No doubt the lines of communication are open between the City of London, Western and Fanshawe College.
Western president Amit Chakma stressed this is the case at Working Together to Build Canada’s Education City, an event featuring Chakma and Fanshawe College president Howard Rundle, hosted by London city manager Art Zuidema, at the London Convention Centre late last week.
Chakma, however, thinks more could be done to ensure the city, its university and college are working together and ensuring a reciprocal relationship that benefits both London’s postsecondary institutions and the city itself.
“The three meet at various points in the city. What is missing is, we need strong political leadership,” he said.
“Right now, at every level, for all sorts of reasons, we perhaps don’t have it – because of fiscal pressures and whatnot. The best example I can give you of strong political leadership – not to denigrate our leaders here – is when you have a small community like Stratford bring in a university campus. That’s leadership. We’ve done some things, but we need to do more at the city level, provincial level and federal level. This is a time to be investing.”
To ensure London is Canada’s ‘Education City,’ there needs to be further investment in infrastructure, more internship opportunities for students, alongside increased awareness of the importance of international students in our community, he noted at the event.
Chakma mentioned the city’s support in developing and expanding Western’s Advanced Manufacturing Park, WindEEE Dome and recent opening of the Fraunhofer Project Centre. These facilities have attracted international attention, created jobs and generated revenue for the local economy, all the while raising Western’s profile. This is a good example of the university’s partnership with the city, he said.
“These are world-class initiatives to be based in the City of London and they’ll do lots of good things for us.”
But the city’s focus, when it comes to a good, reciprocal relationship with Western, should be on improving some things perhaps not high on the agenda now. Western aims to attract the best of the best, individuals who could do great things in the city, Chakma said. In order to attract the best, London needs to be the best.
“The city people live in becomes important. The kinds of people we want to attract from around the world, they have certain needs, apart from the needs we all have. Transportation becomes important. Anything we can do to expand our airport, improve our airport, improve train service, those are all positive things,” he continued.
“For a community like ours, for an institution like ours, if you build it, they will come. We have been doing that – maybe not as consistently as we could.”
What’s more, attracting the best from around the world is next to impossible if individuals in the local community don’t see the benefits of international students and faculty.
“A welcoming community is needed,” Chakma stressed, adding this goes beyond organizing local immigration agencies to support newcomers to the city.
“While we are preaching to bring more international students, there are members within our community who are not quite sure why we do it – they’ll say, ‘Each international student you bring in will displace one Canadian student.’ If the community talks about these things, it will be simply a matter of time before the negative vibe goes out the door and we will not be perceived as a welcoming community.”
We must show international students and faculty that this is not the case, he continued.
“On the one hand, we need to welcome them. On the other, we need to work internally to educate our citizens to the benefit of international students. We need them so we can educate our own in the right environment. The students we educate today, if they don’t get the exposure to a global environment, one way or the other, they will simply not be prepared to face the world they’ll be facing after they graduate.”
Chakma added the city would benefit from keeping international students here once they are done with their education, and to do so, it would need to help provide more internship opportunities in London by encouraging local businesses to step up.
“If we don’t do anything, they won’t stay here. And if we’ve decided to keep some of them here, we need to do things other communities are not doing, or not doing as well,” he said.
“And the more dialogue we have, the better we understand each other. When that dialogue deepens, we may find significant opportunities to work together.”