Challenges in Partnered Research: Dr. Moura Quayle, Associate Provost, UBC Vancouver

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

Hello, folks. I am Adriaan De Jager. I’m the Associate Vice President of Government Relations and Community Engagement. I’m here with my friend and colleague, Moura Quayle, Associate Provost, as of August 1, 2024.  

Congrats Moura. That’s the last of numerous titles we’ll get into. We’re here to talk about Moura’s experience with community engagement at UBC. What’s working and what she sees ahead for UBC in regard to community engagement. So, Moura thanks for having the chat. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

I’m looking forward to it. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

All right. So, a list of titles. Deputy Minister, Dean, heading a task force for the city. Multiple honors, Honorary degree, Woman of Distinction. Let’s go back to the very beginning. To figure out how community engagement started shaping your life.  

Who are Dan and Ann and what did they have to do with community engagement? 

Speaker 2: Moura 

Thank you for asking. This whole process has been really interesting, Adrian, because it’s caused me to think, how come I have collaboration and community engagement in my DNA?  And it actually comes from my DNA. So, Dan and Ann, my parents, I’m an only child, so, you know, you grow up fast when you’re an only child. 

Dan was a marine biologist. He was an oyster and clam specialist. And he had a passion for science and evidence and to convey that to, in his case, the oyster industry. So, he used his science and his research and spent every summer when I was growing up, sitting on a raft in Pendral Sound, up in Desolation Sound, letting the oyster industry know when was the right time to put the shells strings in to welcome the spawning oysters. 

And then my mother, Ann, a public health nurse. All about community. Always about community. From babies to senior citizens … 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

To STIs.  

Speaker 2: Moura 

Yeah, that’s right. Yes, exactly. She started the Venereal Disease Program in British Columbia. So again, a real community connection. But then I think about, okay, that’s one thing to think about is, you know, your environment and your background, but then your education. 

So, I think it really started with my education as a landscape architect. Designers and landscape architects borrow our theories from other disciplines. And so, we’re really used to collaborating, asking questions of others, whether it’s a sociologist, a political scientist, a botanist. And then there’s the pedagogy that we learned through the studio, which is a place to learn, but it’s also a way of learning that is on a project basis. 

So, way back to my time at the University of Guelph (in fact I was telling Adriaan that I’m going to the 50th anniversary of my undergraduate landscape architecture class) we did community studios and then I — 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

Sorry Moura, from the get-go?  So, has there been an arc or a change in the profession or was that part of the core from the beginning?  

Speaker 2: Moura 

It was always part of the profession, but not everybody followed it.  So, I think that’s fair to say, it’s grown a lot. And when I went to Berkeley for my graduate work, I was so fortunate to have Randy Hester — a fantastic faculty member – who was all about community design. How do we let a community design their public realm and their place and their neighborhood? 

You know, what and when appropriate, how do they take charge? So that really shaped how I do everything. In fact, any kind of leadership has to be about involving everybody. And I have been accused in the past of being a little process heavy for that reason. It takes time to engage everybody. 

But I guess the feeling that I always have is that at the end of the day, it’s a richer and better result. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

In your career from the get-go, you had your foot in both the academy and beyond the Academy.  

So, did that sort of approach translate when you went to Cardinal Hardy, for example, and worked with those folks? And did you learn from that, or did you apply new approaches to those? 

Speaker 2: Moura 

So, my career in Guelph, after I graduated, I sent a letter to the Ministry of Education in B.C., and I said I really want to teach design in high schools because I think everybody should have a design education. And they wrote back and said, Yeah, well, you’re going to have to go and do a fifth-year education. 

And so, then I went into the Parks branch in Victoria, and I lasted a year and then I actually made a business card and went out on my own. So, I had my own practice right in Victoria before I actually went to Montreal and that also shaped the kinds of projects that I like to work on that have a community focus. 

And yeah, so I think it’s been there. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

But that tells me two things. One is the early resistance to sort of thinking beyond the currents of the branch, how they operate, how education thinks about pedagogy, for example, that’s changed dramatically over the years for sure. But you’re already then seen as a bit of a pioneer saying, hey, we’ve got to be thinking about how we do this. 

Yeah. And your view of how to open up various processes and approaches, be that within a department or a ministry or in how we educate our kids. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

Yeah. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

So that was there from the very beginning, Moura. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

I think so. I think so. And I guess I’ve always had a kind of passion for continuous learning and when I think about joining the UBC Senate, I don’t know whether I was still an assistant professor.  I was in the Senate for 15 years, and it was a huge opportunity. 

