Thank you
From Dean Jane Gaskell
As my term as dean comes to an end, I want to let you know how much I have appreciated working with all of you for the last seven years. As I said at last week's party, it has been an honour and a privilege, something I have loved to do, though more along the lines of Stephen Sondheim's "Being Alive" than Rogers and Hammerstein's "One Enchanted Evening." I've learned a huge amount, made great friends and, I think, helped push things along in some useful directions.
OISE has wonderful faculty, staff and students. As soon as I think of something that has been accomplished while I was dean, I think of all the people who made it happen. The annual report, which will come out at the end of the summer, will provide a summary of the things that we have accomplished together. A few of the things that stand out for me include:
We have increased research funding, especially in the form of CRCs, CURAs, CFIs, and now an NIH grant for Kang Lee; and we have won some important awards for research, including the Grawemeyer, which is equivalent to the Nobel Prize in education, for Keith Stanovitch.
We have a much better building...no orange carpet with duct tape in the library, elevators that work, classrooms with windows, reception in the deans office, and washrooms that are really accessible.
We have new guidelines for the assessment of teaching, which have become a model for the University and befit a faculty focused on teaching and learning. We have established an Office of Teaching Support, which provides the institutional capacity to focus on and enhance our own teaching.
We have a vibrant OISE graduate student conference, allowing students across departments to present their work and get feedback. Our graduate students enjoy much higher levels of graduate student support, and the process for allocating it is more understandable and related to our research priorities.
We have a more transparent budget model, which allows us to make academic decisions with knowledge of their costs and benefits, and we do strategic budget and enrolment planning and analysis using advisory committees. While it doesn't make the budget problems disappear, it is a much better approach than the across the board cuts we used to face.
Our 100th anniversary celebrations increased our sense of community and communicated our unique identity, within the University of Toronto. And they were fun.
The creation of a Centre for Urban Schooling with support from the University, Bill Waters, as well as faculty and students here, has allowed us to take on more projects focused specifically on schools for underserved and underperforming students.
There has been lots more; big and small. Two of the areas that I have taken a particular interest in are the quality of our teacher education program and the increased internationalization of our programs and research. In both of these areas, I am convinced we have made great progress, with a concurrent teacher education program, a new admissions process, more research on our programs, and better international links and conversations. This is thanks to many, many people.
Academic careers are wonderful in the ways they allow you to try out different activities over a lifetime. I have been blessed with many opportunities to teach, carry out research projects and lead educational change, but I have never been a regular faculty member at OISE. I look forward to joining TPS after a year of administrative leave. I want to teach in ITE, work with graduate students, and spend my mornings writing up research instead of chairing meetings. It is why I became an academic, and it will let me find out how this place really works.
I know things will continue to change and develop as Julia O'Sullivan takes over as dean. I wish her, and all of you, the very best in the years to come.