Acadia 2025 - May 2022 Review

Acadia

Transforming lives for a transforming world

Table of Contents

3 President’s Message

5 Acadia and COVID-19

6 Acadia 2025: Tracking progress

7 Acadia 2025 in brief

President’s Message

When Acadia launched its five-year strategic plan, Acadia 2025: Transforming Lives for a Transforming World, in March of 2020, we could not have predicted that more than two years later we would still be wrestling with the effects of a catastrophic worldwide pandemic that ravaged our planet and its people. As I write this message reflecting on the progress we’ve made toward implementing the plans’ goals and objectives, every country and economy is recovering from the seventh wave of the COVID-19 pandemic that has paralyzed global supply chains, overwhelmed healthcare systems, diminished human to human interaction, and distorted learning environments. New geo-political tensions and rising waves of refugees displaced by war exacerbate the globe’s fragile economy and its political stability.

The pandemic has underscored how delicate human life can be while at the same time demonstrating the value to society of an educated population that is willing to invest in research, reward innovation, and extend a compassionate hand to neighbours both near and far.

Of course, while the pandemic has raged, our institutions, both public and private, have carried on. At Acadia, I am reminded each day that we have a remarkable community that is focused on our core mission. The individual and collective efforts over the past two years are nothing short of extraordinary and it is worth reiterating my sincerest gratitude to our faculty, staff, students, and broader stakeholder community for the work done to keep our Acadia community safe. We have been very fortunate, but it has been because of our community’s dedication and discipline.

In 2022, we find ourselves in a new world. The aforementioned supply chains and healthcare systems have been altered permanently. Governments that have backstopped our economy, its institutions, and its workforce are establishing new short and long-term

priorities to both recover and prepare for future growth. For our post-secondary sector, we face new challenges as waves of incoming students emerge from hybrid learning environments with academic interests shaped by this inflection point in human history and the long shadow it will cast on every conceivable aspect of prepandemic life from public policy to business investment to international cooperation.

When we chose the title Acadia 2025: Transforming Lives for a Transforming World we had no idea just how prescient it would be, but prescient it is. In a short period of time, our world has transformed. Our students have transformed. Our expectations have transformed. Indeed, to quote Yogi Berra once again, “the future isn’t what it used to be.” To be sure, we have not been standing still preparing for the future while dealing with the buffeting winds of the pandemic. The Acadia 2025 framework has proven to be a valuable tool for the Acadia community to use to prepare our academic core, our community stakeholders, and our physical plant for the future.

We are making progress toward achieving the goals we set out in Acadia 2025. We have reduced our carbon footprint, we have taken deliberate steps to make

our campus more open, inclusive, and tolerant, our academic researchers are tackling some of our society’s most pressing problems, we have built new and lasting public and private-sector partnerships, and through the generosity of hundreds of donors we completed the largest fundraising campaign in Acadia’s history.

While this report marks the halfway point in our transformative journey it is important to emphasize that this is a brief moment in time during the history of an institution that has endured and thrived for almost 200 years. Indeed, the mission of Acadia today is the same as that of the Acadia of 1838:

To provide an unparalleled learning experience through a liberal education model based on personalized attention, expanding the boundaries of knowledge, experiential learning, community engagement, environmental stewardship and global citizenship, and engaged research and innovation delivered by a compassionate, dedicated and nurturing community within a beautiful and historic campus environment.

We stand on the shoulders of those that have gone before us, but we are not bound by their limitations. If the past twenty-four months have proven anything,

it is that our role as a leading post-secondary institution is to encourage and foster unconventional thinking, intellectually curiosity, and concern for the future of our planet not just our neighbourhood is more valuable than ever before. Our responsibility then, is to be nimble enough to respond to new challenges and opportunities as they arise to ensure Acadia graduates continue to make a meaningful impact on our world and future generations. Looking ahead to the 2025, the most important work we can do is to ensure we have a solid foundation on which to build the next 200 years of Acadia’s legacy.

