Local & Global Engagement

UBC Arts scholars engage in cross-disciplinary partnerships, foster knowledge exchange, and apply their research locally and globally.

Our strategies

Goal: Exchange knowledge and expertise widely and engage in reciprocal partnerships with the community.

  • Educate students in and by communities locally, nationally, and internationally, while tackling issues ethically and productively.
  • Elevate the creative and performing arts as a core element of UBC’s identity and as a vehicle to enrich the student experience and engage with the community.
  • Provide lifelong learning through UBC Extended Learning, including the Vancouver Summer Program, Future Global Leaders Program, digital-distance courses and certificates, and career education.
  • Support and enhance Humanities 101, our outreach program that offers free university-level education to low-income communities in Vancouver.
  • Improve storytelling through video content to engage external audiences, promote student learning and volunteer engagement, and share our research and public scholarship.

Goal: Expand and enhance Indigenous research and teaching initiatives, increase understanding of First Nations and Indigenous cultures and histories, and supportively and respectfully engage with Indigenous peoples, advancing the recommendations of the UBC Indigenous Strategic Plan and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

  • Increase Indigenous faculty and staff hiring, student enrolment, and retention.
  • Explore a new Arts degree requirement on power and place that includes Indigeneity.
  • Create a Diploma in Arts for Indigenous students transitioning to university.
  • Survey current curriculum for Indigenous histories, knowledges, and perspectives.
  • Increase engagement with Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh communities.
  • Provide support for the Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre.
  • Support community-based engagements with Indigenous peoples in research and teaching, for example, Dechinta: Bush University Centre for Research and Learning.
  • Implement the new major and minor in First Nations and Endangered Languages and participate in a provincial consortium on Indigenous languages.

Goal: Cultivate diversity and inclusion among students through study, reflection, debate, and action across cultural differences.

  • Building on the strengths of our international and multicultural student body, renew our curriculum to address the complexities of diversity, inclusion, and intercultural communication.
  • Provide our students with the opportunity for intercultural experiences in the classroom, in the university, in our local communities, and globally.
  • Work with the Asian Canadian Community Engagement Committee to create a 5-to-10-year vision for the university’s commitment to advancing understanding of Asian Canadians.
  • Support UBC’s Student Diversity Initiative.
  • Strengthen the impact and cross-campus relevance of the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice and the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies. Build on initiatives in inclusion, restorative justice, and environmental justice.

Goal: Further internationalize our curriculum allowing students to explore the global dimensions of their areas of study, excel in international work, and engage with communities around the world.

  • Include a global dimension in all new programs of study, drawing on the strengths of our international student body and faculty, especially with the Asia Pacific, for example, the six regional centres within the Institute for Asian Research.
  • Enhance support for international community-engaged learning and international co-operative education programs.
  • Expand partnerships with universities abroad for exchange, joint programs, and research, such as our successful dual-degree program with Sciences Po.
  • Report on our global connections: international students, exchange programs, research collaborations, dual degrees and partner degrees, and summer programs.
  • Expand Vancouver Summer Programs for international students.

Goal: Foster meaningful relationships with alumni, emeriti, donors, and the external community by improving communications, outreach, and engaging others as partners to achieve shared aspirations.

  • Encourage all departments to engage alumni, emeriti, donors, and the external community through targeted communications and events.
  • By 2022, reach 19,000 Arts Alumni contacts per year by improving our ability to report on alumni engagement, incorporating indices of depth of involvement, and encouraging units to develop annual event calendars for their alumni.
  • Renew the Dean’s Advisory Board with an active volunteer membership, and create connections to community advisories for many of our schools and departments.
  • Implement the Arts Career Exploration Plan, a program of activities to create connections between students and alumni.
  • Continue to engage alumni as employers, co-op program sponsors, internship placements, and participants in problem-based projects.
  • Invite Arts emeriti to undertake a Faculty of Arts history project.

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