University of Saskatchewan president looks back on 2024, ahead to 2025

Michelle Berg/Saskatoon StarPhoenix. University of Saskatchewan president Peter Stoicheff speaks during the graduation ceremony at Merlis Belsher Place. Photo taken in Saskatoon, Sask. on Wednesday, June 5, 2024.

U of S president Peter Stoicheff says 2024 brought some positive developments for the university, but challenges are on the horizon.

Michael Joel-Hansen, Regina Leader-Post

As the year comes to a close, the leader of Saskatchewan’s largest post-secondary institution is taking time to look back on 2024 while not losing sight of what’s to come in 2025.

University of Saskatchewan president Peter Stoicheff says this year brought some positive developments for the university on the financial front, as a major fundraising campaign continued to progress. Meanwhile, challenges are on the horizon in the new year.

Q: How does it feel now that the largest fundraising campaign in university history is 90 per cent toward that goal, with half a year left? Were you ever worried that $500 million was too lofty a target?

A: We always knew that it was a very ambitious goal. The last time this university had a fundraising campaign — and I don’t have my figures right in front of me, but it was a good 20 years ago and I think the goal was less than one tenth of that figure — so we knew it was ambitious …

But there’s so many wonderful things going on at the university that are having a positive impact on the people of the province and our alumni and all of our donors, as it turns out. We started to realize that it was the right time to hold a fundraising campaign with a lofty goal.

So I am very pleased with and proud of how things have been going and my interpretation of our success is that people feel very supportive of the direction of the university.

Q: Is it correct that the school had more than 23,500 students enrolled this past fall, which continues the streak of annual increases since the COVID-19 pandemic?

A: We are seeing yet another increase this year. It depends on how you look at it. We talk about the fact we’re sort of 27,000 strong in terms of students. But there’s different ways to slice that pie, undergraduate, graduate, part time, etc.

But yes, we have seen another increase in our enrolment numbers this past year and we interpret that as another sign that there’s a lot of support across the province, because the largest group of our students are from this province of Saskatchewan.

Yes, we have seen growth every single year without exception, right through COVID and so on, and I don’t think there are a lot of universities in the country, among the 97 of them, that can say that.

Q: Of all the research and projects this year, was there anything that jumps out?

A: Our Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization, VIDO, continues to be a world leader in terms of its work on vaccines, particularly in relation to the pandemic and developing a COVID vaccine for the future.

One of the really bright spots for me, and there are so many other things I can say: the crop development centre and all of our agricultural work is world class. We’re doing great things in terms of space and atmospheric studies. We’ve got a great food security institute, and food security is a huge world challenge; water security as well.

One other thing that was great this year and I’d look forward to this kind of success next year is this year again for the second time in a row we received two Rhodes Scholarships for two of our wonderful students. Only 11 Rhodes Scholarships are given out across the country. All 97 universities are eligible for them. For one university to get two of those is nothing short of remarkable.

Our Greystone Singers gave a concert at Carnegie Hall in New York last June and that, to me, was a real highlight; and I think it helps to remind everybody that we’ve got humanities, fine arts and social sciences that are tremendous here as well.

Q: Any challenges in 2024 that the university had to overcome that stick out to you?

A: We were, like every other university in this country, taken aback last January by the policy that was imposed upon all of us by IRCC (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada) federally that reduced the number of international student visas that would be available. That’s a challenge and it’s extremely disappointing.

It’s a financial challenge, although we will meet that challenge. It’s nowhere near catastrophic but it does mean that we will have fewer international students and we will see a drop in tuition revenue.

Much more important that that is that I and my colleagues are disappointed that there will be fewer international students here and as a result, less diversity, fewer people from different backgrounds and points of view, nationalities, ethnicities that make this such a rich campus.

We will recover from that and I hope that in the future we’ll get back to our previous levels. But all universities in Canada feel that was an unfair and unusual move by IRCC that was trying to solve an immigration problem in the country that we were not contributing to.

Q: The whole world, it seems, is dealing with cost of living, inflation, lingering effects of the pandemic and more. What’s been some of the biggest challenges the university has had to deal with in those areas?

A: They’re there, that’s for sure. But we have good relations with our eight or nine labour groups here on campus and we work, I’d say, collaboratively to arrive at collective agreements year over year that are fiscally responsible for the university but support the needs of our labour force.

We have a provincial government that I am always saying publicly understands the value proposition of the post-secondary sector — not just the University of Saskatchewan, but all post-secondaries in the province, including the University of Regina and Sask. Polytechnic.

We’re in the process of discussing a second four-year agreement with the province, the whole post-secondary sector here is, that would give us some predictability on what the financing going forward will be in terms of the operating grants from the province, and we’re hopeful and confident those discussions are going well.

Q: Is there anything in particular you’re looking forward to in 2025?

A: It’s going to be my final year, so there are quite a number of things that I am looking forward to.

One is the formal end of our comprehensive (fundraising) campaign that will happen in June, and we’re anticipating that we will have met our goal by that point, so that’s certainly going to be exciting and there will be many, many people and organizations for me to thank for their support over the years in relation to that comprehensive campaign.

All the wonderful things that we’re doing on the research side — this university is a research powerhouse in the country, one of the top 15 research universities out of 97 in the country, and I always look forward to the research breakthroughs.

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