Our leadership team has had an especially busy fall season, owing to a number of factors, such as changes in several senior leadership roles (including my own), setting the foundation for a major fundraising campaign, three external reviews, and the launch of a university-wide strategic planning process. 

We had welcome opportunities to celebrate our students’ success with three Fall Convocation ceremonies, including a heartfelt farewell to our outgoing Chancellor and student champion Santee Smith. 

We shared McMaster updates and plans with enthusiastic and engaged McMaster alumni at events in Victoria, Vancouver, San Francisco, New York, Toronto, and of course here in Hamiton, including a breakfast meeting with the McMaster Alumni Association’s board members at Crescent House. 

We officially marked the change in the presidency with several successful Installation events in September, all wrapped around the Installation ceremony itself at Convocation Hall, which featured prominent visitors from sister institutions and a surprise video message from Premier Doug Ford. 

At the Royal Society of Canada’s Celebration of Excellence and Engagement in Montreal last month, we celebrated the achievements of eight prominent McMaster researchers. The Society welcomed four new Fellows (Daniel Coleman, Stuart Phillips, Parminder Raina, and Allison Williams) and three new members of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists (Olufemi Ayeni, Allan Downey and Stelios Georgiades), recognizing their contributions to their disciplines, and the excellence and impact of their work.  Ancient DNA specialist Hendrik Poinar received the Royal Society’s prestigious John William Dawson Medal, joining previous McMaster recipients Harry Thode and Fraser Mustard. 

Amidst the celebrations and other work, we have made a particular priority of government-relations activities at the federal, provincial and municipal levels, because our relationships with each of those levels are important to the university, especially at this uncertain time in history. 

We want to show how well our goals align with those of our government partners and to make it clear we are here to help with issues such as tariffs, economic sovereignty and job creation. 

We are eager to help those partners in government become familiar with McMaster’s executive leadership team after a number of changes in recent months, including our still relatively new Provost, VP Research, McMaster Innovation Park CEO, and President. 

Not only has this been budget season in the public sector, there is ongoing turbulence in the post-secondary education overall, and certainly for universities as institutions continue to face stiff challenges, including limitations on international students and the ongoing tuition cap. We know colleges are cancelling whole programs and even shutting down entire campuses, and that many universities are operating at a loss.  

McMaster’s fiscal management has continued to be prudent and responsible, allowing the university to stay in a break-even position. As a result, we have been less exposed to some of the economic hardship that’s hitting other schools. We also understand that we are the only Ontario institution to be ranked in the green on all seven of the provincial government’s financial metrics. 

One of the many reasons it’s so important to keep our financial house in order is that it allows us to show that the funding McMaster receives, whether from governments, donors, industry partners or other sources, is a safe and effective investment. We had been tackling our budget issues before they reached crisis levels, and as a result we are staying, so far, within our means. That’s something we want our government representatives to know. Asking for funding, especially in a tight economic environment, is much easier when we can demonstrate that we are managing our money well. It’s easier to argue for ending the tuition cap, for example, when we can show we have been prudent with the resources we are already receiving.  

We are also eager to show our government partners that McMaster is here to serve our local community, our province, and Canada itself, as we all face issues such as barriers to international trade, an aging population, climate change and much more. We want all our government partners to know McMaster embraces its public responsibility and is here to be of service. 

At every level, we are also making sure government leaders know McMaster is actively working to ensure its students are graduating with the right skills for the changing economy by introducing new programs such as the new Minor in Nuclear Studies & Society, and Wilson Colllege’s new BA program in Leadership and Civic Studies. We are also showing them how McMaster is actively participating in the life of our community. Our experts from the DeGroote School of Business, for example, are going out and directly helping small businesses, our housing experts from Social Sciences are advising governments on policy, and our researchers from the Faculty of Health Sciences are running clinical trials of innovative new vaccines and drugs. 

The most active weeks of our round of government visits and meetings started in October and concluded the first week of December. 

Senior McMaster leaders visited Toronto October 20, for our annual Queen’s Park Day, when we participated in a series of 13 meetings with Ministers, MPPs and political staff, and hosted a reception where our messages always included a reminder of our successful fiscal management.  

Similarly, in our dealings with the federal government, we have been communicating clearly that McMaster is eager to be part of the solution to broad national issues including Canadian sovereignty and economic independence in light of US tariffs and stated goal of making Canada its 51st state. More specifically, we’re making it clear that McMaster is increasing its efforts in innovation, commercialization and entrepreneurship, both on campus and through the McMaster Innovation Park, with the goal of boosting and diversifying the economy and creating high-quality jobs. 

We were pleased Nov. 4 to see the federal government include a $1.7 billion International Talent Attraction Strategy to help Canadian universities, which will boost McMaster’s existing supports for teaching, research and commercialization. 

On Nov. 10, the week following the tabling of the budget, VP research Gianni Parise and I, together with a group of senior nuclear researchers, welcomed a federal delegation including Industry Minister Melanie Joly and regional MPs Lisa Hepfner, John-Paul Danko, and Aslam Rana to campus for discussions. We also toured the Institute for Infectious Disease Research and the Canadian Centre for Electron Microscopy.  The visit was a great opportunity to showcase McMaster’s research infrastructure and our alignment with federal priorities. 

Last week, a team of McMaster leaders was in Ottawa to discuss the university’s priorities, including our eagerness to contribute to the effort to bolster Canada’s economic sovereignty through commercializing McMaster research and assisting with dual-purpose research that can bolster Canada’s defence structure while producing effects that are also beneficial to everyday Canadian life. 

In addition to our scheduled meetings with federal politicians and their staff, VP Research Gianni Parise and I participated in a public fireside chat about McMaster research at the Chateau Laurier, where the enthusiastic audience included federal government staff and McMaster alumni. 

Throughout the course of our meetings and events in Ottawa, it became clear to us that politicians and government staff had already formed a very specific and positive impression of McMaster as an institution that is responsible, strategic and productive, which certainly helps our efforts to build stronger connections. 

At the municipal level, I was part of a McMaster delegation which attended Hamilton Mayor Andrea Horwath’s Oct. 9 State of The City Breakfast, an annual event organized by the Chamber of Commerce featuring a keynote address and a question-and-answer session with Mayor Horwath, whose remarks included several positive references to McMaster and its part in the community. 

I was also part of a McMaster group to attend a Nov. 10 session organized by the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce to discuss matters related to the provincial budget, featuring provincial Minister of Finance Peter Bethenfalvy and Minister of Sport Neil Lumsden and Hamilton Mountain MPP Monica Ciriello. Again, McMaster received a handful of very positive shoutouts from the speakers. 

On Dec. 12, I am planning to attend the Burlington Mayor’s Luncheon, and I have accepted an invitation from Burlington’s Roseland Community Organization to speak next month about challenges and opportunities in post-secondary education, as part of its annual speakers’ series. 

Taking part in these community activities helps us to stitch McMaster more firmly into the landscape and culture of Hamilton and its surrounding municipalities, which is a presidential priority I had emphasized in my Installation Address in September, where Mayor Horwath was a member of the stage party. 

Ideally, these local activities will set the stage for new McMaster partnerships and new economic opportunities set to emerge at McMaster Innovation Park, which will affirm McMaster’s place among Hamilton’s anchor institutions and add new momentum to our work at all levels. 

On the national, provincial, and local levels, these public-affairs activities are reinforcing McMaster’s positive image and effectively showing our partners that the university is eager to do more to focus its resources on teaching, research, commercialization that benefits society at every level.