So, this is my pitch to people who are interested in learning more about the university and getting beyond their own department or school, join Senate and improve the kind of conversation.  

Anyway, I find myself always wanting to learn like I got my motorcycle license when I was 55. It was a nightmare, but I’m always interested in the context of any problem or opportunity, right? 

So, I think that’s what led me to want to work in the Provost Office because I like working across the university and, you know, I think that’s really helpful.  

And Dave, my late husband, the designer lawyer governance guy, was always fond of reminding me that there is no common sense. We have to talk to one another. 

We have to understand. “Adriaan, what’s your background?” I mean, when I say that, you know a word, what does that mean to you?  And that, for me, is also a connection to the importance of the visual, because I think I used to drive my colleagues in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems crazy. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

Oh, are we going to the whiteboard? 

Speaker 2: Moura 

Always going to the whiteboard, always drawing. But what I love about drawing, you know, if you do a diagram, it’s enough conceptual that you have to ask about it.  When it’s words, you just make assumptions.  “Oh, I know what Adriaan means when he says whatever.” Right. So, it comes down to communication and relationships and I think that’s sort of what it’s about. I’m reminded of when I made the transition from Dean of Land and Food Systems to Deputy Minister. 

And I kept thinking, oh, I need relationships with these people. Because when something goes haywire, I want to be able to call them up and seek their advice. And so, my whole career has really been about collaborations and partnerships, and I really don’t know how else to behave. Without other people to work with, to collaborate with and to debate with, like we’re sunk. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

So how much in your career was there learning for how to navigate fairly static and traditional structures and ways of doing? How much was learning about how to navigate that and really help change their perspective? How much of that changed you in terms of how you try to move things along? 

Because I think a lot of folks tend to get frustrated about, you know, “we’re not recognized the time it takes to develop those relationships”. For example, or “Hey, we were going to go in this direction. And now we’ve worked with the community we’re going in a totally different direction.” And that tolerance in time and understanding. 

So how have you changed in getting that sort of understanding and have you seen organizations and institutions change to better reflect that? 

Speaker 2: Moura 

This a really good, really good question? Adrian So, I think it’s, it’s about adaptability and flexibility and also accepting the fact that, as  individuals, we don’t know everything. We have to ask questions that we have to we have to listen and so I think that I was thinking well what prepares us to be a good collaborator and partly it’s a self-awareness around am I a good listener? 

And, you know, I think about I’m going to use Martha Piper as an example, you know, so when you’re talking to Martha, she’s not thinking about, oh, what else am I doing here and what am I going to do next? She is focused on you. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

She’s present. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

She’s present. So how do we train ourselves to be present in that way? Because, you know, it’s tempting to be on your phone or think about what’s next and. 

So, there’s a there’s a not so fast element. I think a lot about is this something that I should be speedy on or is this something that actually it’s going to take time and just face it, Moura. It’s not going to happen as fast as you want it to. So, I think it’s balancing those kinds of capacities. 

But it’s also, you know, like Dave was a huge support to me when I came home from UBC frustrated, right? Because we all are frustrated because we do want to improve society. We want to improve the life of students, you know, all those things. And so, to be able to actually have a conversation and think about strategies that will, oh, maybe you could try this. 

It is about experimenting. It’s about experimenting. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

So, risk tolerance. Where are we at with that as an institution and within the academy? 

Speaker 2: Moura 

So, it was very interesting at the beginning of five years ago when we were doing the UBC strategic plan, we were trying to think about what the themes would be and, you know, we ended up with inclusion, innovation and what was the third one…? Collaboration, collaboration. And there was quite a discussion about maybe we should have risk taking or creativity and risk taking, right? 

Because I think it’s something that challenges us as an institution.  And I’m forever kind of going, wow, you know, we really need to be much more bold with what we do. We are the University of British Columbia, and we have the capacity with incredible faculty, students, staff and support of the community to really lead the sector. 

And sometimes in the past I’ve been frustrated by it being competitive, you know, kind of I don’t think it’s not about us competing. It’s about us helping colleges, helping our other institutions and being part of really serving our citizens who pay our salaries and who depend on us to educate their children and to bring forward solutions to the many issues that we’re facing. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

So, Moura, with regards to risk. You’ve been a deputy minister. We have the universities accountability to the government, to the public, as you’ve said. And increasingly the university is scrutinized for its value and what role it brings to and has within society. It seems like a time when we have less risk tolerance to try new things and be innovative and fail. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

It’s a tough one. Excuse me as a designer, we’re always looking for experiments, for testing, for prototyping, or for thinking about how we how can we manage risk by doing a small test to see whether this is going to work? If we if we expanded. Sorry, I’ve got a frog in my throat or something. So, it was interesting. 

