Clare Haru Crowston, Dean of Arts at UBC
The UBC Faculty of Arts has just launched its new five-year Strategic Plan (2025–2030), a roadmap to guide research, teaching, and community engagement in the years ahead. In this Q&A, Dean Clare Haru Crowston reflects on what the plan means for students, staff, and faculty, and how it will shape UBC’s impact in the world.
The Faculty has just released the final version of its new Strategic Plan. What excites you most as we begin this next chapter?
I’m excited about bringing our community’s vision to life. Over the past two years, so many faculty, staff, and students have contributed their ideas, energy, and hopes to this plan. I’m grateful for that effort and delighted that the outcome is a plan that is bold in scope but also grounded firmly in our shared values and commitments.
This plan gives us a chance to advance inclusive excellence in research and teaching, deepen our community impact, and tackle urgent challenges like sustainability and digital transformation with the creativity and critical insight that Arts uniquely brings.
Below: View a recording of the launch event.
How does this plan build on Arts’ strengths, and what feels new or different this time?
This plan grows out of what already distinguishes the Faculty of Arts: our disciplinary breadth, our leadership in research and creative practice, and our commitment to inclusion and excellence. We have long excelled at interdisciplinary collaboration, experiential learning, and public scholarship — and this plan strengthens those traditions. It highlights what our students, faculty, staff, and alumni already do so well: advancing knowledge, creativity, and critical thinking in ways that shape public life and policy.
What’s new is the scope and ambition. For the first time, we identify digital innovation as a strategic direction, recognizing the urgency of engaging both critically and creatively with technological change. We also bring new focus to sustainability and accessibility.
Most importantly, the plan reflects a deeper process of listening and co-creation — with Musqueam, with historically marginalized communities, and with hundreds of faculty, staff, and students. That breadth of participation makes it not just a document, but a living framework that reflects the voices and values of our community.
“This plan gives us a chance to advance inclusive excellence in research and teaching, deepen our community impact, and tackle urgent challenges like sustainability and digital transformation.”
Students have asked how the plan will prepare them for life after graduation. What’s your message to them?
As a parent with children at different stages of university and beyond, I know how much students and families wonder what comes after graduation. This plan was designed with students at the centre. It equips you not just for a first job but for a lifetime of meaningful work, civic engagement, and personal growth. You’ll gain critical thinking, creativity, and adaptability — skills that employers increasingly value. Recent studies show that humanities graduates are thriving because of these strengths.
The plan also expands hands-on opportunities that connect classroom learning to the real world and emphasizes digital competencies and sustainability, so graduates are ready to navigate rapid technological change and contribute to a more just and sustainable future. Belonging and wellbeing are equally important — they give students the confidence and resilience to carry what they’ve learned at UBC into their future paths.
Students come from diverse backgrounds and have a wide range of interests. How does the Strategic Plan support them in pursuing different learning styles, career paths, and personal goals?
Our students come to Arts with incredibly diverse interests, learning styles, and career goals. The plan supports our diverse student body by expanding multiple pathways for learning — from classroom study to research, co-op, community engagement, and global experiences. It emphasizes inclusive and culturally informed teaching that recognizes different learning styles and perspectives.
Just as important, it prioritizes accessibility and belonging, ensuring that students — including international students, who make great sacrifices to study here — feel supported and valued for the richness they bring to our community. Whatever their path, the plan commits us to helping every student find the opportunities and support they need to thrive during their time at UBC and beyond.
Arts students gain hands-on experience through global seminars and co-op placements. Pictured: Dr. Pasang Yangjee Sherpa (Asian Studies) with Go Global students in Nepal for the Global Indigeneities course.
Justice, equity, and inclusion are central to the plan. How will these values be woven into everyday practice?
Justice, equity, and inclusion are not stand-alone goals in this plan — they are built into every aspect of our work. In research, that means supporting equity-led and Indigenous-led scholarship. In teaching, it means creating inclusive classrooms, renewing curricula, and reducing barriers to participation. In our community partnerships, it means building reciprocal and sustainable relationships with Musqueam and historically marginalized communities. It also means fostering accessibility and wellbeing so that everyone in our Faculty can thrive.
The plan emphasizes Indigenous resurgence. What does that mean in practice for our community?
Reconciliation is about acknowledging and addressing past harms and repairing relationships. Resurgence goes further — it is about supporting the flourishing of Indigenous knowledge, languages, and ways of being in the present and future.
For our Faculty, that means embedding Indigenous perspectives in research and teaching, supporting Indigenous students, faculty, and staff to thrive, and building truly reciprocal relationships with Musqueam. It also means taking concrete action — from renewing curricula to supporting Indigenous-led research and creating spaces where Indigenous voices guide Faculty-wide conversations. In practice, committing to Indigenous resurgence asks us to move beyond symbolic gestures toward sustained actions and practices that strengthen Indigenous presence and leadership across our community.
