Acadia 2025: Phased Implementation Plan

PHASE I: Student success and building resources 2019/20 – 2020/21

Priority Goals:

Create transformational student experiences focused on academic and personal success

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

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

Ensure that environmental stewardship and sustainability are signature institutional features of Acadia University

Msit No’kmaq – advance Acadia’s contributions to truth, reconciliation and decolonisation

PHASE II: Building and sustaining 2021/22 – 2022/23 Mid-plan review

Priority Goals:

Enhance support for teaching and learning excellence

Create new partnerships and collaboration to drive regional development and educational opportunities

Determine a date for and make measurable progress towards achieving net carbon neutrality

PHASE III: Investing for the future 2023/24 – 2024/25

Priority Goals:

Enhance infrastructure renewal and campus development to meet priority needs and reduce our accumulated deferred maintenance deficit

Establish a culture of sustained fundraising and giving

Ensure Acadia’s research activities and outcomes are known regionally, nationally and globally

Incremental Goals:

• An inclusive and supportive community campus culture

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

• Caring for our community health and wellness

• Acadia recognized for leadership and impact in rural and coastal research and innovation

Caring For Our Students And Employees

Enriching the Acadia learning and working experience

For generations, Acadia has been known for delivering a personalized and rigorous learning experience to its students. Alumni often recall the individual support they received from faculty members, who remain closely involved in their students’ success. By embedding principles of mutual respect and high-performance expectations within a campus culture that values and celebrates equity, diversity, and inclusion, Acadia ensures that its experience will continue to be transformational and desirable.

Over the first three years of the Acadia 2025 plan, significant milestones were achieved in creating a campus environment centred on care for students and employees.

• Implementation of a modern student information system

• Measures to enhance campus safety and promote inclusivity and diversity

• Appointment of senior executive position for EDI and key staff members to support equity and inclusion

• Introduction of a permanent work-fromhome arrangement for eligible employees

Caring For Our Students And Employees Revitalizing Our Academic Core Maximizing Our Impact Sustaining Our Institutional Future Caring For Our Planet

• Pledge to address anti-Black racism and promote Black inclusion in higher education by signing the Scarborough Charter and publishing the Report of the President’s Anti-Racism Task Force

• Improved support for Indigenous students and creation of an Indigenous Education Advisory Council

• New career service created for students as part of an expanded experiential learning program, with support from Acadia Alumni Association A new student-led initiative at Acadia focused on equity, anti-oppression, and violence prevention. Axe Oppression speakers included Claudine Bonner, Vice-Provost of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, Sophey Morris, Acadia Pride Coordinator, Roudraksh Jankee, International Education Program Intern, Allison Smith, Sexualized Violence Response and Education Coordinator, Darlene Copeland, Indigenous Student Programming Advisor, and Cameron Smith, BEd student and lead event planner.

Beyond its campus, Acadia will be known by its Mi’kmaw neighbours and Canada’s Indigenous Peoples as a place where truth and reconciliation matter, and by regional entrepreneurs, artists, and athletes, as a place where they can achieve their dreams of success.

Acadia will be an acknowledged leader in reducing its environmental footprint and will be known as a leader in teaching all students how to be stewards of our environment.

Opportunity Status

Carbon net zero is within reach by 2030

Carbon footprint assessment

Consultant review underway, with comprehensive energy master plan to achieve net-zero recommendations to be received in Fall 2023

2021/2022 Scope 1 and 2 emissions were 16,478 MT eCO2 – a reduction of 39% from 2005

Leading, educating, and researching in environmental stewardship, climate change, and sustainability

At Acadia, we strive to instill a sense of environmental responsibility and stewardship in every student, empowering them to become sustainability ambassadors and agents of change in their future careers. Our location in the Acadian Forest region and Mi’kma’ki, alongside the Bay of Fundy, offers an ideal learning environment for students to comprehend how their lifestyles can contribute to reducing our carbon footprint. We also encourage the incorporation of Indigenous traditional knowledge and ways of knowing into non-Indigenous culture and decision-making.

