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At Ryerson, higher education meets the future

By Mohamed Lachemi

President and Vice-Chancellor

THE TWO FEATURE stories in this issue highlight the opportunities and challenges facing future-focused universities such as Ryerson. Rapidly changing fields like robotics and artificial intelligence require university leaders to take calculated risks, assigning what are often scarce resources to best meet the future needs of students, society and employers. Which fields and innovations will endure, and which will fade over time? These decisions are not always easy.

At the same time, universities are increasingly (and appropriately) expected to be centres of progress and influence beyond our traditional academic mandate. Spanning the Gaps, a wonderfully successful program that aids access to university education for people who might not otherwise even consider the post-secondary experience, is a great Ryerson success story. The program, only 10 years old, represents a generational shift in how universities engage with their communities and I am delighted to share the story with you in these pages.

I feel fortunate to be leading a university that has a reputation for continually reinventing itself to meet the needs of society. How incredibly exciting it is to be at the nexus of higher education and the future. Over the years, Ryerson has been remarkably successful at making the right choices on how to grow and where to focus. There are many recent examples: developing learning opportunities for our students to explore entrepreneurship; our Law Practice Program and Legal Innovation Zone that are challenging the status quo in the legal profession; graduate programs such as finance for social innovation or data science and analytics; and a commitment to social justice that motivates students and faculty to have an impact on issues such as Indigenous rights and the environment.

It helps in planning for the future that our values have always been shaped, and continue to be shared, by our community of students, faculty, staff and alumni.

Meeting the future successfully requires a combination of building strategic partnerships and working hard to understand the needs of our students, the community, and potential employers. For Ryerson, as always, it is eyes forward.