sea, in which Kerr spends a fair amount of time, and of his focus as Canada Research Chair in Marine Natural Products. His goal is to develop new therapeutic drugs from marine life without depleting sources and damaging fragile marine environments.

Many people in the fifeld consider sustainability the biggest issue in marine-drug discovery. Sponges and corals, for instance, are sources of chemicals with potential as anti-inflammatory drugs or cancer therapy, but wholesale harvesting would create a huge environmental issue. In the case of coral, Kerr’s team has determined that it is not the invertebrate itself, but bacteria living on it, that produce an anti-inflammatory product. Kerr said, “We don’t need to collect the coral from nature any more. We can produce, in principle, as much of the compound as we want by fermenting the bacteria.” The very discovery by other scientists that tunicates—the scourge of the aquaculture industry—generate natural products, at least one of which can be used as a cancer drug, is what peaked Kerr’s interest in this fifeld when he started his independent career in 1991. Kerr’s team has gone on collecting trips for bacteria and fungi in waters ranging from exotic tropical locations to Baffin Island. But one source is very close to home—sand and mud in the Bay of Fundy. “It’s a very unusual habitat, with huge tides, and where the temperature and physical environment isn’t replicated anywhere else. We’re fifnding huge numbers of new bacteria, and we’re testing these as potential cancer drugs. And we’re identifying lead candidate substances.”

One discovery relating to anti-inflammatory drugs, which has potential for both health and cosmetic applications, led to a licensing agreement between UPEI and Nautilus Biosciences Canada Inc., a biotechnology company headed by Kerr. The deal allows the University and Nautilus to share in revenue generated by commercialization. “It is an exciting partnership for us,” Schultz commented, “and one I am sure will benefift Nautilus, the University, and the Island’s future prosperity.”

The Nautilus team shares laboratory space in the Regis and Joan Duffy Research Centre with Kerr’s academic researchers, the National Research Council (NRC) Institute for Nutrisciences and Health, and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. All collaborate on health-related projects. That was one of the attractions for Kerr when he considered leaving Florida, where he had worked for 15 years. He arrived in the summer of 2006, and became the fifrst occupant of the building. “It seemed like an exciting time to come, to be part of this new, one-of-a-kind institute, and part of a growing and vibrant university,” he said. In the lower level of the Robertson Library, a quite different kind of laboratory is outfiftted with all kinds of computer and audio-visual equipment. From this base, psychology professor Annabel Cohen heads an international project called Advancing Interdisciplinary Research in Singing (AIRS). It was officially launched in April 2009 with a $2.5-million grant from the federal government’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Cohen directs a team of more than 70 researchers from 16 different countries, including eight based at UPEI, studying the health, social, and cultural benefifts of singing; the development of singing ability; and the relationship between singing and learning.

Left: Russ Kerr’s research team has discovered how to produce an anti-inflammatory product by fermenting bacteria that live on corals Middle: Kristen Murray is one of many students who received an Undergraduate Summer Research Award from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council

Right: Katherine Schultz joined UPEI as the first VP of research and development in 2001Photo: John Sylvester Photography

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Cohen began teaching at UPEI in 1993 and, for many years, was one of the few academics researching psychology and music, but it was not until she fell in love with a Celtic song that the seeds for AIRS were sown. She had written songs of her own, and wanted to sing them to record them for posterity, but couldn’t reach all the notes. She began taking lessons from vocal teacher Pamela Campbell. Campbell gave her a Celtic song, “The Eriskay Love Lilt,” to learn, and that worked so well, she encouraged Cohen to try an Italian aria. The intense joy of singing such a challenging piece inspired Cohen to work her way through the entire Royal Conservatory program in voice. “Through that experience,” she said, “my eyes and ears were open to the multiple dimensions of singing. If Pamela had given me another song than Eriskay to start with, one that had not been so moving, nothing like this AIRS project might have happened.” What she learned from her personal journey was that a singing voice can improve beyond one’s wildest imagination, even in later life—her own range doubled or tripled. More important, other benefifts, such as aspects of literacy, can be acquired through singing. One arm of the AIRS research focuses on teaching skills such as pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar through singing. One international AIRS project entails a battery of singing tests that Cohen created with her honours students—Jenna Coady and Marsha Lannan—to determine how singing ability develops in children, and how it is retained in later life, even in cases of Alzheimer’s disease. Another international study is exploring whether cultural understanding can be improved through the teaching of songs of other cultures. This project, to start in September 2011, entails the participation of Grade 5 children from Canada (Charlottetown and Toronto), China, Brazil, and Kenya, with each country supplying representative songs and cultural information. By the time Annabel Cohen arrived at UPEI in the 1990s, the climate for research of all kinds was warming up considerably. The opening of the AVC in the mid-1980s helped. So did an infusion of young, energetic faculty in the mid-to-late 1990s. In 2000, the federal government introduced its Canada Research Chair programs and the Canada