When I went into government, it was a time when the university colleges wanted to be universities. Right. And so, I thought long and hard about how are we going to manage this? And so that’s how we evolved this idea of what was Campus 2020, which was a long time ago to actually there hadn’t been a review of the post-secondary system for 40 years. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

Not since MacDonald, right? 

 Speaker 2: Moura 

Yeah, Yeah, exactly. And so, it was a real opportunity to dig in. And I think one of the best ways to manage risk is to have research and to have evidence from the world of what people are thinking. And so, we actually commissioned four or five papers at the time, things like digital. 

And I think that while I was disappointed at how unwilling government was at the time to actually take some risks and to look at the architecture of the system and to even communicate the architecture of the system that we ended up with to, you know, to be able to say, yes, we changed the university colleges to teaching universities. 

That’s their mandate. But we there was a resistance to that type of communication. I think that managing risk is part of all of our lives now. And we have a risk registry. You know, every year you’re asked, I’m asked. You know, everybody’s asked to kind of go, okay, where are we? But I think my idea of risk is, is more thinking about how we how do we think bigger how do we think bolder and I think the relook at the Strat plan. 

You know, we’re five years into a ten-year plan and it is a real opportunity. And I, I guess I would say one bold move we could make is to not do the same old, same old strategic planning. I don’t think it’s appropriate anymore. I mean, look how quickly our environment is changing around us. 

 How do we articulate and keep growing our academic mission and be clear about that at the same time responding in some different ways? So, we’re. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

Talking about like living documents and. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

Really exactly. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

Active and animated sort of planning. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

So, this academic futures project that we were doing in tandem with Campus 2050 really ended up with us thinking maybe it’s about a series of assumptions that need to be checked in on every six months, right? Because are we still there?  You know, where are we with hybrid learning, in-person, online? You know, how is that changing? 

Where are we with A.I.?  So, everything that’s coming at us, it’s not a three-year plan, right? And so that’s why we came up with this idea of actually doing some experiments. So, one of the experiments I’m excited about is looking at alternative assessment, huge assessment challenges around our various ways of learning now. So, so CTLT… always forget what it stands for (The Center for Learning and Technology). 

Simon will shoot me. Oops. But anyway, they’re addressing it and looking at how do you scale it up? Because people are doing different assessments. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

And how do you do that with, with partners outside the university? 

Speaker 2: Moura 

Absolutely. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

And private sector industry community partners who say, well, we we’re looking for certain types of capabilities and an assessment that we can rely on. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So, it’s a really interesting time from all of those perspectives. Right. Okay. Sure. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

So going back a bit, in the early nineties, you led a task force for the city of Vancouver. I did, but I think it’s interesting to hear about how that actually happened because it kind of speaks to, in my mind, the importance of engagement because you were already in front of City Hall talking about public spaces. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

Yeah. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

And then the city said, Oh hang on, there’s Moura Quayle from UBC. Maybe we should work with her, right? To look at these public spaces and realize… So, would maybe say a few words about that? 

 Speaker 2: Moura 

 Yeah, sure, sure. I think it’s an interesting evolution of how we think of ourselves as faculty members. And the university is not a tribe, so we don’t all think the same way.  

So, faculty members have different views about in which ways it is appropriate to be an advocate? You know, in a sense, I guess I was an advocate for the public realm and for the urban landscape. 

And so, whenever there was a proposal that came forward to the council, I thought, hmm, I think I better go. And it really happened around Coal Harbor. Right? And that was a huge development. And we were losing some of the historic landscape. And never mind the importance of public access to the waterfront. And so, you know, I think at the time, Mayor Campbell, he was really into citizen Task forces. 

So, there was the clouds of change, the clouds of change. If we had acted. I mean, this is what’s so painful to people my age, like, you know, it was all about atmospheric pollution anyway. And that was that was in the late eighties, early nineties. There was a Safer City Task Force and the Urban Landscape Task Force. 

And so, it was a really interesting process because there was no social media at the time. We actually went into malls for, heaven forbid and, you know, had sandwich boards and anyway, but out of that really came some principles for the urban landscape and the Greenways program. Right? And so, it’s one of the things that I’m proud of because now you can actually cross the busy streets of Granville, and Cambie, and Oak on the 37^th Avenue Greenway. 

