We’re almost there. The start of the academic year is fast approaching. We’re getting ready to kick things into gear.

I hope you’ve had a good summer. I took advantage of these months to spend time with my family and to do some thinking. Summertime has always been an opportunity for me to take stock and to look ahead. People come and go on holiday, the pace of university activity slows down a little, there are fewer courses, meetings are harder to schedule, and complex files are put on the back burner until everything picks up again. Summer is a time for reflection.

And when I have a little more time to myself, I inevitably get the urge to write. The urge to put down on paper a few ideas that are of particular interest to me, a few thoughts about the university, a few musings about the institutional project that brings us together.

I’ve said it several times since arriving at the Université de Montréal: what I want, first and foremost, is to help ensure that teaching and learning are (re)placed at the heart of the University’s mission. This is one of the major strategical axes we have adopted as part of the of the institutional plan. This does not mean abandoning Université de Montréal’s status as a major research university. Rather, it’s a matter of enhancing this central dimension of our collective enterprise.

Knowledge transmission is the original purpose of the academic institution. It must continue to generate enthusiasm, passion, and energy, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. It is an extraordinary privilege and a source of gratification to be involved in the development of those who, one after the other, come to learn in our classrooms, clinics, laboratories and libraries. It should never be a chore. And entering the realm of ideas and knowledge, guided by the most inspired academics, is also an extraordinary privilege and should never be boring.

All over our campuses, there are remarkable professors, dedicated mentors, courses that change lives, and learning that is both uplifting and profound. But at times I have the feeling that we could do even better.

To do better, we have to begin by talking about it. That’s what I’m inviting you to do in this blog, which I’ll be writing over the coming months. We need to talk about the student experience, the act of teaching, and the pedagogical innovations taking place in our classrooms, the obstacles and springboards on the path to learning, the expectations and needs of everyone involved, and all the reasons we have to hope that Université de Montréal will become a point of reference.

That’s my dream.

Daniel Jutras

If you’d like to continue the conversation, please drop me a line.