Foundation for Innovation, aimed at helping outstanding researchers advance their careers and gain access to top graduate students and facilities. The next year, the Atlantic Innovation Fund, a boost for this region, was created. In the beginning, it appeared that Canada Research Chair federal dollars were not aimed at smaller institutions such as UPEI, but would be divvied up by the big players like the University of Toronto, which were already getting the lion’s share. “As far as anybody else was concerned,” MacLauchlan recalled, “we had no business planning to be part of these major research investments. So there was kind of a call among other institutions to ‘get your sleeves rolled up’ or to ‘get your dukes up.’” He was not prepared to plead regional entitlement. I said, “We’re not arguing for our ‘fair share.’ We want the chance to show that we can succeed against standards of competitive excellence. Which is what we have done.” In 2001, Alastair Cribb, an AVC professor in pharmacology and toxicology, became UPEI’s fifrst Canada Research Chair. Katherine Schultz was hired that spring as the fifrst vice-president of research and development. Through the next decade, the “sleeves-rolled-up” strategy—combined with what MacLauchlan calls “raised expectations” —led to substantial research growth. Possibly even the ever-optimistic MacLauchlan was surprised by some of the University’s triumphs. In February 2011, he attended an event at the Château Laurier in Ottawa, organized to celebrate research funded by the top-of-the-line Canada Excellence Research Chair program. Scientists, university presidents, cabinet ministers, deputy ministers—everybody with a CERC to celebrate was there. “What I absolutely loved about it,” MacLauchlan said, “was the number of people who said, ‘The fact that UPEI is here proves that the program was done right. It proves that everybody had a chance.’ A lot of them had never thought of us as close to being in the competition. So there’s a sense of satisfaction in getting something you probably didn’t expect yourself, and that probably nobody else did either. Surprise is one of the dividends.”

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The main dividends of increased research could mean enhanced health and well-being on the Island and beyond, as well as a more sustainable economic future for the province. For faculty, rising research expectations has created a challenge to be excellent at everything. Professors are under considerable pressure to research and publish. Most researchers also teach.

For students, one of the benefifts of research growth is the chance to work with some of the brightest stars in the research fifrmament. In the 2010-11 year, Bill Whelan, like many others, not only taught fifrst-year students but also hired both undergraduates and graduate students to work in his lab: “What UPEI does really well, and was doing well before I came here, is to provide undergraduate students an opportunity to get research experience as early as their second year.” In 2011, Russ Kerr had fifve undergraduates working in his lab beside more senior people. “I think it’s important for the University to give undergraduates a chance to see what research is all about,” he said. “I probably wouldn’t be in research if I hadn’t had a chance as an undergraduate to get hooked.” Susan Brown, chair of the history department, works with her students to fifnd online sources of original material that they put to good use, and she was able to enlist students from English, history, and computer sciences to assist her on a study, ultimately published in an academic journal, on eighteenth-century theatre. “We have a low faculty-to-student ratio,” she said, “so we have the opportunity to get to know our students better, and we can certainly introduce them to the kinds of primary research where they are not simply given the facts pre-digested in a journal article or textbook.”

In the spring of 2009, Ashleigh Allen, who later enrolled at the Atlantic Veterinary College, began helping biology professor Natacha Hogan build up a colony of frogs—Xenopus tropicalis—native to Nigeria. She applied for, and won, a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Undergraduate Student Research Award that summer and the next, which allowed her to turn her enthusiasm for the lab into summer jobs. “I was a part of every aspect of the research,” she said. “I was there every day, cleaning tanks, feeding frogs, but also assisting with breeding and setting up protocols for long-term maintenance of the animals.” As an undergraduate, Michelle Patterson spent plenty of time in the laboratory, and discovered along the way that what she likes best is experimentation. Through the physics department’s co-operative program, she worked one summer in an astrophysics facility in Victoria, British Columbia (“interesting, but not my thing”); and another year in an MRI lab in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Then she began working with Bill Whelan on the opto-acoustics project. In the spring of 2011, by then a year or two away from her PhD, she was helping him prepare a paper for an academic journal on the prostate-tumour discoveries. She has been pleasantly surprised by her progress in the lab. “You always hope you’ll fifnd something new and exciting,” she said, “but that doesn’t always happen at the student level. That’s the nature of research. Sometimes you just do a lot of work and you make small steps, but getting something new and innovative is tough.” So far, her burgeoning career in research has been satisfactory, to say the least.

Above: Annabel Cohen heads an international project called Advancing Interdisciplinary Research in Singing. It involves a team of more than 70 researchers from 16 countries

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A sense of place:

“We stand on tall shoulders”

Photo: John Sylvester Photography

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There’s no air conditioning, the heating can be temperamental and, in the lobby, you can almost sense ghosts from the past levitating up the well-worn staircase. In spite of this—or maybe because of it—Edward MacDonald wouldn’t trade his fourth-floor office in Main Building for anything. “I love the fact that I’m in the oldest building on campus,” he said. “The roots of Main Building are the roots of higher education in Prince Edward Island.” MacDonald, a history professor, happens to focus on Island history, and has spent most of his adult life in and around the UPEI campus, so perhaps it is not surprising that he treasures the building that has served as a focal point of the campus since 1855. Not surprising, also, is that, as a brand-new teacher, he was chosen to deliver a history lesson on higher education on September 14, 2000. At that time, faculty, students, and staff gathered in the quadrangle in front of Main Building to launch a new tradition at UPEI: a specififc celebration to honour those who had contributed to higher education on the Island in the previous two centuries. “Founders’ Day will be a prime event in our University calendar,” President MacLauchlan announced, “an occasion to build on our sense of community, to celebrate the commencement of the academic year, and to recognize the many contributions, commitments and sacrififces that have brought higher education in PEI to where it is today.” The time of year he chose was signififcant: it was on September 12, 1804, that the Island colony’s Legislative Council, having been nagged about this for years by Lieutenant-Governor Edmund Fanning, fifnally set aside land “for the purpose of laying a foundation of a college for the education of youth in the learned languages, the liberal arts and sciences, and all branches of useful and polite literature …” That school, known as Kent College, did not open until 17 years later; a more advanced school, the Central Academy, was built next door in 1836, and an upgraded version, renamed Prince of Wales College, opened in 1860. Meanwhile, the Roman Catholic diocese was building schools of its own in an approximately parallel fashion, culminating in the opening

of Saint Dunstan’s College in 1854. At that time, it consisted of Main Building, built of wood but later sheathed in red Island brick, and still later updated with additions and renovations. Office space has replaced the chapel, bedrooms and some of the classrooms, and all the windows are new, but the old building retains its air of simple dignity. It is still the lodestar for visitors trying to fifnd their way around the campus, as well as a reminder of higher education’s debt to history. When UPEI was established in 1969, it took over the old Saint Dunstan’s campus and integrated staff and programs of both Saint Dunstan’s University and Prince of Wales College. At the fifrst Founders’ Day, the ceremony included recognition of a relatively new building, the Robertson Library, a reminder of Prince of Wales College. The Library was built in 1975 and named after Samuel Robertson, principal of the College in the 1930s.

