Munirul-Haq Raza | News Editor
Featured image | Rowan Campbell
On Oct 18, Rhonda Lenton officially became York’s eighth president, succeeding her predecessor, Mamdouh Shoukri.
Both Shoukri and Lenton bring their own unique perspectives to the presidency and will be addressing their believed needs of the York community.
Shoukri, who was once a protester at Cairo University in Egypt protesting his then-university president, now reflects on his time as president of York.
Looking back on his most memorable moments at York, Shoukri remembers “the opening of the General Education faculty, because that was something I said we would do at the outset, as was the opening of Engineering.
“One of the reasons I even considered applying for the job was the assurance that York is open to go in the direction of becoming more comprehensive and research intensive,” he adds.
On where he sees room for York’s contribution to Ontario healthcare, he says: “I believe that York will help the healthcare system of Ontario if it has a medical school that reflects the growing need for generalists and physicians, who can lead units that provide healthcare to communities. That was my vision and it totally aligned with York’s commitment to social justice.”
Shoukri hopes that the medical school will come to fruition under Lenton’s leadership.
For him, the key focus is on the fundamental subjects—be they in the social or physical sciences. He believes it’s important to keep interdisciplinarity amongst all students. This means that students in hard sciences, such as physics, engineering, chemistry, or others be exposed to humanities and social sciences, and vice versa. “You have to focus on things that do not change to adapt to changes we cannot even predict,” he says.
With an awareness of York’s well-established history of protests and strikes, he says, “I would not expect it to be any different. I think some people dug into my own background and discovered that I was kind of an activist student myself, so I would not deny that to others.
“Did I change my mind about many things? Yes I did. I did indeed do some activism at the time, which resulted in some positive change in the world—not by me, but through student protest in the 1960’s and so on.
“When I go back to what I was party to—and don’t get the idea that I was a revolutionist or anything—I was just an active, young person who had certain interests. I did walk in marches and then protest what was related to a kind of democratic reform of the country I lived in.
“I was in Cairo a couple of months ago, and I actually went to where we were standing—on current reflection, I think we did protest for good reasons.
“At the time, I do believe we were expecting too much from what a university president actually can do, but that didn’t stop us from asking. I wasn’t arrested or anything, but some were.”
Shoukri adds: “But also, realize that I was 19.” Shoukri understands the decision to protest, and thinks that is a great thing.
“This is an essential part of students being prepared to become future responsible citizens. They have to have an opinion to express it, and a right to protest, which they should exercise.
“That goes without saying—I would be the last person to not acknowledge the importance of protest. Student activists and protesters are moving into a world where they have to be part of their creations, because they are soon going to live it. They need to come in and be engaged,” says Shoukri.
“The technological and the scientific changes that we’re going to see in the next 15 to 20 years, I believe, will be even more disruptive than what we’ve seen so far.” he says, regarding sees the future.
“Our lives and education will look very different.”
Shoukri offers some thoughts about the growth of York and how that will impact student spaces, faculty-to-student ratio, and the decline in funding that is happening across North America.
“The student-to-faculty ratio is not one that I like to see—however, it has not gotten significantly worse. In fact, it may have even gotten slightly better,” Shoukri says. “We put a high priority on hiring more student faculty.”
In response to questions about the challenges York outlined in a senate meeting on budgetary constraints that York was facing, he says: “The financial picture today is better than it was a few years ago. Our deficit has gone down significantly.”
Finally, Shoukri closes with his final advice to students: “What I have observed in people who have been successful— success, as in having a fulfilling life—is that they possess two qualities that I encourage students to think about. One is integrity—that all their decisions, actions, and behaviour are driven by a clear set of principles.
“The second is empathy—which is the capacity within them when they differ from others—to be able to put themselves in their shoes and try and see through their lens. I advise them to try and practice thinking about this, because I think this helps the students—regardless of what field they are in. People trust others when they see they are living by a set of principles, and you don’t have to agree, but it is useful to see where they are coming from, in order to be able to deal with the challenges and bridge gaps.”
Lenton will be continuing where Shoukri left off, as well as pursuing her own vision. Being a first generation student herself, she says her parents instilled in her a strong value of education.
Speaking on the focus that will drive Lenton’s presidency, “with Markham, there really is this opportunity to be thinking about York as a multi-campus university that involves the Keele campus—it involves our commitment to bilingualism in education, being an essential partner in the whole growth of York Region, and also in bridging that to our campuses downtown, as well as our campuses in Las Nubes, Costa Rica (an eco-campus) and Hyderabad, India.”
Lenton also wants to take advantage of the opportunity to service the needs of Francophones in Ontario. “I know there is talk of a French only university, which will definitely happen. The success of that university will depend on a strong collaboration and consortium with existing bilingual universities.” She continues that, because of York’s location in Toronto, it has a huge “opportunity to partner with said French-only school.”
Lenton says interconnectedness is key, when speaking in regards to what type of university York should be.
“I want to ensure that the external community understands York’s vision, which is about bridging access and research intensification, and building on York’s strength in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary programming, teaching, research, and learning, because that sort of strong foundation is critically important, no matter what kind of program that you want to be in,” she says.
Lenton continues: “We actually have programs that, at their core, pull in a variety of disciplinary perspectives on education, environmental studies, law and society, business and society, and countless different examples, so we indeed have programs designed intentionally to capture interest in areas that others may not have even thought about as interdisciplinary.”
Lenton gives the example of data visualization when talking about the interconnectedness of disciplines: “Fascinating stuff is happening in engineering, arts and media performance, and design. Also, if you think about emerging areas right now, such as data analytics or data visualization, you know that data visualization is a collaboration between computer science, arts and media performance, and design.”
Lenton also intends to seriously invest in research.
“If we’re going to continue to amplify our scholarship, research, and creativity, we need to continue to make investments. York clearly has been on a trajectory of research intensification, but we need to continue to be paying attention and investing in that,” she says.
When asked about the rising cost of tuition as a means to raise revenue, Lenton acknowledges the challenges that Ontario students face, due to the province’s already-large university education budget, which came as a result of large student populations across the province.
“As someone who put themselves through university, I am cognizant that we cannot assume a pattern where we raise tuition to address the financial challenges we’re facing,” she says.
When asked about the lack of student spaces and whether they’re will be any future investments to make more space available, Lenton says, “I think that needs to be addressed in a number of different ways. First, we know that we need to invest in library spaces at York—partly because we have a number of students who commute, they’ll often look to the libraries for study space or as a place to meet—for example, the learning commons—so further investment in our libraries is a goal that we’ve got highlighted as a priority.
“However, I also believe there is a huge opportunity to align student spaces with our innovation strategy, so the Vice- President of Research & Innovation is leading a major effort to expand our innovation spaces,” Lenton adds. In this context, she notes students who have startup ideas and “want to start to hone their entrepreneurial spirit.”
On how she is feeling about her position, Lenton says: “My values match York’s values as being progressive and committed to inclusion, diversity, social justice, and sustainability on campus.”
With files from Dennis Bayazitov
