Pp“ ,) UNIVERSITY COLLEGE
of the FRASER VALLEY

Volume R. Number N_ September 2, 1998
|

13

A New View From the Top

Headlines sat down and talked with our
new president, Skip Bassford, about a
month into his mandate. He shared some of
his initial thoughts on the post-secondary
systems in BC and Ontario, and the
challenges he sees that lie ahead,
particularly for our institution.

Q: What do you see as some of the major
differences—and similarities—between
the Ontario and BC post-secondary
systems?

SB: The major difference provides the
primary reason for my coming here really,
which is the Ontario system simply doesn’t
have university-colleges. It’s a system
where the universities have lived in their
world and the colleges have lived in theirs;
they’ve done quite different things, and
they have not had sufficient dialogue over
the years. In Ontario, they did not even
have the two-year college transfer
program, so they really were two solitudes.
One big difference, personally, is the fact
that I had been working in a very large
university. The environment here is less
formal and it’s easier to interact with
people on a human scale. That has been
really pleasant for me. It’s taken some
getting used to—but it’s all a plus!

Q: Did you have much of a sense of what
you were coming to here at UCFV?

SB: I think I had a pretty fair sense of
what to expect. I was lucky that in the
second stage of the interview process |
spent more days (six) here than perhaps |
normally would have. But by doing that, I
got to wander around the area a bit; I got a
little better look at the campuses, and
perhaps got to talk a wee bit more with
people than I normally could have. The

interview process itself was fairly
comprehensive. People were quite
forthcoming about both their love of the

place and the problems they saw, so I had a

lot of people talking to me about what they
thought was needed, and what has been
excellent. And I haven’t found things to be
all that much different from what was
suggested early on. So, I don’t think I’m
getting into a lot of things I didn’t expect.

Skip settles into his new office

Q: We’ve become known as a place
where decisions are made by consensus.
Will you try to continue that kind of
process?

SB: Consensus is a model that is ideal; it’s
a model that works well in new and smaller
institutions. It doesn’t work so well when
you get many and diverse interest groups.
And the large institutions don’t have the
time to get all the interest groups working
together. I suspect we’re somewhere in
between. I hope for a degree of consensus,

at least on our general policies, so that then
they can be reasonably and objectively
deployed. But I don’t think you’re going to
get a completely successful consensus
model within any institution this size, even
though everyone is very good-willed, I
must say.

Q: I think we’re all intrigued by the new,
“outsider” perspective you can bring to
the institution.

SB: Well, I think there’s going to be a
good look from the outside as well as a
good look from the inside, because I’m
coming in at an interesting point, with the
(UCFV) Strategic plan in its last year. This
is an excellent time to take a look at where
things have come to and where we want
them to go. So, it won’t just be me
providing input, but the entire
university-college and, I would think, the
community we serve.

Please see Page 2

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