Island historian Ed MacDonald delivered a history lesson on higher education on September 14, 2000, when faculty, students, and staff gathered in the quadrangle in front of Main Building to launch Founders’ Day

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Through the years, MacLauchlan frequently reminded the University community of the importance of appreciating its inheritance. “UPEI’s campus is a true gem,” he wrote in 2002. “The grounds have been well looked after, and continually improved, over the years. Many visitors comment that UPEI looks and feels like a real university, the point being that many universities have lost this quality through consecutive ‘improvements.’” Maintaining the older buildings, he said, “is one of the most important challenges that UPEI faces. To not meet the challenge would be a failure by those of us charged with leaving UPEI as an excellent university, and a valuable asset, for the next generation.” When hurricane Juan demolished an ancient elm on campus in 2003, MacLauchlan asked that pieces of the wood be salvaged for mementos. When the new W.A. Murphy Student Centre was being built, plans were made to preserve the memory of the old Alumni Gym as its centrepiece. Although the Gym was destroyed by fifre in the summer of 2001, the decorative sandstone sconces and medallion had already been saved, and they were subsequently placed in the Credit Union Day Lounge of the Centre.

Through the decade, various alumni associations—of UPEI, Saint Dunstan’s, and Prince of Wales—underscored that sense of history by holding summer reunions and an annual luncheon recognizing selected “Distinguished Alumni” of the three institutions. The UPEI Sports Hall of Fame held an annual dinner and induction of new members. And every September, the Founders’ Day ceremony included a special tribute to four contemporary “founders” who had contributed to the University. One of the inaugural recipients was Milton Wood, who for many years ran the mail room on campus. In September 2008, the University celebrated the inauguration of the upgraded Main quadrangle, outfiftted with brick walkways, planter beds, and plazas honouring the University’s fifrst three presidents: Ron Baker, Peter Meincke, and Willie Eliot. Fred Hyndman, Board of Governors chair, said the plazas were among MacLauchlan’s priorities. “He has a wonderful sense of what makes this community work, and an inherent understanding of the history of the Island,” Hyndman said. “Some people might question that priority, spending money that could

Baker, Meincke, and Eliot plazas are dedicated to UPEI’s first three presidents during Founders’ Day celebrations in 2008

UPEI’s armorial bearings were unveiled September 24, 2010 by Lieutenant-Governor Barbara Hagerman assisted by Fred Hyndman, chair of the UPEI Board of Governors

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have gone elsewhere. I supported him. I think it was a very smart thing to do in the long run—to take advantage of the heritage of the place—and I salute Wade for that.” Portraits of former presidents Ron Baker, Peter Meincke, Willie Eliot, and Elizabeth Epperly, painted by Saint John artist Herzl Kashetsky, were hung in the main stairwell of the Robertson Library, and unveiled at a ceremony in October 2010. Work on Epperly Plaza at the entrance to the Robertson Library is scheduled to be carried out in the spring and summer of 2011. Other signififcant tributes to the University’s heritage took place in July 2009, when UPEI’s new flag was flown for the fifrst time, and the next spring, when, as a culmination of a process that had begun in 2002, the Canadian Heraldic Authority approved the armorial bearings, which include the flag, coat of arms and motto. Lieutenant-Governor Barbara Hagerman unveiled the coat of arms at a Founders’ Day ceremony in September 2010. Based on an original concept by David Webber, and modififed by the Canadian Heraldic Authority in

consultation with the University, the images of the coat of arms depict the heritage of the two predecessor institutions: the hammer, tongs and bishop’s ring from Saint Dunstan’s, and the crown and three ostrich-feather plumes of Prince of Wales. An open book conveys UPEI’s educational mission, while supporting panthers represent the varsity sports teams. An oak tree and saplings reference the provincial coat of arms. On the eve of the eleventh Founders’ Day ceremony—his last as president—MacLauchlan made a special point of urging everybody on campus to show up. “This is an opportunity to celebrate what we are achieving today,” he said, “and to recognize that, like all fifne institutions, we stand on tall shoulders.” Among those tall shoulders were those of a group of women who had played a sometimes-overlooked role in higher education: the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Martha, assigned in 1916 to perform “women’s work,” that is, domestic chores, on the Saint Dunstan’s campus.

Father Charlie Cheverie, UPEI chaplain, 1997–2011, puts the moves on UPEI Panthers mascot “Pride” during the revitalization of the historic Main quadrangle

UPEI’s campus is a true gem. Maintaining the older buildings is one of the challenges UPEI faces to preserve the historic integrity of the campus for future generations

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In 1938, two of the sisters made history when they became the fifrst women to enrol in the high-school program at Saint Dunstan’s, and the next year, two other sisters became the fifrst women in the university program. All did exceptionally well academically. The Congregation as a whole was awarded an honorary degree in 2005. The sisters had administered a women’s residence, Marian Hall, that was built in 1959. It became a men’s residence when UPEI opened in 1969, and was decommissioned as a residence in 2006. Like historic Main Building, it found a new incarnation, in this case as part of Don and Marion McDougall Hall, courtesy of an addition and extensive renovations. The building houses the Centre for Life-Long Learning and the new Hostetter Centre for Entrepreneurship at the School of Business. At the Founders’ Day ceremony, a plaque and photo were unveiled to recognize the Marthas and their residence—yet another example of the past and present meeting at UPEI.

