Remarks by
Sir John Daniel
on the award of the
Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters
at the
Annual Convocation of Athabasca University
on June 13, 1998
President, Graduates, Members of the Athabasca University community.
Thank you for honouring me in this way. It is wonderful to receive an honorary degree from a University where I have been a staff member, a student and a drop-out.
What a pleasure finally to see the AU campus! I remember the announcement of the University's move to Athabasca on March 4, 1980. When the news of the relocation to Athabasca broke I was house hunting in Montreal because I was about to become Vice-Rector at Concordia University.
As soon as I returned to Edmonton I drove up to Athabasca to see where the University's new home would be. I was the first person from AU to visit this site after the announcement.
Since the campus was completed you have invited me here on various occasions but the dates always conflicted with convocations of the universities where I was working, first Concordia, then Laurentian, and now the Open University. Indeed, there was an Open University convocation in Newcastle-on-Tyne today, but this time I chose AU.
The campus is magnificent and I congratulate all those who designed it, built it, developed it and made it the hub of a vibrant University.
Canadians call today's event a convocation, a bringing together of the university community. When a community gathers its members naturally talk about their shared past.
The British call this a degree ceremony. Ceremonies are celebrations - today we celebrate the present success of Athabasca University's new graduates.
Americans call this a commencement because graduation is a time to look to the future.
I shall comment in the spirit of all three terms. Let us savour the past, celebrate the present, and sense the future.
I begin with memories of Athabasca University in the late 1970s. Those were interesting times. AU was an infant institution and distance teaching universities were a new concept. There was no Dr Spock's guide for the parents of infant open universities. But we did our best and muddled through. Seeing the sophistication of Athabasca University today, I am immensely proud of the handsome and robust youth that our baby has become.
I was appointed as AU's Vice-President for Learning Services in 1977. Before taking up the job I came to Edmonton for AU's very first convocation. There were just two graduates. I particularly recall two features of that historic event.
The platform party processed into the hall with great dignity, mounted the stage and then disappeared. It was hidden behind a large screen that had been placed at the front of the stage so that the ceremony could begin with a stirring video presentation. After an instant of confusion President Sam Smith, with his natural decisiveness, ordered the procession back off the stage to seats in the front row.
Everything then proceeded in an orderly fashion until the presentation of degrees to the two graduates. The two certificates could be seen on a handsome table at centre stage. Each candidate came forward and was solemnly given a certificate. Unfortunately the first graduate was given the second graduate's certificate and vice versa. What a contrast to today's well-oiled ceremony!
One of those first graduates was Kevin Whittingham whom I met again as my tutor when I became a student in the AU course 'Ancient Roots of the Modern World'. I observe, with a mixture of regret and relief, that Ancient Roots no longer features in the AU calendar. It - or should I say they - played a formative role in the development of this University. Ancient Roots was the first course AU offered. When I appeared on the scene in 1978 this course was a venerable institution that had already undergone considerable revision.
The first version of Ancient Roots had to establish the bona fides of Athabasca as a serious University with proper standards. Nothing was left to chance and, if I recall correctly, the course required each student to write nineteen 6,000 word essays. Anyone who completed that first version should have been awarded a Ph.D. rather than six measly undergraduate credits.
Thankfully, by the time my wife and I took Ancient Roots the requirements had been pruned. We only had to write six essays and five supervised examinations. But it was a super course and I am grateful for being given a thorough grounding in ancient history and literature from the Epic of Gilgamesh to Augustine's City of God.
I also took an AU Management course and still use those skills daily as traffic cop for my busy in-basket. There was Accountancy course too but I won't dwell on that. My performance was not commensurate with the half billion dollar Open University budget for which I am now responsible.
The courses were fun, but I learned even more profoundly on the job. I had brilliant colleagues. Some are still on the payroll and others have come specially for this convocation. We were also blessed with some exceptional lay members of the Governing Council. They had to be special people because, as well as creating a new type of university, they were pioneering a new form of academic governance, the unicameral model.
We owe a debt to the Council members of those days, citizens like Ed Checkland, Lois Hole, and Ken Chapman, for their commitment, understanding and foresight. The unicameral structure created some interesting situations. One year the Governing Council appointed the student member of Council to chair its team for negotiating staff salaries.
That student was a sergeant in the Calgary City Police and did a splendid job. He demonstrated the advantage that AU gains from having a mature student body. By negotiating pay for the faculty he took us back to the earliest days of universities. In the University of Bologna in the 12th century the students paid the professors directly and the professors had to get the students' permission whenever they wanted to take a trip out of town. Not a bad system!
It would be invidious and embarrassing to reminisce about all my AU colleagues of the late seventies but I must mention three names. I have worked in eight universities in five jurisdictions and spent almost twenty-five years in senior management positions. It has been my good fortune to work with presidents and vice-presidents of exceptional quality. But Sam Smith and Barry Snowden were the best of all.