I want to again than everyone who has contributed to the progress we have made over the past two years and for their unfailing commitment to Acadia’s success.

Dr. Peter J. Ricketts President and Vice-Chancellor

Acadia University is the first in Canada to achieve an Organic Campus designation from the Canada Organic Trade Association. The certification was awarded during Organic Week activities held at the University, located in Mi’kma’ki, Wolfville, Nova Scotia

Acadia and COVID-19

Given the enormity of the COVID-19 pandemic and it’s impact on every aspect of life and learning, it is important to reflect on how the Acadia community adapted to public health constraints and advice and contributed to broader efforts to end the pandemic.

When the campus was closed in March of 2020 it was as though clocks stopped while individuals heeded public health warnings and withdrew from normal day-to-day activities. With the end of the 2020 academic year in sight and students returning to their homes en masse, faculty responded quickly by moving to on-line teaching platforms with tremendous support from our technology services team. This almost instantaneous transition could not have been achieved without the single-minded concern for students that is the hallmark of the Acadia community.

In April 2020 a COVID-19 testing site was established in the University Club on Westwood Avenue. This testing site has been a permanent fixture of support for everyone in our community throughout the pandemic. In the spring of 2021, the parking lot of the Festival Theatre became a drive-through vaccination clinic augmenting the walk-in vaccination clinics that had previously been offered in the building lobby.

Tracking COVID-19 outbreaks and community spread has consumed public health resources and dominated news coverage for more than two years. Acadia faculty member Dr. Jennie Rand led a team of researchers to determine the levels of COVID-19 in municipal wastewater. It is hoped that this tool will become an effective method of detecting the virus in the community as an early warning tool for healthcare practitioners and policy-makers.

Acadia 2025: Tracking progress

Acadia 2025 was approved and adopted by Acadia’s Board of Governors and Senate in early March of 2020 following an extensive and broad-based consultation process involving internal and external stakeholders. The formal launch of the plan followed later in 2020 but rather than a signal to begin work, the release

An overview of the framework

Caring for our students and employees

Goals:

Transformational student experiences focused on academic and personal success

An inclusive and supportive community campus culture

A campus culture passionate about professionalism, inclusion, service excellence, and leadership

Caring for our community’s safety, health and wellness

Msit No’kmaq - Advancing Acadia’s contributions to truth, reconciliation and decolonization

of the Acadia 2025 framework provided a means to connect and organize the vast of array campus activities and achievements toward an over-arching goal: by 2025 to establish Acadia as a university that is clearly differentiated within the Canadian post-secondary landscape.

Strategic Direction and Goals

Caring for our planet

Goals: Environmental stewardship and sustainability are signature institutional features of Acadia Make measurable progress and establish a target date for achieving net carbon neutrality

Revitalizing our academic core

Goals: Embrace a 21st century liberal education model that is central to Acadia’s vision and mission

Enhanced support for teaching and learning excellence

Maximizing our impact regionally and globally

Goals: New partnerships and collaboration to drive regional development and educational opportunities

Leadership and impact in environmental, rural and coastal research and innovation

Acadia’s research is impactful regionally, nationally and globally

Sustaining our institutional future

Goals: Achieve optimal rates of student enrolment to ensure institutional and campus community sustainability

Establish a culture of sustained fundraising and giving Enhance infrastructure renewal and campus development to meet priority needs

Progress toward our goals can be measured in two ways – quantitative and qualitative.

There are clearly some measures that are purely statistical. For instance, have we reduced our output of greenhouse gases or achieved optimal student enrolment? On the other hand, statistics alone cannot be used to measure the positive impact work performed by academic researchers is having on families living in poverty or on efforts to reduce pollution in the Arctic. However, by capturing both quantitative and qualitative information as a means of measuring progress, we can create a narrative about Acadia that will determine whether we have achieved our over-arching goal by 2025.