Opposite top left: Portraits of former presidents Elizabeth Epperly, Willie Eliot, Peter Meincke, and Ron Baker, painted by Herzl Kashetsky (seated), were unveiled in October 2010. They are on display in the Robertson Library

Opposite: In the beautifully refurbished Main quadrangle, UPEI’s new flag has been flying high since 2009

Top: The Congregation of the Sisters of St. Martha was collectively presented with an honorary degree during convocation 2005. Missing from photo: Sister Lauretta White who delivered the convocation address

Bottom: Don and Marion McDougall Hall was opened in 2008, as the new home for the School of Business and the Centre for Life-Long Learning

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“Don’t look back; don’t look down”

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One evening during a social gathering at a cottage in Rocky Point, insurance executive Fred Hyndman was enjoying himself on the deck when the new president of UPEI, Wade MacLauchlan, approached him and asked for a favour: the University was planning a fundraising drive—a very big drive. Would Hyndman chair the campaign? Hyndman did not say yes. MacLauchlan did not give up. “My fifrst observation about him was ‘This guy is like a dog with a bone,’” Hyndman recalled a decade later. “He wasn’t going to take no for an answer. It wasn’t that he was being at all offensive. He just kept the pressure on in a determined, low-key, repetitive manner.” Hyndman eventually succumbed. While he was not an alumnus of UPEI, he did have ties to the University: his father, Walter Hyndman, a former lieutenant-governor, had co-chaired the fifrst major fundraising campaign in the 1970s. And besides, MacLauchlan was uncommonly persuasive. “He’d make a great success in sales,” Hyndman observed. “I’ve been a salesman all my life, and one thing I know is that you have to keep going back.” The campaign Fred Hyndman took on—the most ambitious in the University’s history—would need all the sales smarts anybody could muster. Called Building a Legacy, it had a goal of $25 million over the next fifve years, and would solicit money from across Canada and into the United States. Following a long-held tenet about fundraising strategy (setting the bar high and convincing yourself and others you can succeed), the campaign team managed to announce commitments of more than $15 million by the time of the official launch in the spring of 2003. That money included an unprecedented donation of $2 million from students for the new Student Union building. MacLauchlan had a good track record in fundraising from his days as dean of law at the University of New Brunswick. When he took on the UPEI job in 1999, he assured an interviewer blithely that fundraising “is easy stuff; all it takes is a sense of theatre and good manners.” A couple of years later, he amended that to the more realistic criteria of “blood, sweat, and tears.”

Opposite: More than 900 graduates, including BEd recipient Salvador Reynaldo López Betrán, celebrated their accomplishments at the 2011 convocation—the largest graduating class in UPEI’s history Top: Chair of Board of Governors, Fred Hyndman, was proud to celebrate UPEI accomplishments under Wade MacLauchlan’s leadership Bottom: Regis Duffy served as chair of the UPEI Board of Governors from 1996–2006. He was named Board chair emeritus in 2007. In 2008, the new bioscience building on campus was named the Regis and Joan Duffy Research Centre to acknowledge the Duffy family’s support of UPEI. Regis Duffy, Joan Duffy, and their granddaughter are pictured

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As Fred Hyndman found out, however, MacLauchlan still made the task look easy. “He has an almost intuitive, uncanny sense of the value of money,” Hyndman said. “When he’s on the trail, seeking support for the University, he knows how much to ask for from certain people. It’s almost as though he’s reading their minds or their hearts. The audacity—what he asks for—it almost takes your breath away.” Regis Duffy, then chair of the Board of Governors, was equally impressed with MacLauchlan’s “extraordinary” fundraising talent. But the success formula also required broad participation and the recruitment of other talented people. By the summer of 2004, through a team effort that extended across the continent, more than $20 million had been raised to go toward capital expenditures, programs at the Atlantic Veterinary College and the main campus, awards, and athletics. By May of 2005, Hyndman announced that the fifrst-stage goal of $25 million had been surpassed. Then he handed over the chairmanship of the second phase of the campaign to entrepreneur Mike Schurman. By the end of 2008, the campaign had exceeded its $50-million target. A total of $52,236,859 rolled in or trickled in, through thousands of donations big and small. “The most impressive result is that we have done it ourselves,” MacLauchlan said at the time. “More than 90 per cent of the giving to the campaign has come from people with long-time, close associations with UPEI and PEI. This spectacular achievement has

come from our own hearts and pockets, and from our commitment to build a legacy through a great university.” Through the donations, more than 250 new student scholarships were created. Student support programs such as those in the Webster Centre for Teaching and Learning were strengthened. Access to electronic library resources was increased. Major academic and research facilities were upgraded and replaced, including extensive renovations of the Duffy Science Centre, construction of a new School of Business and Centre for Life-Long Learning, and extensions to the Atlantic Veterinary College. The boost could hardly have come at a better time. In the mid-to-late 1990s, cuts in federal-provincial transfers had led to a deferral of building maintenance that, in MacLauchlan’s estimation, had become an urgent priority—and a cost of about $19 million—by 2002. “Very simply, we are either looking after the place, and reinvesting in it, or we are letting it run down,” he wrote. Hyndman, who later was appointed chair of the Board of Governors, agreed. “That deferred maintenance is a defifcit by another name,” he said. “It’s so easy to postpone a $75,000 new roof. But it will catch up with you. Wade made himself unpopular with some people by spending money on maintenance. Some people could rationalize postponement. In fact, the temptation has been greater than some university presidents could resist. But when buildings start falling down, it’s too late.”