Never have I had the pleasure, stimulation and sense of achievement that I did here when teamed up with Sam as President and Barry as Vice-President for University Services. Sam was skilled at founding universities and creating academic communities. Barry had unique gifts for making finance clear and for reading the minds of bureaucrats.
My awareness of my debt to them is not the cosy glow of hindsight. When I left AU I wrote these words to Sam Smith:
"Leaving AU will be a wrench. The last two years have been packed with the excitement of venturing, the satisfaction of accomplishing and the confidence created by teamwork. For its closeness and openness (I see no contradiction between the two!) my professional relationship with you has been unique in my experience. I doubt I shall ever again experience such a harmonious and effective executive group as the one you have created. If I have developed as an administrator during my time in Edmonton you and Barry must take much of the credit."
I stand by that statement today.
So much for savouring the past. Now let's celebrate the present.
I said I would mention three names. The third is, of course, your President, Dominique Abrioux. I am very proud to have spotted his immense talent early and asked him to start AU's language programme. When I saw that with a racket in his hand he was even more ferociously competitive than Sam Smith I knew he would go far. You are extraordinarily fortunate that he is now guiding the destinies of AU with Marie-Louise to support him.
I congratulate Athabasca University on its success under President Abrioux's leadership. The best expression of that success is today's graduates. I congratulate you all. To become a graduate of Athabasca University requires special commitment. Few of you have been able to devote yourselves exclusively to your studies for any substantial period of time. You have had to combine study with employment and with family responsibilities. Those qualities of drive and personal organisation are part of your Athabasca degrees.
But you know yourselves that you have not done it alone. AU students depend on the tolerance and support of others. It's good that so many family members and friends are here today to celebrate with you. Athabasca degrees are family degrees and I know how grateful you are for the support you have had from those around you.
You also appreciate the support you have had from the staff of the University. I am tremendously impressed by the dynamism of AU today. The number of programmes available is expanding rapidly. This in an era of lifelong learning and many of you will come back to AU to gain further skills and knowledge. The University attaches high importance to programme articulation and collaboration and its Centre for Learning Accreditation is an innovation of national importance.
These developments give me particular pleasure because one of my tasks at AU was to get other universities in western Canada to recognise AU credits. I remember laying siege to one citadel of tradition, the University of British Columbia, for quite some time until the quality of AU courses and students spoke for themselves.
Today many students in campus universities take AU courses alongside their classroom work, so equivalency with other universities is no longer an issue. The challenge now is to ensure that AU programmes articulate with professional requirements. The agreement with the Alberta Association of Engineering Technologists is a model for the future.
I've savoured the past and celebrated the present. What do I sense for the future?
According to a wise Chinese saying it is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future. We worry too much about the future. Build a good present and the future will be good too.
That is particularly true of Athabasca University. AU and the world's other open universities are the future of higher education present in the here and now. The advancement of distance education has been the most important academic development in the last half of this century and will provide the model for the university of the next century.
Demand is exploding worldwide as a tidal wave of young people reach university age and older people take up the habit of lifelong learning. The world now needs one large new campus to open somewhere every week just to keep participation rates in universities at their present levels. The money is simply not there and, even if it were, new residential campuses wouldn't solve the problem .
Distance education is the answer. Twelve of the world's open universities now enrol over 100,000 students each and over three million students between them. These mega-universities have expanded access, cut cost and improved quality. Athabasca University staff have advised several of the mega-universities and that should make you proud.
The technology of distance education is the key to the future. But how should we use technology in distance education? Athabasca University is providing vital answers to that question with the Virtual Teaching and Learning Community that it calls ViTAL. Community is the key word.
Never forget that thirty years ago distance education was called correspondence education and had low status. Study materials were poor and communication was meagre. The Open University, Athabasca University and our sister institutions have since changed all that.
Together we have pushed the stone of distance education from the valley of low status up to the top of the hill of quality. But the stone could easily roll down again. We should worry about today's infatuation with Web-based teaching and On-line instruction. Electronic education could soon share the low reputation of correspondence education unless there is a genuine commitment to good materials, two-way communication and the creation of learning communities.
That is Athabasca University's commitment , that is the Open University's commitment. Together we must provide the benchmark of quality for the university of the 21st century.
What is a university? It is a community conversing about knowledge. Today's technologies can expand every element of that definition. We can create a broader community, we can converse more frequently, and we can access knowledge more quickly.
Thank you for awarding an honorary degree to this AU drop-out. Thank you for inviting me back to the AU community for this moving convocation. Thank you, graduates, for studying with AU. I wish you every success in the future and I urge you to continue conversing about knowledge with your University community.