The article below, highlighting the numerous accomplishments of SFU President, Dr. Michael Stevenson, was originally published in Business in Vancouver (issue 1043; October 20-26, 2009) and is written by Glen Korstrom.
Class acts: Simon Fraser University president has helped build the school's campus and academic reputation
- Mission: To expand the number of Simon Fraser University campuses and SFU's research, graduate and international programs
- Assets: Academic credentials, charisma, drive and a global perspective
- Yield: Nine years at the helm of B.C.'s second-largest post-secondary institution
Michael Stevenson has overseen about $500 million worth of capital projects since he became president of Simon Fraser University in 2000. None excite him more than the university's January 2010 plan to move its contemporary arts programs to the emerging Woodward's development. "It's my proudest accomplishment," said Stevenson, who plans to retire at the end of August 2010.
His university contributed $80 million toward the $400 million Woodward's project to create 130,000 square feet of space for music, dance, theatre, film and visual art programs that have long been consigned to temporary trailers at SFU's Burnaby Mountain campus. "Being part of the coalition that brought this massive investment in the Downtown Eastside was not an easy thing to do," Stevenson said. He added that creating new space for arts programs is a tougher sell than establishing space for new programs in engineering or health sciences. Stevenson believes Vancouver's Downtown Eastside was in such desperate shape that most developers and potential tenants preferred to ignore the area.
But he imagines a project that will affect Vancouver similar to how New York University helped mould modern Manhattan. "The development of SoHo and TriBeCa [in New York] had a lot to do with the university expanding," Stevenson said. "It created a vibrancy and had a huge multiplier effect because students wanted residences, wanted to shop and hang out. The arts community gets involved in that kind of an area and foodies start to attract enterprises. The fashion industry locates there. Premier galleries move in, as in SoHo."
Downtown Eastside business owners such as Army and Navy CEO Jacqui Cohen share Stevenson's excitement and believe the Woodward's project will provide the area with a much-needed shot in the arm. She expects residents in the project's 536 market-housing units and 200 non-market housing units to change the area's demographic and provide ready customers for her department store as well as businesses such as Nesters Market and London Drugs, which will be located alongside SFU in the Woodward's structure.
Stevenson, however, was at work building SFU long before the City of Vancouver bought the former Woodward's department store site for $5 million in 2003. The South Africa-native arrived in 2000 from Ontario's York University, where he had held various posts including being an African politics professor and dean of the faculty of arts.
Stevenson watched the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue open soon after he took SFU's reins. The first major project he spearheaded was the 2001 initiative to build an engineering building at the Burnaby Mountain campus that cost tens of millions of dollars. That complex opened in 2003. Next came Stevenson's $70 million decision to expand in 2004 by assuming 30,000 square feet of space in then-Surrey Place Mall that the defunct Technical University of British Columbia (TechBC) was vacating. SFU opened its $32.5 million Segal Centre for Graduate Management the same year after developer Joe Segal gave the university a $7.5 million building at the corner of Granville and Pender streets. "That is a huge new expansion that meant that we could move business programs out of Harbour Centre and move new programs in here," Stevenson said from the end of a long boardroom table near his Harbour Centre office.
SFU opened its Harbour Centre campus in 1989 on three floors that were once a Sears department store. The university now leases five floors. Among other projects, Stevenson has overseen con
struction of:
- several student-residence towers and the creation of the Univercity on Burnaby Mountain;
- the $28 million Blusson Hall health sciences building that resulted in part from a $12 million donation from Stewart Blusson and wife Marilyn; and
- a $36 million applied-science building.
But his work in expanding SFU's enrolment from about 18,600 to more than 30,000 full-time students has been broader than simply building new structures. SFU's annual operating budget has grown from about $300 million in 2000 to around $400 million today. He has also expanded international partnerships by launching a dual-degree computing science program four years ago with Hangzhou, China's Zhejiang University. Students study in Mandarin in China for two years before completing the final two years of their program in English at SFU.
Many Canadian students take extra time to study Mandarin and math before starting the program, Stevenson said. "SFU has a very strong program in China, primarily because one of my predecessors as president was Bill Saywell," Stevenson said. "He was the first cultural attache to the first Canadian mission in Beijing after Canada recognized the People's Republic of China.""The Chinese figured that anybody who was good enough to serve their country in China and then went on to be president of a university must have gone to a damn good university."
SFU's successes in China stem more from Stevenson's abilities than from Saywell's connections, said Saywell, who now lives in Puerto Vallerta, Mexico. "I got things started, but Michael ran with the ball and scored all the touchdowns," Saywell told
Business in Vancouver. "I think Michael as president, overall, has done an absolutely splendid job."
Michael Francis, a venture capitalist and longtime British Columbia Film chairman, is also the chairman of SFU's board of governors and is heading the search committee for a new university president. He said the search is in its infancy and will be global in scope. "Michael's qualifications - a PhD and background in political science - is probably quite easy to replace," Francis said. "What you can't replace is his sense of humour, energy, commitment and leadership - all those qualities that he has exhibited in the past 10 years."
Stevenson is 65, and, though he said he feels much younger, he's looking forward to retiring. "I've done 10 very busy years here," he said. "The cost of that is that you stop doing certain things that you love to do. I don't read as much as I love to do. I haven't been writing things that I like to do. I haven't been travelling at times and in places where I like to go. I also haven't seen as much of my family as I should."