The Road Ahead
I think it’s fair to observe from the vantage point of 8 months into the
job that, while the challenges facing UTS may be daunting in scale, the
scope of the opportunity for UTS in the future is equally great, and the
combination of the two is so interesting that I’ve decided to write about
it.
UTS today is blessed with a thoughtful and dedicated Board of Directors
who understand very well their responsibility to protect the long term
viability and reputation of the school. An equally talented group of
committed supporters are working to establish the Board of the UTS
Foundation, and their job will be the stewardship and growth of the UTS
funds. As is the case with UTSPA and UTSAA, all these people are volunteers
working to advance an institution whose existence they believe to be of
profound importance. UTS may have had its identity crises, its troubled
times and its struggles to overcome the limitations of an old (but elegant)
building, but everyone I have spoken with to date, whether volunteer, alum,
employee, student, parent or friend, exudes a kind of goodwill about the
school that we should all find remarkable and precious. And they share a
certainty that the school will and must continue to thrive.
In 2010, UTS will be 100 years old. It will also be financially
self-sufficient for the first time in its history. It will meet this
challenge with the same success as it has met past challenges. The financial
demands are clear – the operating budget must be entirely funded from
tuition by 2010 and, in the future, the endowment must grow to preserve the
commitment to be as accessible to the students we want to attract as
possible, and we must continue to raise dollars for a new building.
So 2010 is a kind of milestone. We know what we have to do by then to
meet the challenge of self-sufficiency on the operating side. We know what
we have to do to meet the challenge of fundraising for endowment and
building funds. We’ve made real progress in getting ready for those
challenges. But the interesting thing, and the real opportunity, is that we
have the opportunity and incentive at the same time to consider 21st
Century principles and realities in our decisions about what a UTS education
should offer. The prospect of a new space will force us to ask ourselves
what kinds of learning and what kinds of relationships that space should
support. The prospect of strong partnerships with UofT and other
institutions will force us to ask how we will support both students in
developing a vision of the world and their places in it and our city schools
and UTS’s contribution to them. The challenges we are facing globally become
opportunities for education – and they must be so, or we risk handing over
the world’s challenges to our children who will have no skills to meet them
and therefore no opportunity to resolve them.
If we seize this opportunity, then the sometimes-heard comment that UTS
has nothing to contribute to the public education debate because its
students are atypical and elite will disappear. UTS students will be known
as students who have learned about the challenges to their city and the
planet, who have learned what it means to strive to overcome those
challenges, and who carry with them into university a commitment to service
and the life of the mind and an understanding of the power of the individual
to do good. Those are the factors that will make them leaders.
That is the opportunity before us.
Michaele Robertson
Principal,
University of Toronto Schools
