Headlines/January 26, 1998

es . .

Wrapping up with Jones
Reflections on a decade as president at UCFV

Peter Jones stepped down as president
of UCFV at the end of December after
10 and a half years at the helm of what
was a small community college when he
arrived in 1987 and what had become a
much larger and significantly different
entity by the time he left. Jones played
an active role in lobbying for university
college status for Fraser Valley College
(granted in 1991), steered UCFV
through the degree-program development
phase and a major hiring wave, and saw
incredible growth in capital projects. As
his time in charge wrapped up, Jones left
an institution that had independent
degree- granting status and was a newly
accepted member of the Association of
Universities and Colleges of Canada.
There were also some tough decisions
and personal regrets along the way.

Headlines sat down with Jones
recently for a reflective look back at his
decade in charge.

“lm not a bricks and mortar man”
Jones was a vice president at the British
Columbia Institute of Technology when
he applied for the top spot at Fraser
Valley College.

“I was responsible for about as big a
budget at BCIT as FVC’s was then, but I
was from a humanities background and
was a strong believer in education as
well as training, so I was intrigued by
the opportunity. The president notion
appealed to me, as well as the idea of
being outside of the city,” Jones recalls.
“Fraser Valley had a great reputation as
a solid community college. I do
remember telling the board that I was an
educator by nature, and that if they
wanted a lot of physical expansion done

I might not be the best choice, and John ~

Wiens, the board chair at the time, said
not to worry, that this was a nice, small,
cosy, community college.”

Jones hadn’t been president long
when he sensed that the college was
“resting.on its laurels” a bit too much,
and wasn’t preparing for the
unprecedented population growth
coming to the Valley. .

“IT saw the communities exploding in

size, and an increased interest in lifelong

learning,” Jones says. “It was clear that

people were coming to the Valley with a
lot of expectations for themselves and
their kids — far in excess of the.
demands that Valley people had
traditionally put on this institution. The
Valley itself was also changing. The
need for more post-secondary learning
opportunities was becoming better
recognized.”

- The provincial government started to
address the growing provincial demand .
for education by creating the University
of Northem B.C. and giving university
college status to Malaspina, Cariboo,
and Okanagan colleges in 1989. But
nothing was done in the Fraser Valley,

' the fastest growing region of the

province.

“We in the Valley did some soul-
searching. I was part of a four-president
committee that looked at a number of
options for the Valley, and we generally
agreed that we weren’t doing enough,

‘but there was no agreement on what

should be done. Then we at the college
put our own committee together, and.
becoming a university college was one
of the options we looked at. We decided
that it wouldn’t solve the problems of

the whole Valley, but it would certainly

help our college region.”
A whirlwind of lobbying

A short and intensive lobbying period :
began, one that involved the college
board, administration, faculty, and staff

but also received an enormous and vital

boost from students and community
members. This was in the months
leading up to the 1991 election, and the
pressure was on to win the support of
the Socred government, with several
influential local MLAs, while it was still
in power.

“We learned a lot about working with —

politicians,” says Jones. “For instance, -
you don’t try to get them to say yes, you
make it impossible for them to say no! I
recall being in a meeting with :
then-minister of Advanced Education
Bruce Strachan, and former board chair
Brian Minter, and the news wasn’t
good. Brian said to him outright, ‘We’re
not taking this as a definitive answer.’”

G

A couple of strong community rallies
helped turn the tide in favour of the
college, and, in a time of revolving
cabinet ministers, Abbotsford MLA

Peter Dueck was named Minister of

Advanced Education and soon after, on
July 5, 1991, he announced university ©

college status for FVC.

“Heady years”
Several exciting boom years followed,
as people at the newly renamed UCFV
planned new bachelor’s degree

: programs, sought partnerships with

established universities, and welcomed .-
scores of new colleagues and hundreds -
of new students. UCFV had the
advantage of being a couple of years
behind the other university colleges, so

we could learn from their experiences,

Jones recalls. Many UCFV delegations ©

" visited the sister institutions.

“We did some things right atthe
beginning that helped set us on a good
course,” says Jones. “We made a clear
statement that.we would not separate
upper level from lower level — you
were expected to teach the whole
four-year curriculum. We took great
pains to let people know that they were
not coming to a traditional university. _
We also sunk half of our start-up .
resources into the library, the biggest
percentage of all the university colleges.
Half of the money that we spent on new

-. programs was spent on the core arts and

science degrees, but we also put half
into ‘laddered’ degrees, building on our
established career programs, such as
business and criminal justice. This has
really paid off for us. We have a very
interesting and diverse mix of degree
programs.” .
While UCFYV was busy developing
new degree programs, it was also
undergoing a major building boom, with
major new facilities going up in
Abbotsford, Chilliwack, and Mission

-- between 1991 and 1997.

“One of the reasons we’ve had such a
successful decade here is that I was able
to rely heavily on people around the
management table,” notes Jones. “For
instance, I was comfortable leaving the

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