“Resurgence goes further — it is about supporting the flourishing of Indigenous knowledge, languages, and ways of being in the present and future.”
The plan commits to reconciliation and Indigenous resurgence, working in relationship with Musqueam. Photo: sʔi:ɬqəy̓ qeqən (double-headed serpent post), Brent Sparrow, Musqueam. Jamil Rhajiak / UBC Brand & Marketing.
What advice would you give to faculty and staff who want to align their work with strategic priorities but may be worried about budgets and capacity?
My advice is to treat the plan as a framework that connects your work to a larger vision. It provides clearer priorities, more opportunities for collaboration, and better recognition of how individual efforts contribute to Faculty-wide goals. Given budget constraints, it’s also about helping us focus and invest strategically, so that people feel supported rather than overextended. In short, the plan is meant to guide and enable, not add to already full workloads.
I encourage colleagues to look for opportunities to collaborate across units and disciplines, since so many of our priorities — from interdisciplinarity to sustainability — depend on collective effort. Use our shared commitments to academic freedom, accessibility, reconciliation, and equity as touchstones for both daily decisions and long-term projects. Keep an eye on emerging initiatives and progress reports, and think about where your work might connect. Alignment isn’t about doing everything at once — it’s about being intentional, finding inspiration, and knowing that together our contributions will add up to real change.
How does the plan support academic freedom?
Academic freedom is the cornerstone of scholarly life in Arts — it ensures that all of us can pursue inquiry wherever it leads, even into difficult or contested terrain. At the same time, our commitments to equity, justice, and inclusion are not about limiting freedom; they are about expanding who has access to it. The plan supports scholars by safeguarding their independence while also providing resources to pursue long-standing and emerging questions — from climate change to digital transformation — in ways that draw on diverse perspectives and strengthen the quality of our work. Our goal is a Faculty where freedom and inclusivity work together to ensure that everyone can contribute fully to advancing knowledge.
Faculty and students explore ethical and creative approaches to digital innovation. Pictured: Dr. Patrick Pennefather (Theatre and Film; Master of Digital Media Program) demonstrates VR with a student.
Digital innovation is another area of focus. What’s your vision here?
When I arrived at UBC, I was struck by the depth of expertise related to digital technology and innovation across the Faculty. By bringing that expertise together, we have an opportunity to lead in this area, which is why I proposed digital innovation as a strategic direction. The rapid rise of AI has only underscored how urgent this focus is.
For us, digital innovation isn’t just about technical skills. We want students, faculty, and staff to thrive in a changing world while also bringing Arts perspectives—ethical, cultural, and critical—to the table. Too often technology is shaped without these voices, and the results can magnify existing inequalities or contribute to new ones.
While a discipline like Computer Science belongs to a different Faculty, our fields—including digital humanities, computational social science, and virtual reality arts—equip students with competencies and ethical frameworks to navigate and shape the digital world. No Faculty of Arts has fully figured this out, but we’re well positioned to lead.
“We want students, faculty, and staff to thrive in a changing world while also bringing Arts perspectives — ethical, cultural, and critical — to the table.”
Looking ahead, what are some of the first actions we’ll see in Year 1?
In the coming year, you’ll see the launch of Faculty-wide conversations on innovative forms of scholarship and teaching, including initiatives that cross disciplinary boundaries. We will work toward strengthening our relationship with Musqueam and advance Indigenous resurgence. We’re developing new non-credit and online learning offerings to increase access to the amazing expertise of our Arts faculty. And we’ll introduce annual reporting to track progress and highlight opportunities to get involved.
Dean Clare Haru Crowston and Professor Kamal Al-Solaylee engage in a Q&A during the launch of the Arts 2025–2030 Strategic Plan in May, 2025.
Finally, on a personal level, what part of the plan resonates most strongly with you?
On a personal level, what resonates most strongly with me is the plan’s vision of inclusive excellence — the idea that we achieve our best by expanding access and ensuring everyone can thrive. As a historian of women and gender and working people, I believe deeply in the power of diverse voices and perspectives to change how we understand the world.
I’m also especially drawn to our commitments to reconciliation and Indigenous resurgence. Working in relationship with Musqueam and centering Indigenous perspectives feels both urgent and transformative — it challenges us to reimagine what the university can be.
And finally, as Dean, what moves me is the collective spirit of the plan: it was shaped by hundreds of faculty, staff, and students as well as by engagement with alumni, employers, and Musqueam. For me, the plan is not just a set of priorities, but a shared promise about the kind of community we want to build together.