Since implementing Acadia 2025, we have taken significant steps to reduce our carbon footprint and enhance environmental education for our students.

• Hosted the 2023 Envirothon for 55 high school participants from across Nova Scotia

• Set up a public Level 3 EV DC fast charging station — opened in 2020

• Signed the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Accord in November 2021 — first Canadian university to do so

• Became Canada’s first Organic Campus in September 2022

• Established a science laboratory focused on Mi’kmaw traditional knowledge

• Introduced a Master of Environmental Science program

• Participated in the United Nations COP26 and COP27 conferences

• Acadia’s GHG Scope 1 and 2 emissions were 16,478 MT eCO2 in 2021/2022, a significant reduction of 39% from 2005 emissions, which were 27,179 MT eCO2

Executive Chef Peter Welton and President Peter Ricketts are shown at The Growcer, which is a unique hydroponic vertical food system situated steps away from Acadia’s dining hall.

Revitalizing Our Academic Core

Compelling and impactful programs, experiential learning, and inspired teaching to prepare graduates for 21st-century careers

At Acadia, students are empowered to explore their academic interests and push themselves beyond their disciplinary boundaries with the help of a supportive faculty. The university’s liberal education model prioritizes academic inquiry and encourages students to design their own programs, combining majors and minors from different faculties and engaging in communitybased research.

Meanwhile, Acadia is committed to fostering a culture that nurtures faculty research, attracting established and up-and-coming scholars to join its ranks.

• In Fall 2023 will offer a Bachelor of Science in Nursing thanks to provincial investment and Cape Breton University partnership

Caring For Our Students And Employees Revitalizing Our Academic Core Maximizing Our Impact Sustaining Our Institutional Future Caring For Our Planet

• Established a Master of Science program in Environmental Science

• Three Tier II Canada Research Chairs approved for Dr. Lesley Frank, Dr. Emily Bremer, and Dr. Zoe Migicovsky

• New Law and Society program created

• Jarislowsky Chair in Trust and Political Leadership created through a $2 million endowed donation from the Jarislowsky Foundation — part of a network of five Chairs at liberal education universities across Canada

• New Doctor of Psychology degree developed to address new professional credential requirements

• New Biochemistry degree developed in partnership with regional bioscience industries

• A new course transfer agreement as part of the Maple League of Universities: students can now earn credits for both on-line and in-person classes from any of the four member universities

• Acadia recognized as one of the Top 50 research universities by Research Infosource Inc. for three successive years

Opportunity Status

Bachelor of Science in Nursing

Online Professional Certificate in Maritime Security

Teaching and Learning Centre

Curriculum development and instructional design

Government approval and funding announced in May 2023, in partnership with CBU with first students enrolling in September 2023 — will eventually lead to a stand-alone Acadia BScN degree

Partnership established with Irving Shipbuilding Inc. and the International Association of Maritime Security Professionals (IAMSP). Courses finalized and first cohort expected in 2023

New position of Vice-Provost Teaching and Learning Excellence established to lead the new Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL)

Enhanced support to faculty through the CTL and Open Acadia, together with the Maple League Virtual Teaching and Learning Centre

Opportunity Status

Acadia’s growth in research funding is sustainable

New MOU with Town of Wolfville and Acadia Students’ Union

Community Clinic concept for new SUB

Rural Innovation Centre

Acadia is top undergraduate university in Atlantic Canada in corporate research income

New MOU will be signed in June 2023

Clinic is part of the Nursing proposal in order to provide experiential learning opportunities for students; also for Education and Psychology counselling students

Repurposed to provide enhanced support for start-ups and incubating early development of businesses and entrepreneurs

All labs are fully occupied by partnerships between Acadia and regional industries, including wine and beverage, tick and insect control, medicinal cannabis, and food and nutrition