And I really also like the fact that Community Neighborhood Greenways are also growing and those are the ones that the community itself can design and even build well. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

And to me it’s also an interesting arc because from that, from that early engagement you said, hey, I need to get involved in talking about public spaces. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

Yeah. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

You get to the task force, Campbell becomes premier, and then you get a call to say, oh, hi, I’m looking for Deputy Minister of Advanced Education. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

Yes.  And that and that was interesting too, just in terms of collaboration, because I remember saying to him, because I said, well, right, well, this is interesting, but I have a bunch of questions. And so one of my questions was, So Mr. Premier, if I become, you know, Deputy Minister of Advanced Education, am I allowed to, you know, entertain topics like sustainability in the Ministry of Environment or, you know, issues around social justice in children and families or, “oh, yes, yes,” he said.  

In fact, not so much. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

Silos are not just in university. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

Yes, that’s right. That’s right. But it was a really interesting experience around thinking about knowledge exchange and I remember in an exit interview with the Premier, I said, well, we didn’t make a lot of progress on getting our research not just from UBC but from the post-secondary sector into government. And I said with one exception, and that was when you engaged Mark Jacquard and Andrew Weaver on the climate file. 

And so how did that happen? He said, well, you know, I read their books. He’s a voracious reader. Yeah, I read their books, and I called them up and said I need your help. And I said, that’s great, but it’s not really sustainable, is it?  

So how we and I remember discussing with Ken Dobell, who was used to be city manager and then was the deputy minister to the Premier, why don’t we get the deans of UBC together with the deputy ministers on an annual basis and kind of talk about what’s keeping everybody awake at night? 

Yeah, Yeah, and you know, what can we be doing? And so, my interest in knowledge exchange, you know, goes back certainly to that time. And then when I left government, it was when Gregor Robertson was the mayor, and we had the greenest city taskforce and out of that came this idea of a campus community collaborative. And so, Mike Harcourt, another former premier was super interested in, well, how are we getting our educational institutions to make sure that we’re training for green jobs? 

How are we doing that? And my passion was much more about how we are getting our research into the city and into the policy decisions.  It’s crazy to think that, you know, we’re still at the stage where it is about relationships, but we don’t yet have a kind of coordinated approach to knowledge exchange. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

Systemized way of doing it. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

Systemized way of doing it. And so actually right now we’re working with Michael White and a number of colleagues on looking at what are all the projects we’re doing with the city of Vancouver. How are people engaging them? Yeah, how do they find out about them? And what’s this? What are the pros and cons and are there ways we can enhance our relationship with the city? 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

Well, is there a sweet spot between organic relationship building and being purposeful and actually facilitating that [knowledge exchange] in a way that actually supports everyone? 

 Speaker 2: Moura 

Exactly. So, we’ve had the city studio for yeah, for a number of years now, and it’s evolved in a particular way. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

Can you maybe say a few words about what that is?  

Speaker 2: Moura 

 So, so the city studio kind of grew out of the beginning of social media and there was, there was a call for ideas. And so that idea really stuck, and Duane Elverum and Janet Moore were really the driving forces. In its inception, it was the six public post-secondary institutions and students from those institutions working on projects with city staff. 

And so, it was a really exciting opportunity for UBC students to work with BCIT students and Emily Carr students and to learn about what a career would be like in local government.  Oh, that’s actually cool what these people do.  And so, the knowledge exchange kind of happens at that level. And we’ve had sustainable scholars, we’ve had lots of initiatives, but I just think we need more. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

And so maybe taking that to the university. Yeah, two examples come to mind is one, is your work at the School of Public Policy and Global Governance and the other one is the knowledge exchange, right? So those are the efforts to actually take from the university’s perspective folks out into the community.  Various partners too, to do that very thing. 

So, can you maybe speak about that experience from the school’s perspective and then from the Knowledge Exchange’s? 

Speaker 2: Moura 

For sure. So, it was very exciting to be involved in the development of the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs. And it’s not often that you get the opportunity to be kind of on the ground level of curriculum building and deciding what the outcomes should be. And out of that, we developed this idea of the Global Policy Project GP squared it’s called and because we’re a very global oriented policy school, we actually created the opportunity for students in their second year to do a project anywhere in the globe. 

And so anywhere in the sense that where we had partners, where there would be a project. Before the seasonal holidays, the students worked on kind of scoping the project and, you know, meeting with the clients and then they would actually go to Indonesia or India or, you know, wherever. I really enjoyed this because it was also my opportunity to talk to them about strategic design and a different approach to how collaboration can work and how you speak to clients and, you know, all of those pieces. 