“A university is a complex facility, we are either looking after the place and reinvesting in it, or we are letting it run down”

Each summer, hundreds of young Panther campers benefit from UPEI’s exceptional recreation facilities and expertise

Photo: John Sylvester Photography

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In the decade that followed, the University would be looking at millions of dollars in capital expenditures, fifnanced through public and private sources. And, like many institutions, it always seemed to be walking a tightrope when it came to paying the bills. Because universities are “people-intensive” operations, about 70 per cent of operating expenditures are dedicated to fifxed costs, mainly salaries and benefifts. “It all adds up, and has a tendency to want to amount to more than we can add to the revenue side of the house,” MacLauchlan wrote in a 2002 newsletter. “This squeeze becomes especially tight when we take account of the natural and admirable tendency of a university to want to improve, to take on new initiatives, to develop new programs, to have more modern equipment, and to do things better. It becomes close to impossible when we add the costs of maintaining what is necessarily a complex and ageing physical facility.” In one meeting in 2002, the executive committee of the Board of Governors asked MacLauchlan how the University should approach its tightrope act. He replied: “Don’t look back; don’t look down.” Through the decade, that warning continued to be appropriate, primarily because of the uncertainties of year-by-year government grants, collective bargaining, and student enrolments and retention, as well as inflation, and the long-run challenge to address pension defifcits.

By 2008, the global economy had slipped into the most severe recession in decades, bringing with it fifnancial hardship for people and institutions, and knocking down the value of endowment and pension funds. If there was a silver lining, it was that the downturn coincided with the successful end of the Building a Legacy campaign. MacLauchlan’s understated observation: “This is a better time to be completing than it is to be launching a campaign in search of donations.” Again, if a person really wanted to look on the bright side, there was this mixed blessing: compared with other institutions with a longer tradition of philanthropic support, UPEI had not built up a sizeable endowment fund, and was therefore less reliant on endowment revenues. In fact, UPEI was faring better than many larger institutions. It had never run—was not allowed to run—operating defifcits. It managed to keep tuition fees at or near the bottom end of those in other Maritime universities. It continued to do well on the competitive enrolment front. Alumni support, while still a work in progress, was advancing, following the lead of expatriate Islanders in Calgary, who gathered every year at the Glencoe Club for a fundraising dinner and silent auction. Through the years, the group, called the Calgary Friends of UPEI, raised close to $1 million, invested in a fund that pays out $36,000 a year in UPEI scholarships. By 2010, even universities in Alberta, Canada’s wealthiest province, were facing defifcits, salary cuts, and layoffs. Yale, with a $150-million

Alumnus Bill Leclair (left) is a founder of the Calgary Friends of UPEI. The group raises substantial funds for student scholarships

Scholarship recipients Genny Keefe, David Brandon, and David Arsenault represent many students who benefit from over $4,300,000 in scholarships offered annually by UPEI

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defifcit, was planning staff and research cuts. Cornell had lost 26 per cent of its endowment the previous year. The University of New Brunswick announced cuts of $3 million because of spending commitments and an enrolment decline. Some Nova Scotian universities were also in a perilous state. “It would be unwise for UPEI to believe that we are immune to the broader challenges of demographic decline, uncertain world markets, and structural fifscal problems that face institutions and governments across Canada and elsewhere,” MacLauchlan warned in February 2010. For a start, government-funding issues in the region had serious implications for the Atlantic Veterinary College, dependent on fifve-year agreements among the four Atlantic provinces. Still, MacLauchlan noted that the University had managed the “remarkable achievement” of increasing its activity two-and-a-half times in a decade, while balancing the books every year, and reducing the proportion of the budget funded by government grants and tuition. He promised that another milestone would be reached in June 2011, when the University would be in a position to “burn the mortgage”—that is, ensure that all of the infrastructural investments were fully funded, and would not be paid off with resources from operating budgets. At the end of the decade, Fred Hyndman cautioned that fifnancial worries would be a constant for the foreseeable future—much as they were when he was commandeered for the Building a Legacy campaign. But much had changed, too. The operating budget had more than doubled to $130 million. Research-related revenue, most of it from outside the Island, had increased fifve times. And, because of these increases and other University-generated revenues, the government’s share of operating revenues had shrunk to 42 per cent from 50 per cent.

The skyline had changed dramatically. Almost $120 million—41 per cent of which came from UPEI donations and operations—had been

spent on infrastructural enhancements. Among the most impressive was the $13.5-million biosciences facility. When it opened in 2006, the premier, Pat Binns, heralded it as the route to the Island’s future prosperity. “I’m counting on this being our oil sands,” he said. As a businessman, Hyndman saw UPEI not only as a benefifciary of grants and donations but also as a generator of wealth—“part of the economic food chain”—for the province. And compared with the late 1990s, he said, “in all the facets that you can measure, the University today is much stronger.” The opinion Hyndman formed early in the Building a Legacy campaign of MacLauchlan’s talents in recruiting volunteers, collecting donations, managing budgets, and dealing with governments, has not so much changed as solidififed. “My respect for Wade,” he said, “grew exponentially.” Compared with the early days of that fund drive, the standard for donations had grown, too. In MacLauchlan’s fifnal year in office, the University raised more than $10 million, including, in one week, three commitments each of a million dollars or more. “That’s raising the bar,” MacLauchlan said. “People now think in more ambitious terms about how they can make a difference, and I love it when they start asking themselves. One of the greatest legacies is that there will be more nice surprises, including bequests—provided people don’t leave it too late.”

