The University of Winnipeg has charted a course for the next five years that leans heavily on its position as a member of the downtown community.
A business professor, physics researcher, Indigenous scholar, international student and the CEO of its community renewal corporation announced the five-year road map, Meeting the Moment, on Tuesday at the campus hub for science and environment studies.
“The University of Winnipeg has always played a key role in the heart of our downtown,” Jeremy Read told the crowd at the Richardson College for the Environment.
“This plan empowers us to build on that legacy in new and meaningful ways.”
Read, the leader of the University of Winnipeg Community Renewal Corp. — the entity that designs buildings and constructs them across campus — said the U of W plans to be an active partner in revitalizing downtown.
He was among the handful of people who were tapped to deliver one of the school’s five “pillars.”
The lineup was a symbolic gesture. The U of W’s new 18-page strategic plan, which was 18 months in the making, relied heavily on community input.
Sara Penner, an associate professor of business administration, spoke about her employer’s renewed emphasis on student-centered education and supporting faculty.
Physics professor Jeff Martin announced the second institutional priority, which involves “transformational research.”
Martin noted the U of W has started to invest “more strategically” in research programs over the last decade, and he’s been a benefactor.
The Canada Research Chair’s team made a historic breakthrough over the summer that could advance knowledge about the Big Bang-created universe.
The U of W’s third institutional goal is to continue to advance reconciliation. Christy Anderson, a lecturer who is a member of Pinaymootang First Nation, presented it to an atrium that was standing-room only.
Alan Saji Koshy, an executive member of the 2025-26 student association, rounded out the list.
“We meet the moment by engaging with our community,” the philosophy student said.
Saji Koshy moved to Canada from India during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and remote learning.
He told event attendees he’s found lifelong friendships in Winnipeg despite his isolation-filled introduction in 2021.
The road map, which is printed on glossy paper and filled with photos of community members, calls for creating more Indigenous spaces on campus, expanding “flexible learning” options and making hiring practises more transparent.
The next phase of the rebranding exercise will involve establishing concrete actions, timelines and performance metrics.
The U of W’s new tagline — meeting the moment — references its unique positioning to respond to “the needs of our ever-changing world,” said Todd Mondor, its 10th president and vice-chancellor.
The university spent nearly $350,000 on external consultants, including a Winnipeg marketing firm and post-secondary education advisers from Toronto, last year. The expenses covered the outsourcing of a new strategic plan and designing promotional materials, including “UWIN” billboards.
Following a land acknowledgement, Mondor told the event his team collected “extensive” feedback from internal and external members of the Indigenous community.
There were a combined 36 consultation sessions organized to develop it, he said.
Nine of them were to seek out First Nations, Métis and Inuit voices, the president said.
Advancing reconciliation is especially important because Indigenous knowledge has been dismissed and excluded throughout history, said Anderson, an academic who has Ojibwa and Mennonite ancestry.
“Indigenous peoples were misrepresented as culturally and morally inferior to European settlers,” she said.
“So much of our brilliance and excellence was both invisible to the settler colonists and stolen from us and our generations of kin.”
It was one of the first Canadian post-secondary institutes to introduce an Indigenous course requirement. All new undergraduate students have been required to enrol in at least one three-credit course about First Nations, Métis and Inuit topics since September 2016.
While the U of W is a 21st century leader, its founders never intended to welcome the first inhabitants of the land they built a school on, Anderson said.
“We, as Indigenous peoples, are taking our rightful place in these spaces to share the brilliance that we had to offer long ago and still have to offer today,” the lecturer said.
The plan states the U of W will establish short- and long-term strategies to recruit and retain Indigenous faculty, students and staff.
It also calls for the championing of research that advances equity, development and inclusion.
The launch was held following 12 months of austerity measures, including teaching assistant reductions, at U of W.
Mondor called the U of W’s financial situation “stable,” owing in part to a rise in domestic enrolment and higher-than-projected international enrolment, at the start of the current semester.