And then we knew that there were students with families who couldn’t up and leave work. And so, we had more of a local project. So, we did some projects for Global Affairs Canada, we did some projects with the city. And so that was an opportunity and out of that grew this idea of a policy studio. 

Because when I was at Sauder, I had the D Studio and that was also that was more of a business collaboration because we had some wonderful partners like, one year I had the VP of Digital Marketing from Lululemon come to every studio, and we had four projects at Lululemon with the students and it was so helpful for business students to have her come and say,  

“Guess what happened this morning?” Yeah, a real business situation — that’s where the community engagement and where my real desire for us to have professors of practice more embedded into many of our programs. So, I know the global policy project has evolved but it’s keeping going and you know that. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

And any lessons from the school is really an assemblage of many areas of expertise coming together. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

Yes, it is. It is. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

Any lessons in terms of putting that [the policy school] together? As sometimes we don’t always help ourselves and our own ambitions as an institution. So, I’m curious. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

It’s true.  Well, we certainly learned the importance of having someone manage the project. Right. And ideally not a faculty member. Yes. So, we actually have some very good staff. Yeah, professional staff who would manage. We also learned a lot about teaching teamwork — a lot of disagreement about how you teach teamwork. 

Right. How like, how Because you know, all these students are same thing with the MBA program. You come together as a team. So, you know, is it just like babies in the bathwater? You just throw them in and hope for the best or, you know. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

I don’t think that’s how people bathe their babies. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

Let’s hope not. And so how do we ride the line of here are some best practices like I’ve always been. Whenever I do a studio project, I actually use the SWOT technique. Okay. What are okay, I’m going to diagram my strengths, weakness or skill. Now it’s SOAR different, you know. Anyway, different, but same idea. 

And then to come together as a team and share.  And you know, I used to say to the MBA students, you know, if you’re excel weak, this is your opportunity to say to your teammates, I need to be put in charge of the Excel. Right, right, right.  You know that’s, that’s what I need to do. 

 So that was a lesson. And then the other thing that we learned is that there also needs to be faculty mentorship, you know, a faculty member with some capacity to actually mentor the team and, you know, follow the process. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

How are we at mentorship as a university? 

Speaker 2: Moura 

Actually, I think we’re all over the map. During my career, we’ve tried to have centralized mentorship programs, but they never really stick. I think some faculties have very strong mentorship. I know in Land and Food Systems. When we were in our transformation, we had an excellent staff person, Cathleen Nichols, and she devised a tri-mentoring system first year, fourth year, third or fourth year, and then an alum. 

Yeah, And I was just asking Rickey Yada about it and it’s still happening.   

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

And how about for academics? 

Speaker 2: Moura 

Yeah, we’ve got a mentoring system for our Canada research chairs, which is relatively new. I think that’s alive and well. And I think each faculty has a different approach. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

Different culture, 

Speaker 2: Moura 

It’s part of our distributed system. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

So, the Knowledge Exchange? 

Speaker 2: Moura 

Yes. So, the policy studio that I just talked a little bit about attracted a PhD student, Marcelo Bravo, and he became obsessed with knowledge mobilization. And he was, as sometimes these students do, they’re kind of wondering like, where exactly am I going to land in this project that isn’t my life work, but it feels like it is. 

And so, he talked me into going to a conference in Toronto on knowledge mobilization. So, there’s actually an organization in Canada, and I’m not going to be able to grab on to the name of it right now. That brings together all of the universities that are working actively on knowledge exchange. And UBC wasn’t a part of that at that time, we weren’t members. 

And so, it was very interesting to go to this conference and we did a design workshop when we were at the conference and we came back and Marcello said, this is it, this is what we need to we need to get UBC on track here.” So, I’m like, absolutely. 

Marcelo. So that’s how it happened, right? Okay. That there was motivation, you know, always interest on my part on, you know, how, how do we actually earn our keep, right.  In terms of helping the citizenry, helping business, helping government helping not for profits, you know, and how do we how do we get all the amazing work that happens here on a daily basis out there? 

Right. And so, we were fortunate enough to have in Helen Burt, as an advocate, at the time she was Associate Vice President Research and Innovation. But then she actually became the VP for a while and so that was, when she supported Marcelo’s work and our work in terms of, okay, what do we need to do? 

 Well, we did we workshop with faculty members and tried to find out, well, how are the faculty members who do this kind of knowledge exchange, how are they doing it? And what kind of support are they lacking? Right. And, you know, how do we do that? 

