A New Year

After a 4 month hiatus I’m back to blogging. Hopefully some of the new readers will be parents of new McMaster students. It was a pleasure to meet some of you at Welcome Day on August 8^th. Last year at this time my blog was an introduction to myself and Student Affairs. Since I’ll hopefully have some new readers this year, this year’s initial blog is also introductory. Below is an article that will appear in the Welcome Week issue of The Silhouette – McMaster’s student newspaper. Thanks for tuning in, I’ll get to some more topical things over the coming weeks.

I’m Dr. Phil Wood, Associate Vice President (Student Affairs). No, not that Dr. Phil! I’m Dr. Phil your Dean of Students. I’m pleased to welcome all new students to McMaster University as well as welcoming back all returning students. I’m delighted to have been offered this opportunity to tell all of you a little bit about me, what we offer in Student Affairs and why getting engaged with the university (whether through Student Affairs or the MSU) will be beneficial to your success at Mac.

First, a little bit about me. I’m a native of Brantford and went to the University of Waterloo. I earned my PhD at Caltech in Pasadena California and have been a professor of chemical engineering for more than 30 years – the first 5 at Michigan State and the last 25+ at McMaster. For the past six years I have been Associate VP and Dean of Students.

Student Affairs at McMaster is a large operation. Our consolidated budget is in excess of $70 million. You can learn about all of the Student Affairs departments by going to our website: studentaffairs.mcmaster.ca . While on the site I would ask that you check out our Annual Review: “Connecting Communities”. This report contains feature articles as well as updates from various Student Affairs departments for the 2007 year.

Of course, these days, one of the most prevalent Student Affairs departments is the First Year Experience Office (FYEO). They coordinate Welcome Week activities having just completed Welcome Day. One of my proudest achievements in Student Affairs is the creation of the IRIS production and I especially thank Michele Corbeil for her inspiration. Hopefully you all have, or will see it. During the year the FYEO will be engaged in First Generation student activities and our assessment exercises.

One of the largest departments is Athletics & Recreation. The new David Braley Athletic Centre (known as D-BAC) is the hub for all or your recreational needs on campus. Our varsity basketball and volleyball Marauders play in the Burridge Gymnasium in the Ivor Wyne Centre. Of course the big news this year will be the grand opening of the Ron Joyce Stadium on September 13^th as a prelude to the Marauder football game versus Ottawa. We’ll have two football games on Friday evenings this year as well in an effort to get more students out to a game before they head home for the weekend.

So come and check out the new stadium and see our Marauders. Coach P tells me that we’ll have a young, exciting team this year. You should also make good use of the DBAC. McMaster students have pledged $20 million towards the construction of this building and with the Ron Joyce Stadium gives us arguably the best facilities in Canada. This financial gift from the students was unprecedented in Canada and all of us in senior administration are extremely grateful to the generosity of the students. (Who also donated a like amount to the McMaster University Student Centre – the MUSC).

Over my six years as Dean of Students we have opened two new residences – Mary E Keyes and Les Prince Hall bringing our number of be spaces to over 3700. Each of these residences was built in response to student needs – suites in Keyes and singles and doubles with in-room bathrooms in Les Prince. Our Res Life team is the model for many universities in Ontario and we work collaboratively with the resident student government, the IRC.

I have eaten on several campuses during my career and from my experience we have the best campus food in the country. There is not a better campus restaurant than the East Meets West Bistro and we are equally proud of Bridges – our vegetarian café. Bridges was a joint effort between Hospitality Services and a student group which came up with the concept. Both East meets West and Bridges have won national and North American awards from campus food organizations.

Student Affairs is also home of the Campus Health Centre and the Centre for Student Development (CSD). Both are in the lower level of the MUSC. Campus Health is a state of the art medical clinic and is constantly rated in the top two or three campus health centres in the country. It is also the home of our health education team. CSD is where to go if you need help. It’s the home of our disability services, counselling services and study skills/time management support. It is also the host (with Career Services) of our very innovative Leadership Certificate Programme and Peer Helper programme.

Career Services is located on the first floor of Gilmour Hall and is a good place to go for help with your career aspirations and to learn more about job hunting skills. Don’t wait until your last year to begin this process. Check it out early to see what sort of careers are out there. Student Financial Aid and Scholarships is right inside the main doors of Gilmour Hall. Students who are on OSAP should attend this office and make an on-line application for a bursary. Again, more information is available for this (and all offices) on their website.

Finally, I would like to stress (particularly to the new students) the importance of getting involved at McMaster. Nowadays the word we use is “engagement”. Research has shown that students who are more engaged at university do better. It’s as simple as that. Likewise, universities that do a better job of engaging students can be judged to be of higher quality than those that do a poorer job. Luckily for you, McMaster does an excellent job with engaging students.

For the past four years we have been involved in a large study called the National Survey on Student Engagement (NSSE). Consistently over those past four years McMaster has been rated amongst the best universities in Canada in terms of engagement. Check out McMaster’s NSSE webpage: http://www.mcmaster.ca/avppa/nsse.html for its results to date. You might also be interested in the paper I wrote: “An Introduction to NSSE and a Brief Discussion of McMaster’s Performance in 2006″ that is available for download from the site and explains the survey and the research that backs it up.

There are tons of ways to become engaged – you can join an MSU club, get a job on campus, volunteer, get involved with a research project in your department, play sports or just work out. One of the exciting new programmes that we are offering in Student Affairs is “Service Learning” which you can learn about on our website. I hope that all of you have a very successful year in 2008-09. Stop me to say hi if you see me. I expect to be shaking hands again with all of the first year students and usually attend all of the McMaster sporting and student events.