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Top: Roberta MacDonald, Marion McDougall, Wade MacLauchlan, Don McDougall, Fred Hyndman

Middle: John Bragg, Judy Bragg, Linda Rodd, Wade MacLauchlan

Bottom: Wade MacLauchlan, Kathryn McCain, Chris McLaughlin, Don Reynolds

Top: Kim Horrelt, Margo Thompson, Pat Schurman, Mike Schurman, Wade MacLauchlan

Middle: Back: John McMillan, Tom McMillan, Dr. Joseph (Joe) A. McMillan (in framed photo), Colin McMillan, Maura Davies, Charles McMillan. Front: Eileen (McMillan) Fulford, D. Eileen McMillan

Bottom: Sharon Koo, Suzanne Lévesque, Carolanne Nelson, Marva Sweeney-Nixon, Sandie Morrison

Top: Vianne Timmons, Wade MacLauchlan, Norman Webster, Pat Webster

Middle: Bill Andrew, Denise Andrew

Bottom: Wade MacLauchlan, Kathleen Murphy

Photo: Camera Art

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“Making a difference”

Photo: Steve Simon

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In the early 1930s, John Croteau, an American economics and sociology professor, began the monumental task of helping poor and undereducated Islanders get through the Great Depression. By day, he taught at both Prince of Wales College and Saint Dunstan’s University; by night, with librarian Bram Chandler, he toured the Island, slogging through mud to the axle night after weary night, to set up adult-education clubs and self-help cooperatives. After Croteau left the Island in the mid-1940s, he wrote a memoir entitled Cradled in the Waves. It is a book much admired by Wade MacLauchlan. “I read that book and say, ‘I wish I could do that,’” he said in an interview. “I see that book as a great place to go to be reminded of our obligation not just to reach out but to take on the ‘muddy roads.’” As MacLauchlan is fond of pointing out, UPEI “stands on tall shoulders,” and the book could also be a reminder that outreach to the community did not begin in 1999 or 1969, but in the 1930s, with the Saint Dunstan’s extension department, the circulating library at Prince of Wales College, and Croteau’s personal sacrififces. While most of the literal muddy roads disappeared in the decades since Croteau’s time, his mission did not. From the beginning of his term, MacLauchlan promoted the idea of the University as a key to advancing the province’s economic, social, cultural, and intellectual development. “Historically,” he told an interviewer in 2001, “PEI’s number one export has been its talent, especially its intellectual talent. A primary measure of success for UPEI is to contribute to the province’s development in a way that permits our most talented people, and UPEI’s most talented graduates, to have world-class opportunities here. A related measure of success is for new citizens—with new talents—to move to PEI because of the nature of development and opportunities that UPEI helps to create.” Near the end of his 12-year term, Wade conceded that the task was very much a work in progress, but the University had made both a measurable and an intangible impact on the Island community—and for that matter, in various places around the globe.

Opposite: On Canada Day, 2009, 21 Inuit teachers obtained their Leadership in Learning master of education degrees from UPEI

Top: As the ‘lights’ on the map indicate, UPEI has made a significant impact on the Island and around the world

Bottom: UPEI business student Billy MacDonald (shown here taking part in an impromptu game in Kenya) travelled to over 20 countries while studying at UPEI

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To showcase this outreach, the University developed the concept “University Island” with a website providing hundreds of examples of how UPEI is making an impact. They include co-operative education programs, faculty and student exchanges, resources available to the public on campus, lifelong learning experiences, partnerships with industry, research at home and abroad, and advances in education outside the Island. On Canada Day, 2009, MacLauchlan and UPEI Chancellor Bill Andrew took part in a convocation far from home. Twenty-one Inuit teachers, all wearing traditional embroidered parkas, climbed a podium in Iqaluit to accept a new Leadership in Learning master of education degree from UPEI. Through a combination of online courses and face-to-face instruction in both English and Inuktitut, they had just completed a three-year program, the fifrst graduate-degree program offered in the vast northern territory. Education professor Fiona Walton, a key player in organizing and conducting the program, said the teachers had been clamouring for many years for a chance to upgrade their education without leaving home. That opportunity was offered to a second group of Inuit women in 2010, and Walton is in the midst of other education research projects in the territory. In February 2011, three faculty members—Barbara Campbell from the Webster Centre for Teaching and Learning, Larry Hale from biology, and Wayne Cutcliffe from computer science—spent two weeks at the University of Namibia investigating ways to develop effective teaching

strategies in an institution with huge classes, a high failure rate, and few resources. Campbell was hoping that a team could set up a teaching and learning centre along the lines of the one at UPEI. “I have a real belief that we could make a difference,” she said. In the summer of 2006, Jane Magrath from the Department of English, and Lisa Miller from the Department of Pathology and Microbiology at the Atlantic Veterinary College, created a project in which veterinary students and faculty would travel every year to a northern community to set up a temporary animal clinic. The students subsequently wrote about their experiences. Other examples abound. The Atlantic Veterinary College has conducted millions of diagnostic tests for clients around the world. At home, student athletes work every year with local youth and raise funds for the Food Bank and other organizations. Students of psychology professor Philip Smith volunteer with community organizations as part of their courses. To a casual observer, none of this activity is apparent. The most noticeable thing about the UPEI campus is the way the skyline has changed in the past 10 or 15 years. Almost every year, it seems, a new building goes up. “When I started here as an undergraduate in the seventies,” history professor Edward MacDonald said, “I wondered why the parking lots seemed to be so far away from everything. They’re getting a lot closer to the buildings now.”