And then we also went into the community asking what do you want from us? How do you want this to work?  So, it was a really good process. And so that that really Marcello, his PhD, was really around what should, what could and should this look like. And so, Helen, you know, drove it forward and created the knowledge exchange and hired our first director. 

Right. And the rest is history. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

Well, I love that story because it’s another example I think is pretty indicative of UBC how responsive we are to students and student ideas. Right. And that collaboration with students. But also, I think one of the aspects of knowledge exchange is the importance of staff. You mentioned staff in the school involved with the school.   

Also, we need people. We need people facilitating these relationships. And so, can you say a few things about that? 

Speaker 2: Moura 

 So, so now we Genevieve and so helpful to have someone like her with experience from Michael Smith with experience in deep knowledge translation in the health, that’s the terminology is always challenging. And so, without that kind of leadership around, well, what do we need and how do we do this and how do we listen? 

Well, then I think I think we’re challenged. And actually, one of my big issues with the academy is that there’s not enough respect for staff just generally. I think that there’s a huge importance of the professionals who support us, sometimes challenging and annoying faculty members as we muddle through with our various foibles, our strengths or weaknesses. 

And I know that we depend so much on our staff and on their leadership to move us forward, but also keep us sane, you know, to live well. You know, you’re one of them, right?  And but it does come back to knowledge exchange. I like that terminology because it also says that we have to respect that we’re all learners, too. 

We learn from our community. It isn’t just like, okay, here we are. We’re the experts. We’re pushing this out. It’s about what, what, what questions do we need to be asking? You know, what are we learning? And I think this respect issue, it it’s kind of followed me when I got to the ministry at my very first executive meeting, I said, can somebody articulate the values of the ministry, knowing that 23 of them are in the service plan? 

Right. Right. And I just joked and said, I mean, I know you guys don’t have the service plan at your bedside table, but there’s too many values here. So we did a whole value exercise and came up with respect being the number one important and  I feel that quite strongly because I’ve noticed that when we were doing the transformation of the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences to Land Food Systems when we’re doing any kind of work and in a change process, it goes off track. 

If I’m not listening, if I’m not there, if I’m not Martha Piper present and communicating consistently so and even the most negative or resistant person or response is going to provide incredibly useful insight. And so, it comes back to the strength of having different opinions around the table. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

So. And have you seen a shift or an evolution at the University of UBC or within the sector with regards to that, that approach to how we define who’s who in the in the zoo, so to speak, and who’s respected, and then how we how we are engaging, and present in the community?  

Speaker 2: Moura 

I don’t know. I don’t know if we’re making the kind of progress that I think we need to make. Right. Because I chaired a I think it was an ED defense. This person had done a study in a particular faculty about how management and professional staff were treated. And I was shocked. 

So I think we’ve got work to do and part of that work has to be about us being as faculty members, continuous learners like, okay, you know, we may have grown up in a certain, you know, we did our PhD with person X and you know  that’s what who we learn from. 

But I think we need to really think hard about how our culture, how we respect students, how we respect staff and how we respect faculty, and how we respect each other as faculty members. Like everybody’s a human being. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

Well, in our place brought more body and community. And I kind of go to obviously this is my I people hear this all the time for me. We exist thanks to the social contract which says the citizen citizenry believes we add value. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

Exactly. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

Which creates obligations on our part to engage with them and respond to that. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

Absolutely does.  And so, I think, you know, I think that, yeah, we still have work to do on that. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

So, Moura, looking ahead, what gives you hope and joy and where are the spots where you think, oh, we need to do a bit more thinking here? 

Speaker 2: Moura 

Happy to talk about that. Always thinking about it. So, we are fortunate to have new leadership with Bennoit, our new president, Energy I feel a good focus on government and the importance of keeping the academic mission in in our target. And I think all of that is very, very hopeful. I think our community engagement units are amazing. 

I kind of seek some kind of better connection amongst them and coordination and thinking about I mean, we tend to be City of Vancouver focused. And, you know, we need to think about Surrey, we think about Richmond. We you know, we think about Metro, you know what are what are we doing? 

And I, I actually do yearn for some leadership on the kind of partnership front. I mean, I know that’s part of your portfolio, but you can’t do everything. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

No, that’s right. Well and I think it’s also the academy and the provost office, I think of the Okanagan and Vancouver and their roles in. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

That, too. Exactly. So, I think that that is also hopeful, but, you know, we need to think about who’s doing that. It can’t be off the side of everybody’s desk. Right. It’s not a volunteer sport. You know, it’s like we need somebody who that’s. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

What that’s and in my view, also nested quite strongly within the academic mandate. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

Yes, exactly. Exactly. So, I think that we also, as we look ahead, we need to make sure that faculty members are made aware that it’s okay to have impact in ways that are not necessarily scholarly papers. And we need to have a place in our curriculum vitae where we can record our community engagement activities Right now. There really, you know, there’s no place that says, well, where did you do community engagement? 

