Angela Campbell, BA’95, BCL’99, LLB’99, McGill’s new provost and executive vice-president (academic), worked closely with her predecessor Christopher Manfredi for a decade as associate provost (equity and academic policies) and then as interim deputy provost (student life and learning). Even so, she says her new job will take some getting used to.
“Chris made everything look so easy, and he was always so calm and unflappable,” says Campbell. “It’s a massive portfolio. I am definitely drinking from the proverbial fire hose!”
Campbell is now both McGill’s chief academic officer and its chief budget officer. In announcing her appointment, President Deep Saini described her as “a skilled consensus builder, a dedicated academic colleague and a strong advocate for student voices,” adding that, “as a bilingual Montrealer, she brings a nuanced understanding of the political, economic and cultural dynamics that shape the McGill context.”
A professor of law, Campbell is a two-time teaching award winner and the former director of the Institute for Comparative Law. She also served as the former associate dean of graduates studies in the Faculty of Law. Having completed degrees in history and law at McGill, Campbell has experienced the University from the vantage point of a student.
“I was a first-generation [university] student, and I came from a background [of limited financial resources],” says Campbell. “I benefitted enormously from the fact that I had access to very generous scholarships from the University because of our amazing alumni.” After graduating from law, she served as a law clerk for Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci.
How does the McGill of today compare to the McGill she remembers as a student in the 1990s?
“In many ways, it’s much the same,” says Campbell. “The professors I had were people who were both top scholars and really dedicated to teaching. And I got to sit in classrooms with students from all over the world.”
“I can say as a faculty member that the biggest privilege of being a McGill professor is our students. They challenge you to be at your very best all the time and they bring an incredible amount of energy and insight.”
Provost and Executive Vice-President Angela Campbell
But some things have changed. “One thing that’s different today for students is the presence of communications technology in our lives. I see students constantly getting pinged from a multitude of directions and sources,” says Campbell. “They always have a laptop or a phone with them and they’re always reachable. I worry a lot about [the downside] of always being connected.
“The saturation of information through media, especially social media, also has seemed to have enhanced experiences of isolation or alienation or loneliness [among students]. What is positive, though, is that students today are much more comfortable talking about those things than students were a generation ago,” says Campbell.
“They are better at setting boundaries for [their] mental health protection. And the University, I think, has responded in the sense that the amount and diversity of resources and services that are supplied to students has grown exponentially, compared to when I was a McGill student, to meet them where they’re at.”
Campbell says one of her first priorities is to begin work on a strategic academic plan that would cover McGill’s next five to 10 years. Also high up on her to-do list is “rethinking our budget model to ensure fiscal sustainability into the future.”
It is no secret that McGill is currently grappling with some serious financial challenges, challenges that have been exacerbated by recent decisions made by governments in Quebec City and Ottawa that have affected the funding received from tuitions as well as international student enrolment numbers.
Calculations estimate that, in the absence of any corrective measures, McGill could face an operating deficit of $73 million by 2028. The University launched Horizon McGill about a year ago, an initiative aimed at reviewing processes to identify areas where both increased efficiencies and effectiveness are possible.
“Horizon McGill has focused primarily on administrative operations until now,” says Campbell. “But we can’t neglect our academic mission either. We must start thinking about the fact that delivering academic programs has a cost, and we need to be able to look at where our programs are yielding the greatest benefit in terms of the impact that they’re having on our learners and on the research mission of the University.”
Campbell says the coming review of academic planning won’t just be about dollars and cents.
“In this era of constrained resources, we are going to be looking for viable opportunities that could credibly and sustainably generate more revenues and that contribute to McGill’s core mission. We also know that some academic activities will never yield a net positive revenue, and that’s okay as long as they are high value in [what they contribute] to McGill’s teaching, research, and service to society. We will always operate with a model of strategic reallocation of resources across the University.”
In recruiting academic talent, Campbell believes that McGill has a few cards up its sleeve – which is a good thing given the competition it is facing in recruiting top minds.
“Our faculty come here from all over the world and they have multiple options. We must be able to offer them something special and unique and we do. I can say as a faculty member that the biggest privilege of being a McGill professor is our students. They challenge you to be at your very best all the time and they bring an incredible amount of energy and insight.
“And we are in an amazing city,” Campbell adds. “Montreal offers an environment that [supports] our international character. There is a sense of acceptance and belonging here that is special and it’s something we must keep working at.
“When you walk into a classroom at McGill, you find students who are bright, curious, and represent diverse lived experiences. They come from all parts of the globe and all backgrounds. It’s not necessarily like that at many of the other big universities in Canada, where sometimes up to 90 per cent of undergraduates come from the most proximate geographic areas.”
Geopolitics is also a factor that affects where academics choose to teach. In the United States, for example, recent tensions have arisen in the relationship between the federal government and many top universities, largely due to the suspension or cancellation of thousands of research grants.
“These circumstances have definitely had an impact on the way in which [academic] recruitment is happening in Canada,” says Campbell.
“There are a number of scholars and colleagues in the U.S. who are feeling that the kind of research program they want to carry out is not possible [in the U.S.] at this moment … [and] Canada is increasingly looked upon as a location that offers relative stability. Many bright minds have expressed interest in coming here and that could be tremendously beneficial, not just for McGill, but for the sector in Canada and Quebec as a whole.”
Campbell led the development of McGill’s first Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Plan – the first of its kind for Canadian universities.
“Before there was any institutional mandate on EDI, McGill was a hub of activity and activism [on that front]. Many students and faculty were doing a lot of heavy lifting long before people in institutional positions paid attention,” says Campbell.
“It’s critical to acknowledge that. That work at the grassroots level is extremely valuable, and it has to exist in a complementarity with institutional attention and energy and resources. What’s really important, at least from my perspective, is the relationship between people who are pushing things forward at the ground or local level and people in institutional positions. And I think we’ve made great strides by working in collaboration.
“One area where I think we’re starting to see real material gains is in faculty hiring,” says Campbell. “The turnover of faculty is not frequent at McGill – we typically retain our faculty for more than a generation. Some people come and go, but the majority of professors stay for a career. So, changing the demographics of faculty is a major part of culture change in a university because the faculty determine the kind of research that gets done, the kind of teaching that gets done, they set the climate in terms of what and how students learn. It isn’t the only thing that needs to be addressed, but it is a pivotal piece.”
The world is facing some daunting challenges right now and universities can play a significant role in providing potential solutions – but they’ll need help, says Campbell. “Universities might not be able to live up to the needs of this moment if we try to work alone. Working across institutions and sectors, that’s not always a comfortable place for universities to be.
“If we are going to take on challenges like sustainability and climate emergencies, we need to think about partnerships with the public sector and industry and non-profits,” Campbell adds.
“There are a lot of people doing amazing work in those fields who are [at McGill] right now, but in terms of implementation, that takes partners. How do we engage in thinking transversely across disciplines and across sectors? How can we lend our expertise, while benefitting from the know-how in other domains?” She believes that the interdisciplinary work done at the McGill Sustainability Park will be “an amazing model for doing exactly that kind of thing.”