Barbara Campbell, director of the Webster Centre for Teaching and Learning, is one of several researchers who have contributed to literacy programs in PEI

The Dr. Tim Ogilvie Vet Camp gives students in Grade 7 and up a glimpse at the life of a veterinarian

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The traffic has not diminished, however. The neighbours drop in often, bringing pets to the AVC teaching hospital, attending hockey games at the new MacLauchlan Arena, heading for the campus fiftness facilities or the library, driving the kids to summer camps. “The place is very much a mini-van haven in the summer because there are so many families around,” athletics director Ron Annear said. In the summer of 2010, more than 800 families sent their youngsters to camps for everything from soccer to crafts to science. One of the renowned programs is the Dr. Tim Ogilvie Vet Camp, which gives students in Grade 7 and up a glimpse at the life of a veterinarian. The camp has twice won a national award as the best community outreach program in Canada, and since 1998 has attracted more than 1,200 participants from as far away as Australia. One of the enthusiastic campers in the summer of 2010 was Charlotte Miller of Charlottetown, then age 11. Almost a year later, the details of the camp were fifrmly fifxed in her mind: the dragon lizard that sat on her shoulder; the surgery on the baby llama born with an eye infection (“it didn’t bother me, but it bothered some people”); the necropsy on a calf that had died at birth (“the guy who was doing it was very cheerful for someone in that job”); the dog-training exercise, the examinations on a dog and a horse (“the horse’s heartbeat was very, very slow and very, very loud”). The athletic facilities, which Annear regards as the best in Canada for a university of this size, have attracted many sports teams from off-Island. The campus is ideal for training, partly because the facilities are located in a convenient cluster. The CARI complex includes a recreational and

competitive pool and two NHL-sized ice rinks. The Canadian women’s hockey team trained there for two weeks in 2006 and went on to win a gold medal in the Olympics. Next door is the multipurpose Chi-Wan Young Sports Centre, and behind it is an eight-lane running track and rugby fifeld, inaugurated in time for the 2009 Canada Games. In 2010, young athletes from fifve countries trained on the UPEI track before the World Junior Track and Field Championship. All of this activity not only serves the broader community but also enhances the University’s reputation. And reputation is somewhat of a tender issue, because it can affect donations, enrolment, and even the future success of students. In 2006, UPEI’s overall standing in what MacLauchlan calls the “crude-but-seductive rankings” by Maclean’s rose to a high of fiffth among primarily undergraduate universities from eighteenth in 2000 and 2001. But rankings for “reputation”—a criterion based on the opinions of people such as school principals, company heads, and recruiters—consistently lagged behind the overall score. “That is the nature of a reputation,” MacLauchlan wrote in 2009. “It lags when you are on the rise, and it holds up—for a while—when you are on the downturn.” To ensure that the University’s reputation caught up to its real quality, people on campus needed to speak well of each other and the University, he said. But “the most important response is to keep doing what we have been doing.” Like all institutions and people, UPEI was not immune to occasional hard times, and the sometimes-negative headlines that accompanied

With some of the finest facilities in Atlantic Canada, UPEI provides a first-class venue for community sports and recreation activities

UPEI Alumni Canada Games Place hosts local, regional, national and international athletes

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them. In the winter and spring of 2006, local and national media latched onto three events. The fifrst occurred in January, when a part-time professor, objecting to the size of his class, told students that those who wished to leave could still get a 70 per cent mark. President Wade MacLauchlan, citing a breach of academic integrity, removed him from the classroom, and subsequently addressed the class himself. “We opted to use this as a ‘teachable moment,’” he said later. In the second incident, in February, the student newspaper, The Cadre, published controversial cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad, fifrst published elsewhere amid violent protests in several countries. MacLauchlan immediately ordered all the newspapers removed and described the publication as “an outrage against public order, and a reckless disregard for how people have responded to these cartoons the world over.” Student Union President Ryan Gallant initially defended the paper on the grounds of freedom of the press but quickly decided that campus safety and respect for religious sensibilities were paramount. The third event was a two-week faculty strike in late March, a time uncomfortably close to the end of classes and the beginning of fifnal exams. By the end of the fifrst week, MacLauchlan was expressing concern about the effect on students. “The anxiety level has risen sharply with the realization that the strike will extend into next week, the last full week of the semester,” he wrote in a March 24 newsletter. His approach, however, was to leave the bargaining to the bargaining table. Eventually, the strike ended; students did not lose a year; convocation proceeded normally; and everybody had the summer to cool off.

Ryan Gallant, commenting on these three headline-grabbers, said: “Incredibly, these three events, in my opinion, have made the UPEI community stronger. I was amazed by the amount of discussion they generated, and that the level of student engagement was head-and-shoulders above anything I have seen in any of my four years here.” As for the reputation of the University, which some had predicted would be bruised, MacLauchlan pointed to student enrolment numbers in the fall of 2006 as the best measuring stick: “They were not affected at all. I think the link between notoriety and reputation is moderate, at best.” There was less doubt about the impact of the storm that erupted when, in the fall of 2010, the provincial government proposed to amend the University Act to open the way for a new, private, online university for “international real estate.” MacLauchlan objected strongly (“angrily,” the media claimed), and called for proper consultation. “The initiative goes against our history and the quasi-constitutional status of our post-secondary structures on PEI,” he wrote. “Moreover, it directly jeopardizes UPEI and what we have achieved, including our good name and reputation.” The University alumni sprang into action to enlist support, and within days, 1,400 people—including former Premier Alex Campbell—had added their names to the list of UPEI defenders. “This is an outrage,” one person wrote. Another commented: “For a skills-training business to call itself a university does not make it so, and recognizing it as such

