Leadership messages

 

At the beginning of your Mount Allison journey, there’s a moment when your heart flutters with excitement, curiosity, and the sense that you’ve just stepped into a place that is truly special. What you might not yet realize is just how far this experience can take you. You become part of a community that supports you, not only in your studies but throughout your life, offering connections and opportunities bigger than you can imagine.

At first, all of this might feel larger than life — and that’s exactly the point. Mount Allison is about creating meaningful connections, moments of discovery, fostering growth, and building the confidence to dream bigger than you ever thought possible. Whether you are a student, faculty, or staff member guiding the way, alumni reflecting on your journey, or a valued supporter investing in the future — you play a vital role in turning this vision into reality.

I’d like to extend my sincere gratitude to everyone who contributed thoughtful insights and energy to shape the Strategic Plan. Your belief in Mount Allison’s potential, and each other, reminds me of our community’s strength, heart, and vision to meet today’s challenges and seize tomorrow’s opportunities. 

On behalf of the entire Board of Regents, thank you to our Strategic Planning Co-Leads, Dean of Libraries and Archives Dr. Rachel Rubin and Dr. Craig Brett (‘91), professor of economics and secretary of Senate, along with the full Strategic Planning Facilitation Team, for their leadership throughout 2024-2025.

The Board of Regents fully endorses this plan and is committed to supporting the University community in its successful implementation. We are proud to share this plan with you and are excited for the future we will build together.

 

---

These are the first words of our new Strategic Plan, and they could not be more on point. They contain the extraordinary legacy of our University — nearly two centuries of impact in learning, research, and positive change grown by generations of faculty, staff, students, and alumni. They describe the feeling of being home held in the hearts of Allisonians everywhere. They speak to the magic and wonder that is Mount Allison, a small and mighty, deeply Canadian university sitting aside the Tantramar marshes in beautiful New Brunswick.

These words call us together…celebrating legacy, home, and the magic we create; focusing our aspirational gaze to the future, committed to the call: there will always be no place like Mount Allison!

Throughout the planning journey, true to this call, the entire community has come through, bringing forward your voices, thoughts, concerns, ideas, and suggestions for an ever-greater MtA.

This is your plan; this is our plan.

Two key messages

As I reflect on this journey, all the consultation sessions, survey submissions, emails, townhalls, community cafés, two fundamental messages sing out.

The first is our foundations — we know who we are. Demonstrably, Mount Allison is one of the finest liberal arts and sciences institutions anywhere. We are an immersive undergraduate university, small and mighty in size, dedicated to exceptional student experience, with an unshakeable commitment to academic excellence in learning, research, and creativity. So we are, so we will be.

The second is change — Mount Allison wants proactive change, to build our future together, charting waters rife in rapid transformation, increasing complexity, and ongoing uncertainty.

What our Strategic Plan does is articulate both our foundational commitments, who we are and who we will be, and the focal areas for change, development, and advancement.

The change we bring

The change we want is focused on being an ever more supportive community, an organisation of agility, a university proactively oriented to the future with student needs as our cornerstone. As a community, it means increased intentionality in well-being, equity and accessibility, professional development, and career orientation. As an agile organisation it means responsibly engaging technological solutions to boost human capacity and creativity, rigorously aligning structures and resources to need and demand, building resiliency and sustainability. As a future-focused university, we proactively identify the resources and skills our students require to be global citizens, positively contributing to a better world in an ever-evolving and interconnected landscape.

Rooted in academic excellence and freedom, committed to positive, values driven, ethical change, these insights serve as key design principles shaping the learning, research, and creative activities that define their academic journeys. The leitmotif running through all we will do, our core organizing principle, is students — delivering a student experience that is second-to-none. For students, we advance career and life skills, academic growth and guidance, health and wellness — all in an immersive, residential setting that enlivens the mind, spirit, and the hearts of every future Allisonian.

It is all about broad minds, bold futures, lifelong connections — a university where:

• The life of every student is engaged and enriched, prepared for the futures they forge.
• The life of every employee is valued, meaningful, and contributes to shared success.
• The life of every alumni is prosperous and always connected to their Mount Allison home.

Immense gratitude

At the start of our journey, I sat down with Dr. Rachel Rubin and Dr. Craig Brett and asked if they would lead the creation of our new Strategic Plan. They did just that, and they did it exceptionally well. They brought together a remarkable team of faculty, staff, students, and alumni — the Strategic Planning Facilitation Team. This team was assisted by the wonderful Trudy Hicks and Alex Montana, and supported by Bonnie Crocker and her colleagues from Academica Group.

To Craig, Rachel, the whole team, Trudy, Alex, and Bonnie, thank you! Mount Allison owes you a debt of gratitude for the countless hours of work, creativity, collaboration, and the generosity of spirit and belief in our university that you brought to the table every step of the way.

Finally, to the whole Mount Allison community — thank you! Your engagement through dozens of consultation sessions, hundreds of survey responses, myriad email submissions, and engaged community cafés and town halls has built this plan. We couldn’t have done it without your voices, your support, your participation. This is your plan. This is our plan.

There is no place like Mount Allison!

---

Questions? Email strategicplan@mta.ca.