Ryerson Alumni - Winter 2018 - 3

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ILLUSTRATION BY ADAM CRUFT

At Ryerson,
higher education
meets the future

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

By Mohamed Lachemi
President and Vice-Chancellor

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.
"I feel fortunate to
be leading a university
that has a reputation
for continually reinventing
itself to meet the
needs of society."

Winter 2018 / Ryerson University Magazine

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Ryerson Alumni - Winter 2018