Where did you do knowledge exchange? You know, you can embed it, but it needs to be much. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

This leads us down the garden path of bargaining. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

Doesn’t it? Well, well, no, actually, the university has control over the curriculum vitae and what is in it. And in fact, Andrew added an E.D.I piece, and we just need to think about, you know, what, what other things we, we can potentially do. The last round of bargaining, we managed to which is I think very exciting and important to change the language around research to include a much better understanding and criteria for appropriately evaluating Indigenous research. 

So, it takes time to work in communities. There are different outputs like oral histories. So that’s really good progress. And this round of bargaining, we’ve created a new joint consultation committee on community-based research and you’re on the committee and where I think can really make progress on that one round. But we also have to communicate to faculty members that it’s okay. 

Yes. That you know, that that that’s that that’s important. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

Well, just as a point of interest, what we did, the Carnegie classification eight years ago, they pointed to indigenous engagement as that’s really setting the bar in terms of how we should be engaging. Yeah, that time, that thoughtfulness, the openness to change, where research goes, the co-creation, the reciprocity, and then seeing that infused in, in more broadly more broad community engagement, I think is where we’re hoping to go. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

Absolutely. So. So, there’s lots of, you know, how I mentioned the professor of practice and you know, how we again engage community and in a different way and how do we reward faculty members for their community engagement. And you know, when I was dean of course, I had to take the landscape architects through promotion and tenure. 

So, you know, as a profession. And so, I ended up getting four academic references and four community references. So how we now have blended cases, you know, we have made progress right? But as usual, you know, there’s still more for us to do. I think the other opportunity that’s coming up is, is the I don’t know what I think the word that’s being used is the refresh of the strategic plan. 

And this is where I really, I really hope we can think about how we do academic planning. I mentioned this, you know, how do we establish a much in a sense, faster pace, incremental checking in of how we are doing here and what’s happening. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

This living document type of approach. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

Yeah, yeah, and that I think is going to be an important process. I also feel I really, really want the word to be out about what UBC is known for. You know, how, how do we I mean why shouldn’t we be saying UBC is the best place in the world to research and learn about climate solutions or energy transition, whatever language we want to use? 

So, I think there’s an opportunity and I realize that that means that some people will not necessarily be included in that. But I don’t think the citizenry knows enough about what goes on.  

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

The absence of actually here, seeing what we’re good at, we don’t say anything. And that’s the risk. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

That I think that that is a risk. So, I’m, I’m hopeful that that we will develop a more iterative academic planning process and that we can get clear about maybe some short-term priorities, because I think historically, we have so many priorities that we don’t have any priorities. So, what are we really going to be focused on over, you know, maybe in the next year or two? 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

It also seems to me we’re getting a better, better, a better sense and a better approach to rankings, which I think has dominated a lot of thinking about, oh, if this doesn’t help us move the rankings and we’re not going to do it, Yeah, I think not just UBC, I think the sector generally. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

Yeah,  

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

I would think that’s an opportunity as well for us because the rankings themselves are going through a whole different. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

Absolutely That’s right and it was interesting in the Academic Futures Project we actually developed four different scenarios of well this this could happen and that could happen. And, you know, how would we respond? And I think that’s a that’s a really good way of keeping us alert and thinking about, okay, what? And I would you know, I think we do need to think through how those scenarios of how we respond to them and how we keep them alive and in our in our thinking, because that’s what we do as a university is a place for debate, is a place for imagining the future. 

Right. And being bold about kind of saying, okay, what could our response be to that? 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

So magic wand, what do you do? You wave the wand what do you wish for? 

Speaker 2: Moura 

A couple of things: leadership development.  How do we take leadership more seriously? How do we develop leaders in our students and in our faculty members and our staff? You know, how do we imagine onboarding a new president, a new VP? You know, you’ve got have a new vice president external coming. 