Of course, we also need to be realistic in our assessment of progress. The challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic are real and have hampered our ability to make certain investments, undertake new partnerships, and even to recruit students. On the other hand, some work has proceeded almost unimpeded by the pandemic and new opportunities, such as an accelerated move to on-line and virtual learning, have arisen. In short, our progress can best be described as uneven, but there is progress nonetheless and this needs to be celebrated while serving as a guide to where and how we might allocate resources over the next 24 to 36 months.

Acadia 2025 in brief

First university in Canada to sign UN SDG Accord and to achieve Organic Campus designation

CO2

CO2 40% lower in 2021 than base line 2006

Over 100 environmental/ sustainability activities on campus

Inter-institutional cooperation agreement signed

Campaign for Acadia complete. $86 million raised–exceeding target by $11 million

Fourth in Canada among primarily undergraduate universities for 2021

Water consumption down 19% since 2019

33% increase in endowment payout since 2019

Caring For Our Students and Employees:

By Enriching the Acadia Learning and Working Experience

Goal: Transformational Student Experiences That Focus on Student Academic and Personal Success

• Acadia transitioned to Colleague Student which replaced Eden, a legacy student information system that had reached the end of its usability.

• Acadia joined its Maple League colleagues in signing an inter-institutional cooperation agreement that encourages students to take courses, with a focus on on-line and virtual learning communities, from any of the four universities that will be credited toward their degree at their home university.

Goal: An Inclusive and Supportive Campus Community Culture

• The Edwin Borden Awards are available annually to five Black students who demonstrate a history of community engagement, extracurricular activities and career and life-goals.

• Acadia’s new Black Student Success Navigator will develop and implement programs and services to support the academic and personal success of students of African descent.

• Acadia is one of more than 40 universities to sign Scarborough Charter which vows to redress anti-Black racism and foster Black inclusion in higher education.

Goal: A Campus Culture Passionate About Professionalism, Inclusion, Service Excellence, and Leadership

• Acadia released its Report of the President’s AntiRacism Task Force (PART) which builds on the work of the President’s Advisory Council on De-Colonization and several of the PART recommendations have already been implemented.

• Acadia joined the Canadian government’s $95 million Global Skills Opportunity program through the Maple League’s Nation to Nation: Building Indigenous Knowledge Across International Borders program that will provide 60 Indigenous students with an opportunity to travel to Belize to explore aspects of its Indigenous culture.

Goal: Caring For Our Community’s Safety, Health and Wellness

• The new Sexualized Violence Policy adopted in 2020 updates Acadia’s previous policy and expands the reporting and investigative processes to combat the prevalence of rape culture. The policy covers every student, employee, and visitor and applies to University property, events, and travel.

Goal: Msit No’kmaq - Advancing Acadia’s Contributions to Truth, Reconciliation and Decolonization

• Elder Dr. Joe Michael (’19) is Acadia’s first Elder in Residence and will apply his passion for educating youth to provide mental, spiritual, cultural, emotional, and physical health support to Acadia’s Indigenous students and faculty while helping to guide Acadia’s journey toward truth and reconciliation.

caring for our students and employees revitalizing our academic core maximizing our impact sustaining our institutional future caring for our planet

Mawio’mi 2021. Glooscap First Nation, the Town of Wolfville, and Acadia co-hosted a gathering from September 30 to October 4, 2021.

sustaining our institutional future caring for our planet

Caring For Our Planet:

By Leading, Educating and Researching in Environmental Stewardship, Climate Change and Sustainability

Goal: Environmental Stewardship and Sustainability are Signature Institutional Features of Acadia University

• The public EV charging station prominently located at the entrance to Acadia’s athletic complex is an important feature of Canada’s sustainable transportation infrastructure and represents the only “filling station” within the limits of the Town of Wolfville.

• Acadia was the first university in Canada to sign the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Accord. Acadia is now committed to aligning its activities with the SDG, cooperating with other signatories, and reporting annually on its progress.

