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Changing Lives, Building Community A Message from UFV President Dr. Mark Evered With more than 16,000 students studying at UFV this year, we have grown larger than half the universities in Canada. If you have not visited us recently, we encourage you to do so. You may be surprised. We hope you will be pleased.  | | Mark Evered has now been at the helm of UFV for two years now -- and he has enjoyed watching the university as it continues to grow. |
We invite you to share the excitement of a campus that has developed new programs in a variety of disciplines, trades, and professions to better meet the needs of our students and communities. Come meet the talented and committed faculty and staff who lead and support these programs, and witness their passion and creativity in classrooms, shops, laboratories, galleries, theatres, clinics and the many other places where they engage with students, colleagues, and members of our communities. Share the delight of new discoveries by faculty, staff, and students working together, and the satisfaction of finding new applications of what has been learned. And take the opportunity to talk with our students. They are a remarkably diverse group drawn not only from the Fraser Valley or the Lower Mainland but from over 50 countries.
Come see how we’ve continued to develop our campuses. For example, the Trades and Technology Centre in Chilliwack is now fully functioning and the former home of these programs in Abbotsford has been redeveloped as a centre for business programs and for the visual arts. Construction will begin shortly on a new student centre in Abbotsford, to better meet the needs our growing student population. Our recently-built student residence is full, and the gyms in our expanded athletic facilities are busy day and night. Construction of our new campus in Chilliwack has begun on 85 acres at the Canada Education Park. And we continue to work with the District of Mission to develop ideas for expansion of our programs and facilities there. Although you will find much that is new about our university, we hope that you will also see that some important things have not changed. We remain strongly committed to our students and their success. UFV continues to earn top-tier status in the Globe & Mail Canadian University Report, ranking at the top of universities our size for the quality of education and the student experience. Our students consistently identify the commitment of our faculty and staff as the most important reason they chose UFV, and often credit the time spent here as having changed their lives fundamentally. We continue to measure our success by the success of our students. Some universities take pride in how difficult it is to get into their programs, how high a student’s grades must be before they can be admitted. We remain committed to access, and take pride not in the standings of the students entering but in their abilities when they complete their studies, and in their successes after they leave us. We measure our success by the achievements of our alumni, including the impact they have on their communities; we will continue to measure our success, UFV and its alumni, by the achievements of the communities we serve. These values and commitments have been captured in the goals recently set by UFV to guide us over the coming years. This spring, UFV’s Senate and the Board of Governors approved two goals. They are:
• to provide the best undergraduate education in Canada, and
• to be a leader of the social, cultural, economic and environmentally responsible development of the Fraser Valley. These goals reflect our commitments to our students and our region. The first inspires us to build on our reputation for quality education and to continue to pursue the very best ways to serve our students. The second recognizes that a responsible public university plays a major role in the advancement of its community. Both these goals commit us to excellence: serving our students and our region in ways that would be recognized as excellent anywhere in the world and that are models for others to follow.
We face many challenges. The demands for our programs, our service, and our leadership continue to rise and are already stressing our limited financial, physical, and human resources. In establishing our goals, we recognized that we must also commit to being innovative, entrepreneurial, and accountable. We have been and we will be. We are building on a strong foundation. And we have the talent and drive to take us forward. I have no doubt about our success. Within the pages of this magazine you will find much evidence of the kinds of successes I have been describing. Read about them and celebrate them with us. And come for visit to see for yourself.
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