February 9, 2010 News

Meet the man

New dean of arts and science promises ‘to spread the paint’

by Terrine Friday

Brian Lewis, current dean of arts and science. PHOTO TERRIEN FRIDAY

Brian Lewis returned to Concordia this year to take up the post of dean of arts and science. Lewis, a former communications associate professor at Concordia and the Director of Communications at Simon Fraser University, is now leading Concordia’s largest faculty, with over 18,000 students.

With an operating budget of almost $100 million, the faculty of arts and science accounts for almost half of the $207 million operating budget of all four faculties at Concordia.
The Link sat down with Lewis to ask him about his views on sustainable education, graduate-level research and advancement.

The Link: Arts and Science students account for almost half of the student body at Concordia. Do you feel pressured to seek donors in order to support the faculty?

Brian Lewis: If I can add value to arts and science through building relationships, that’s something I absolutely want to do. I’m not pressured to do it; I feel responsibility to find resources.

It’s hard for a professor to [generate an influx of money for special programs], it’s my job to put the professor in touch with people who can support their activities.

In terms of the advancement, it isn’t just about making money, it’s about making relationships. And the way I see Concordia, it’s a very, very engaged university. It’s part of the life of this city. That’s why it attracted me. I’d like to get to know people in the city, get to know friends of Concordia, project our image to the community more effectively—all of that’s advancement: building relationships.

Sustainability is important at Concordia. What types of sustainable initiatives are you taking as dean of arts and science?

I like to say there has to be an endgame to everything we start. If we’re planning something, we have to know how we’re going to keep it going. A lot of [university initiatives] get launched because an opportunity comes along without a lot of thought about how we’re going to maintain it. So, expectations can be built without being satisfied at the end. Part of my function as dean is to make sure the planning goes into these opportunities so we can keep them going. We have to find the appropriate infrastructure, the appropriate resources, we have to make sure there’s a critical mass of interest.

From an academic perspective, sustainability means creating programs that there’s a demand for, that people are interested in and that we have the resources to support.

Enrollment at the university increased significantly over the past year. How did services compare?

There’s no one-to-one correspondence between one student and more resources. At the end of the year, everything’s aggregated to see what kind of extra support we need or where we have too much. For example, when the number of students goes up by 40 per cent, our budget doesn’t go up by 40 per cent. You sort of have to absorb the capacity and see where the pressure points are. We have to relieve the pressure from those spots. Then this becomes part of the planning for the next cycle.

For example, what I’m focusing on is providing more TA support [...]. I think we need more tutorials and more support for graduate students. Tutorials give students the opportunity for a smaller class environment and they give the graduate students an opportunity [...] to learn how to teach.

The union of Teaching and Research Assistants at Concordia are currently in negotiations for an initial collective agreement. What do you think about student compensation at Concordia for research and teaching?

Students have to be fairly compensated, and I think the scales are probably set across institutions. Before I got here, [Concordia made] sure that the comparators were equivalent for faculty members; there are similar salary scales across universities. The same kind of bars have to be followed for the TAs and for research assistants. [...] There is no reason Concordia students should be paid less.

What do you think your biggest challenges will be moving forward?

When I met with the professors in the department, a lot of people shared the vision that we need to enhance the experience of the students through interdisciplinary [programs and] through letting them move back and forth across programs, developing programs which maybe haven’t been foreseen yet but which may be important to them. The question is, how do you find the time to make that a reality? It’s a time-management issue, just because it’s a big faculty.

I’d like to find the time to be able to develop [departmental] intersections, where we can offer students something more than other universities can offer. That’s my goal for the future: to add value to what the faculty’s already offering, from a level that’s not embedded in any one department and that can see a bigger picture. I’d need a lot of support with that. I need student support, I need faculty support, I need administrative support.

It’s the apocalypse, your budget is chopped down to size and you can only afford to keep three programs. Which ones do you keep?

There’s no way I can answer that question. [Laughs] There’s no way I can answer that question. That’s not the way it would work. If it’s the apocalypse and your budget is cut way down, you really have to try to spread the paint. There are too many expectations and hopes and dreams attached to too many different programs to let your ego determine [which programs to keep]. You’ve got to find a way to [cancel] programs that just aren’t functioning for anybody, or find a way to spread the paint.

Or you fight back, you take a stance and say it can’t be done.