• In September 2022, Acadia became the first university in Canada to achieve Organic Campus designation from the Canada Organic Trade Association. The new Organic Campus program will help Acadia its commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, namely Goal 12, Responsible Consumption and Production.

Goal: Make Measurable Progress and Establish a Target Date for Achieving Net Carbon Neutrality

• Since Acadia’s base year of 2005/06, Greenhouse Gas Emissions have fallen by 40% in 2020/2021 to 16,088 tonnes of eCO2 from all sources. In addition, but not necessarily related to achieving carbon neutrality, Acadia’s water consumption continues to fall. In 2021/22, water consumption was at it lowest level ever with the exception of 2020/21 when the university was effectively closed for several months during the initial phases of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Acadia University celebrated the official launch of its first electric vehicle fast-charging station October 9, 2020.

Revitalizing Our Academic Core: Through Compelling and Impactful Programs, Experiential Learning and Inspired Teaching to Prepare Graduates for 21st Century Careers

Goal: Embrace The 21st Century Liberal Education Model That is Central to Acadia’s Mission

• Acadia’s new Master of Science in Environmental Science reflects the interdisciplinary environmental research many Acadia students undertake under the guidance of leading environmental scientists at Acadia such as Dr. Nelson O’Driscoll, Dr. Ian Spooner, and Dr. Rob Raeside.

• Led by Dr. Mark Mallory, Acadia continues to be involved in multi-stakeholder research into environmental contaminants found in Arctic seabirds harvested in Nunavut. Collaborating with Environment and Climate Change Canada, Nunavut Arctic College, and Nunavut communities, and Inuit hunters Acadia students receive hands-on experience in answering some of the most pressing problems with respect to environment impact in the Arctic.

• The new Jarislowsky Chair in Trust and Political Leadership, supported by a $2 million gift from the Jarislowsky Foundation, will assist in the development of an innovative program of scholarship (teaching, research, and experiential learning) that will provide a deep learning experience for students interested in politics, ethics, government and public service.

Goal: Enhanced Support For Teaching and Learning Excellence

• Dr. Lesley Frank and Dr. Emily Bremer are Acadia’s newest Tier II Canada Research Chairs. Dr. Frank’s interest in food security was recently highlighted with the release of her book Out of Milk: Infant Food Insecurity in a Rich Nation, which explores why women who can least afford to buy formula for their babies are also the least likely to breast feed. Dr. Bremer’s work will build on the exceptional work already underway at Acadia such as the Sensory Motor Instructional Leadership Experience (S.M.I.L.E.) program.

• Acadia remains in the Top 50 research universities according to the annual rankings issued by Research Infosource Inc. and is fourth in Canada among primarily undergraduate universities.

caring for our students and employees revitalizing our academic core maximizing our impact sustaining our institutional future caring for our planet

Acadia remains in the Top 50 research universities according to the annual rankings issued by Research Infosource Inc. and is fourth in Canada among primarily undergraduate universities.

Maximizing Our Impact Regionally and Globally: Through Engaged Research, Innovation, and Collaborative Initiatives for Community Cultural and Economic Development

Goal: New Partnerships and Collaborations to Drive Regional Development and Educational Opportunities

• Partnering with the Glooscap First Nation, Acadia’s Indigenous Speakers Series is an on-line resource for faculty and students to learn more about Mi’kmaq traditional knowledge opening pathways toward truth and reconciliation.

• Acadia’s founding partnership in the Canadian Alliance for Skills and Training in Life Sciences (CASTL) creates opportunities for Acadia students to be the next generation of highly skilled bioscience and technology professionals so desperately needed to fill vacancies in the bioscience sector. Acadia is one of ten academic and industry partners located in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island who have come together to form CASTL.

• The Town of Wolfville Partnership Agreement aims to create a mutually beneficial municipal/university relationship that is not only unique in Canada but can serve as a model elsewhere.