How do we do that? And we’ve talked quite a bit amongst faculty relations, human resources in the provost office about actually establishing like you have community engagement table. I think we need a leadership table. You know we need to have the Daniel Skarlicki  from Sauder, who’s a leadership researcher, and we need to bring together the Advanced Leadership Development Program, Maximizing Impact, which is our  tenure track program, you know, attracting people into some administration and then senior onboarding, how to how do we do all that, how to coordinate that because you know Medicine has a program and other places don’t yeah so if I had my magic wand would touch that I really think we need to focus much more. And then in especially our professional programs, we should be having leadership discussions, you know, courses, activities. So, there’s that. I’m going to return to my culture point that I think we do have work to do on respect and respect of each other and thinking about how that culture can really help us be happier in our jobs and really convey to our students that we’re that we’re a respectful community. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

At a time where we’re increasingly polarized. Even more important, I would say. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

I think so. And then the final magic one is it is really it is an is an old concept of being a learning organization. You know, I think continuous learning. And just a quick anecdote, I went to a conference that was put on by Thomas Friedman, The New York Times columnist, and it was on work 2.0. It’s like ten years ago now. 

Yes. Several points ago he was interviewing Laszlo Bock, who at the time was the VP People for Google. And Google was getting 11,000 applicants a day at the time. So, Friedman says to Bock, how do you decide who you’re going to hire?  He responded comfort with ambiguity and continuous learner and multisectoral experience?   

And so, I think that’s what we have to be about, right, is we’re all continuous learners and we should be. And any opportunity to do so is going to just make our experience better.  

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

That’s fantastic. So here is a final question. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

Huh? 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

And maybe it’s advice for folks listening, particularly young faculty students who are looking ahead at maybe not even seeing a path, a career path yet. What advice do you give them? What if, looking back at your career and now still looking ahead, what do you say? 

Speaker 2: Moura 

Well, one could certainly know that my career has not been a straight line. In fact, someone might say that woman can’t even hold down a job. I think I’ve been in at least four faculties at UBC. I think I was a gig person before the concept was even coined, and I’m for sure a pracademic. So, my learning is much toward what I want to do this. 

What have I learned? How do I communicate that? And I have been at UBC for 41 years, but it’s been in a host of different roles, partly because I am a seeker of change, right? But also because of luck being in the right place at the right time. So, when I think about career advice, I go back partially to Dave’s advice to me, my late husband’s advice. 

Well, I think I was between terms of Dean. And he said, So, Moura, what’s your what’s your strategic plan for the next five years? I was like, really? And he said, well, what I think you should do is you should interview 30 people. And I was like, what do you mean? So, choose people who you’d like to find out about their career. 

Because let’s face it, people love talking about themselves, right? Right. You’re not asking for money. You’re not asking for a job. You’re just wanting to understand how they evolved their careers. So, I interviewed Iona Campanella when she was the lieutenant governor. You know, I went all over the map. I didn’t do 30, believe me. And, you know, not one had a strategic plan. 

So, I kind of went back to Dave… At the same time, I also took a lesson from Paula Martin, who used to be in communications here and then went to work with Tamara Vrooman. When Tamara was the CEO of Vancity. And they were having a hard time determining what should Tamara agree to do? What speaking engagements? So, Paula created this little one pager where you say to yourself, What’s my 30,000-meter goal? 

You know what? What do I really want to do? And so, one of mine has been to make cities a better place to live and work. And then you’re allowed three bins around, you know, how you how you do that. Right. Right. And then you say to yourself, well, you know, what are the deliverables out of those bins? 

What are the outcomes?  And it was super helpful for me and I got. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

Sounds like a personal strat plan, Moura.  

Speaker 2: Moura 

A personal strat plan, a personal plan, maybe. Maybe. And so, I, I, I do advise that, but I also, I also advise which, you know, I didn’t talk about being coached, but it’s been hugely important for me to have a coach and one of my coaches. She must have been prescient because it was right before I went to government. 

I think. Anyway, she said, okay, make a list of things that you like to do and things that you don’t like to do. But the third column is really important. It’s the column where people know you’re good at doing X, Y, Z, and they’re always asking you to do it, and you have to kind of avoid that, that interesting, really. 

So those are just a few techniques around the last one. I’m big on diagramming. Diagram your relationships. Hmm. Like, do you have any protege mentee relationships? What’s your friend network look like? What’s your business network look like? Is it small? Is it connected? Is it big? How? How, how, how might it help you think through What are what are some opportunities? 

How do I open up my opportunities? And I guess, you know, finally, don’t rush into it. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

Mm hmm. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

You know, there’s time.  Yeah, And I mean, I feel like I’m still in it. You know, I’m in the process of leaving UBC, but I don’t know what I’m going to do. 

Speaker 1: Adriaan 

Yeah, great. That’s fantastic. Thank you so much. 

Speaker 2: Moura 

Thank you.