From budding scientists to aspiring hockey stars, young Prince Edward Islanders use the UPEI campus as a supportive place to learn and grow

Joel Ward, pictured here in 2005 with young hockey player, Nicole Gallant, won regional and national athletics awards while captain of the UPEI Hockey Panthers. Joel graduated from UPEI in 2006 and plays for the Nashville Predators

Photo: John Sylvester Photography

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diminishes the value and meaning of all universities and the degrees that they award.” Another protested: “This legislation makes me extremely nervous. What are the criteria? Who qualififes? What’s the future impact? Why is it necessary?” By the end of November, Premier Robert Ghiz announced that the legislation would be shelved, and that UPEI and Richard Homburg, the developer proposing the new institution, would be asked to iron out their differences. The Guardian published an “all’s well that ends well” editorial, and UPEI’s relationship with the government appeared to be unchanged. MacLauchlan in fact, expressed appreciation for Ghiz’s ongoing support, including the promise of a 3 per cent increase in the operational grant in the spring of 2011, a time of budget restraint for the province. Fred Hyndman, chair of the University Board of Governors, applauded the president for standing up for the University during the University Act kerfuffle. “This was Wade’s fifnest hour,” he said. When MacLauchlan was asked in an interview what he found most satisfying about his 12 years as president, however, that issue was not mentioned. Nor were the construction cranes nor the research boom nor the growth in programs and population. What he spoke about, after a moment of silence, was making a difference through an accumulation of little incidents, mostly involving people and mostly setting the stage for good things to happen, at the University and in the community.

From the beginning of his term, he focused on intangible impacts as well as concrete ones. A year after he took over as president, he wrote about his vision for the University’s role in the community. “If I had only one quality to improve on to make a better PEI,” he wrote, “I would say ‘ambition.’ I do not confuse this with ‘pride’ or even with ‘self-esteem.’ I mean ambition in the sense that my grandmother intended when she would tell us, ‘You have to aim high to shoot high.’ UPEI must play a central role in providing this sense of ambition for PEI, and in encouraging the province and individual Islanders to aim high. The University must be a key instrument and partner in building the capacity to shoot high.” At the end of the MacLauchlan era, as far as Fred Hyndman is concerned, that goal represented one of the many ways the University has made a difference to Prince Edward Island: “Raised expectations. That’s Wade’s legacy. His epitaph. The place believes in itself. People all of a sudden are saying, ‘by damn, you can do it here!’”

Proud University of Prince Edward Island graduates on convocation day

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Message from the President When I became president of UPEI in 1999, I said this was my ‘dream job.’ Twelve years later, the dream continues. The greatest satisfaction comes from knowing that the dream has been shared with—yes, believe it—thousands of others. If you are reading these lines, you are among those thousands. We have a new and ever-expanding sense of UPEI’s possibilities, relationships, impacts, and responsibilities.

Our world has changed in the short space of 12 years. Communications are faster. Geography has shrunk. Education, knowledge, creativity, and innovation are more important than ever. Today, they are essential to the ability of communities and nations to differentiate themselves and do well in a highly competitive world.

During these 12 years, UPEI has extended its horizons. Enrolments have grown, as has the UPEI team. Research activity has increased. Campus grounds and facilities have been enhanced. UPEI’s proud graduates today number more than 20,000. Our community of supporters grows by the week. Everywhere we look, and especially as we look to the future, we enjoy a sense of RAISED EXPECTATIONS.

For what we have achieved, there is an enormous sense of gratitude. For the support of our province and country. For the opportunity to work in peace, and with a sense of purpose and place. And especially for the many, many great people who believe in UPEI, and who make the extraordinary efforts and contributions. THANK YOU!

H. Wade MacLauchlan, CM

Raised Expectations Awards and Medal

Under the leadership of President H. Wade MacLauchlan, the University of Prince Edward Island has demonstrated

our University’s capacity to employ brains, ambition, and talent—enhanced by education—to challenge ourselves, to aim

for the “next level up,” and to succeed against standards of competitive excellence.

In the spirit of his example, the University of Prince Edward Island is proud to establish the H. Wade MacLauchlan Raised Expectations Awards, a new entrance award at UPEI recognizing selected students who demonstrate the greatest academic improvement during their high-school years and who go on to study at UPEI.

In the same spirit, the University has created the H. Wade MacLauchlan Raised Expectations Medal, to be awarded to the UPEI graduate whose academic standing has improved the most compared with his or her entrance grades.

UPEI’s goal—to advance the economic, social, cultural, and intellectual development of the province—depends on all members of the extended University community continually raising our expectations and aiming ever higher, creating confifdence, new opportunities, and competitive successes. The University appreciates your support for these inspirational awards.Please contact advancement@upei.ca for further information, or to contribute.

43*School of Nursing/Family and Nutritional Sciences building as it will appear when completed in autumn 2011

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University of Prince Edward Island —A 21st-century platform for success

UPEI Archives

Original photo: David McCannell

1949 1974 2002

UPEI2011

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Photography credits:Camera ArtDavid McCannell Doreen Anne PippyIC PhotographyJoey DraneJohn Sylvester PhotographySteve SimonV. Tony HauserCredit for Order of Canada photograph featured in the centre montage:©Office of the Secretary to the Governor General of Canada 2009Photo credit: MCpl Jean-François Néron, Rideau HallReproduced with the permission of the Office of the Secretary to the Governor General

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