• Glooscap MOU with Acadia to partner with four regional Mi’kmaq communities.

Goal: Leadership and Impact in Environmental, Rural and Coastal Research and Innovation

• Dr. Sandra Barr was named the 2022 recipient of the Bancroft Award by the Royal Society of Canada for publication, instruction and research in the Earth sciences that have conspicuously contributed to public understanding and appreciation of the subject.

• Dr. Nelson O’Driscoll was awarded the Maine Council on the Marine Environment 2022 Visionary Award for his innovation, creativity and commitment to protecting the marine environment through his research into the movement of mercury in the Bay of Fundy and Gulf of Maine.

Goal: Acadia’s Research is Impactful Regionally, Nationally and Globally

• Dr. Sandra Barr was inducted into the Nova Scotia Science Hall of Fame as a pre-eminent, internationally acclaimed geoscientist with over 100 thesis students and more than 170 refereed papers who has mapped nearly one-half of Nova Scotia ad a substantial portion of New Brunswick.

• Dr. Rob Raeside was named the 2021 recipient of the J. Willis Ambrose Medal by the Geological Association of Canada for his tireless service to Canada’s geoscience community.

• Acadia Music Department members Derek Charke, Eugene Cormier, and Peter Togni were nominees for 2022 East Coast Music Awards. These nominations build upon previous ECMA and JUNO nominations and awards for each of them.

• Leah Creaser (’21), honours biology student and president of the Indigenous Student Society of Acadia was awarded a prestigious 3M National Student Fellowship in 2021 to pursue her studies in fish biology using the two-eyed seeing perspective. Leah created a first-year biology lab incorporating Mi’kmaq Traditional Knowledge that is now a required first-year lab.

• Julia Baak (’21) was awarded a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship to pursue her Arctic seabird PhD research at McGill. Julia’s research will require collaborating with several Arctic countries and numerous Canadian agencies, organizations, and communities. At Acadia, Julia received the Outstanding Master’s Research Award and the Governor Generals Gold Medal. Shew as cosupervised at Acadia by Dr. Mark Mallory.

revitalizing our academic core maximizing our impact sustaining our institutional future caring for our planet

Sustaining Our Institutional Future: Through Optimizing Enrolment, Fundraising and Campus Infrastructure Renewal

maximizing our impact sustaining our institutional future caring for our planet

Goal: Achieve Optimal Rates of Student Enrolment to Ensure Institutional and Campus Community Sustainability

• Acadia’s domestic undergraduate enrolment is ahead of it 3,200 student target (out of an overall full-time undergraduate population of 4,000). However, continued post-COVID travel restrictions and economic conditions worldwide have negatively impacted targeted international student enrolment of 800. Overall undergraduate enrolment has fluctuated little since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Goal: Build a Culture Of Fundraising to Continue Beyond the Successful Completion of Campaign for Acadia

• Campaign for Acadia concluded in 2020 raising a record $86.8 million to support students and faculty and to expand and renew Acadia campus infrastructure.

Goal: Enhance Infrastructure Renewal And Campus Development To Meet Priority Needs

• Significant infrastructure renewal projects include the replacement of the aging Raymond Field all-weather turf and the boards and glass in Andrew H. McCain Arena. Acadia’s athletic complex is a key piece of infrastructure to both students and the community which allows the university to attract major events such as the 2022 USports Men’s Hockey Championship and a July 2022 CFL football game between Toronto and Regina. These events are important contributors to Acadia’s reputation as a leading Canadian university and significantly beneficial to Wolfville and the Province of Nova Scotia.

• Completion of new Science Complex and Huestis Innovation Pavillion

Significant infrastructure renewal projects include the replacement of the aging Raymond Field all-weather turf. Acadia’s athletic complex is a key piece of infrastructure to both students and the community which allows the university to attract major events.

Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada, B4P 2R6

acadia2025.acadiau.ca