Start-up liberal arts university aims to change the face of Canadian university education with an unusual curriculum, a multidisciplinary focus and a professor-to-student ratio of 10 to one.
Published: Globe and Mail, October 31, 2006
DEBORAH JONES, SQUAMISH
Moving from the U.S. to a small university still under construction in this former pulp-mill town "was a huge risk for me," admits mathematical historian Glen Van Brummelen, a new instructor at Quest University, scheduled to open in September, 2007.
Dr. Van Brummelen, a native of Canada, left behind a fellowship at MIT in Cambridge, Mass., and tenure as a professor at Bennington College in Vermont. What drew him to Squamish, about 70 kilometres north of Vancouver, was the big ambitions of Canada's newest, and likely smallest, university.
Quest, a non-profit, liberal arts university, is the brainchild of David Strangway, a geologist and physicist, who retired in 1997 as president of the University of British Columbia.
It will have a curriculum unlike that of any other university in Canada, with a multidisciplinary focus. The professor-to-student ratio will be 10 to one, compared to first-year classes at big universities that often have hundreds of students in lectures with one professor. Quest will have no "tenure," and will call its professors tutors to encourage interaction with students.
Its aspirations to change the face of Canadian university education have already attracted seven full-time faculty from tenured jobs at prestigious North American institutions. "How many times in your life do you get a chance to change the educational climate in an entire nation?" asked Dr. Van Brummelen, who moved to British Columbia this fall with his wife and three young children.
"It was scary because my family's financial future depends on this place," said Dr. Van Brummelen, who with five other new faculty members is working full-time to develop Quest's unusual curriculum. "But I want to finish my career and say I did something important and I made a difference."
Before Dr. Strangway's tenure at UBC, he worked at NASA and was responsible for the geophysical aspects of the Apollo missions. He then went to the University of Toronto, where he eventually became president.
While he was in those big institutions, the 73-year-old educator said, "It struck me that we needed to do something different . . . that there was no category in Canada of small liberal arts colleges." He said he was inspired by an early teaching experience at the University of Colorado, and from observing the success of students from small liberal arts institutions in the U.S.
During the past decade, the future of Dr. Strangway's private, not-for-profit university has often been uncertain. A plan to locate in Whistler fell through before Squamish stepped up with an offer of land in the Garibaldi Highlands, overlooking a vista of Howe Sound and surrounded by mountains.
The timing of a real-estate boom allowed Quest to raise much of the money it needed by selling much of its land to a developer for housing subdivisions, while several philanthropists donated money.
After nearly a decade, what was once an idea in Dr. Strangway's mind is now tangible. Quest's campus is taking shape with $100-million worth of construction projects, including a student residence, library, building with administration offices and lecture rooms and a recreation centre. Dr. Strangway is travelling to Hong Kong and Seoul next month to meet with schools that may provide future students for Quest. While there, he will meet academics from 18 other liberal arts institutions around the world in a new partnership with Quest.
On Nov. 11, the campus in Squamish will open to prospective students and their parents, said Quest public-relations spokeswoman Angela Heck. The visitors will spend a day touring the facilities and attending classes that will be typical of Quest's curriculum.
Instead of enrolling in semesters and spending their days rotating through standard classes, Quest students will focus for weeks at a time on only one topic, said Dr. Strangway. One such course will be named salmon, he said, and it will include multidisciplinary instruction in the humanities and sciences, field trips to local waterways and hands-on laboratory work.
The students will study sciences and arts equally, he said, with the goal of learning critical thinking and an understanding of the big picture.
In the 21st century, he said, attacking climate change, achieving the United Nations Millennium Goals, or curing AIDS will certainly require the kind of specialists being trained at traditional institutions -- but also people with a liberal arts background, who can grasp complex problems that include science, economics, cultural studies and the humanities.
Quest will open with 160 students in the fall and have a maximum of about 650 students at full capacity. Half of its students will be from Canada, said Dr. Strangway, with the rest from around the world. "They'll be people with some interest in the outdoors, and they'll be risk takers, looking for something different," he said.
Despite the annual cost of $24,000 for tuition (compared to an average of about $4,300 for other Canadian universities), plus $11,000 for room and board, Quest already has 60 applicants, said Ms. Heck. Dr. Strangway said he hopes the university, with the help of donations, will be able to offer scholarships for as many as half the students. "It's not just for people with lots of money," he said.
Dr. Strangway admitted that the graduates from the small university will be a drop in the vast pool of Canadian university students, but hopes that its example will prompt others to start similar programs.
"I see a unique opportunity here for young people," he said. "If we pull it off, it might be something that others might like to do.
"But we have to be careful not to be excessively arrogant, not to think that getting 650 kids on a hill in Squamish is going to change the world."
Quest already has letters from major universities throughout North America expressing interest in having graduates from Quest apply for their graduate programs.
In starting Quest, Dr. Strangway responded to a concern about the future of university education that is increasingly expressed by others. In her 2004 book Dark Age Ahead, the late intellectual Jane Jacobs argued that one of the threats to the future of human civilization is that universities are providing students with credentials instead of truly educating them. A full decade ago, Patricia Marchak, former dean of arts at the University of British Columbia, noted in a speech that commercial, technological and demographic pressures besiege them and "universities are not what they used to be. . . . Do we still need these expensive institutions?" she asked.
Ms. Heck, who moved from the National Film Board to work at Quest, said she considers its format a return to the traditional goal of universities -- to encourage intellectual exploration.
"The point of an education is to think critically and be enlightened. But for myself, when I got my [bachelor of arts], I learned how to drink a lot of beer, and got involved in the student press," she said.
It was only when she went to graduate school for a masters degree, working in small classes and workshops, that she began learning about the world.
Dr. Van Brummelen said he prefers to teach at small liberal arts universities because the students are prepared to deal with real issues. "I think it's important for any thinking person to be able to pick some controversy out of the newspaper and approach it with a quantitative understanding as well as a scientific and social understanding."
"We don't train people like that in big universities; instead we train them to be professionals with a very narrow way of looking at the world," he said. "One of the problems I have with big universities, especially at the beginning levels, is that the size of the classes preclude any conversation.
"I don't want to say everybody who comes out of a big institution is just a professional robot," he said. "But real intellectual exploration happens when you're interacting, and I do spend a lot of time working one-on-one in small groups with my students."
Copyright Deborah Jones 2006
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