I could speak at length about the impact of Université Sainte-Anne on Pointe-de-l'Église, a community of fewer than 10,000 people. If the university did not exist, the community would be entirely different on the social, cultural and economic levels.
I've been president of the university for 13 years. One of the commitments I made at the start of my term was to create a strategic focus that I like to call “community anchoring”.
I wanted to make sure that we weren't sitting in an ivory tower, in other words, I wanted the university to get involved in the community in many different ways.
For example, I wanted to make sure that the infrastructure on campus was accessible to the local community. I am thinking, among other things, of the theatre, the new soccer field, the new race track, the sports centre and the amphitheatres. All of those are available to the community. I also wanted to make sure that members of the administration, students and, above all, faculty who do research are very involved in the community. For example, we do a lot of applied research with the private sector, not to mention all the work we do in partnership with francophone and Acadian organizations to advance our communities.
I imagine I don't have much time, so—