Below the Radar Transcript
Episode 43: Andrew Petter on the Engaged University
Speakers: Rachel Wong, Am Johal, Andrew Petter
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Rachel Wong 0:05
Hello listeners! I’m Rachel Wong with Below the Radar, a knowledge mobilization podcast. Below the Radar is created by SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement, and is recorded on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. On this episode, Am Johal sat down with Andrew Petter, the president of SFU since 2010.
In September 2020, he gets ready to move on from SFU to a new chapter of his life. Prior to becoming SFU’s president, Andrew had an extensive career serving in the BC government, teaching as a faculty member in the law department at the University of Victoria, and even a brief stint doing radio in Nelson, BC. Andrew takes us down memory lane as he talks about his work prior to joining SFU, the vision behind his Strategic Vision for the university, and why SFU will always be a big part of his life.
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Am Johal 1:06
We are here today with our special guest, Andrew Petter, who is still SFU President for at least another six months. Welcome, Andrew!
Andrew Petter 1:15
Hanging on, hanging on, Am. Thank you.
Am Johal 1:17
It's great to be able to sit down with you. And, you know, for the past nine and a half years, you've had quite a journey as president of SFU. And I'm wondering from the moment that you came on and you, you know, accepted the position, and here you are six months away from finishing your second term, what sort of thoughts and reflections you have right now in terms of the kind of journey it's been?
Andrew Petter 1:43
Well, one thing I just feel hugely privileged to have had this opportunity. And I came to SFU not because I was thirsting to be a university president. In fact, I had no thought of becoming university president, but I came to SFU because it's an institution that has a wonderful history. I knew a number of people who are at the institution. But I guess more than anything, I saw it as an institution that was, even then, doing things differently: The move to Downtown Vancouver, the programming in the community, the commitment to community-based education and research, all things that I really believe in. I believe universities have both an opportunity and a responsibility to do more than just educate, as important as it is. or research, as important as that is. And in fact, I think both those things are better done in community. And I saw SFU as an institution that was already doing those things, but maybe wasn't as aware of what it was doing as I thought it should be. And worried maybe a little too much that it wasn't a big kind of traditional research university like our friends out on Point Grey more than it should and so I came because I thought I want to be part of this community and I thought I could help in some way to surface some of the things that were already happening, provide some strategic direction that would help energize the university. Very much drawing what was already happening. And I just found it a wonderful, wonderful experience. It's a great community of people. It's an institution that really believes that has both a mandate and a mission to provide benefits to communities well beyond those of a traditional university and I just feel so privileged to have been part of that.
Am Johal 3:34
Now you were a dean at UVic law school and on faculty there for many years, but you did a lot of other things in between working at an academic institution. You held a number of positions in elected life, including being, when I remember seeing you first on television, Minister of Finance, Ministry of Attorney General. How did that experience outside of the academic institution help you in your role as president?
Andrew Petter 4:02
Yeah, I guess my career history, if you want to call it that has been sort of navigating between public life, that is to say political life, and between university life. Being told in both places that I really was in the wrong place, I think. Some people thought I was not traditional as an academic and some people thought I was too academic as a politician, so. But I, you know, I started out as an executive assistant way back in the Barrett government back in the 1970s. I probably shouldn't admit my lineage back that far, but it's true. I became a law professor, initially at Osgoode Hall in Toronto, and then at UVic, and then ran and became an MLA and cabinet minister and then came back to the university after serving two terms and ended up in the dean's office. So I think in fact, for this particular job I have it's proved to be very helpful to have the background that that has lived in both those worlds and seeing how those two worlds look at look upon each other because, of course, as a public university, we're very dependent upon government, we need government to support us. But we also, I think, very much need to maintain our autonomy and our mission and our academic freedom. And understanding how to navigate those waters, understanding how government can be supportive of universities without compromising university's integrity and mission, understanding how universities work and sometimes don't work, which is very different from government. I've benefited from having that that dual perspective and being able to draw on one side of my experience or another depending on the issue or the moment.
Am Johal 5:49
It seems that in conversations with your colleagues, other university presidents in that relationship in conversation with government or government is such a big funder and stakeholder. As a group of institutions, how do you see that conversation about higher education going at the provincial and federal level? There's obviously money and financial questions, but I think sort of where do you see higher education going, and what could government be doing to enhance that type of role of the institution?
Andrew Petter 6:19
Well, I don't think it's any secret that we're seeing a reduction in the share of funding that comes from government. It's not that government, at least in this province, has been cutting funding, it hasn't. It's funded our mandates for salary increases. It's providing funding to us now for new student residence, and for our new program in Surrey. But the amount of funding that's being provided is not keeping up with the costs and increasingly we're having to rely on tuition, particularly international student tuition, to the point that some people suggest we no longer should be calling ourselves public institutions. We should be perhaps calling ourselves public supported Institutions, but institutions whose main source of revenue comes from students not, from government. That concerns me. One thing about British Columbia, I like the fact that we have a slightly populous tradition where the politics is one that is robust. But I guess I'm disappointed that we haven't put education more at the center of the conversation within that political discourse. And that's not just the read - I mean, it's not because of government. It's because if you look at polling, and maybe because people assume that, you know, the education system is good in this province, and it is. I would really like to see us see education as a vehicle for social and economic progress. I mean, we're going to be facing over 900,000 jobs that need to be filled in this province in the next decade. The vast majority of the jobs require post-secondary education, university at some level. And yet we don't seem to be mobilizing ourselves to invest in the education that can allow young people and mid-career people to achieve their full potential and contribute to the economy. And for me, it's a such a natural to say we should be celebrating our educational success and investing in it, and I don't see it happening to the extent that I would like to see. On the other hand, I look outside this province at other provinces, and I see those other provinces going in a very negative direction, cutting funding for post secondary education, for public education generally. And I'm thankful that that's not the culture and hasn't been the culture in this province. So I guess we measure progress by the fact that we're not going in the wrong direction. I just wish we were going a bit more in the right direction.
Am Johal 8:45
One of the things that is very much associated with your tenure at SFU is how much you've been consistently focused on the community engagement piece and its entanglement with the teaching and research mission of the university. Of course, SFU had a long history of doing that prior, but there has been a kind of investment in that that focus of the university and I certainly going to conferences in the US, and I run into people from the northeast, they'll be like, "Oh, you work at SFU? [I] met Andrew Petter." And they talk about this part of it and you've been very consistent all the way through as someone working out of a community engagement office. What was it about that part of the mission of the university that you thought was really important, or particularly in your timing of coming in at SFU, why that was a kind of piece that you wanted to place a focus on?
Andrew Petter 9:41
Well, I don't think it's any secret that I have held a personal view for some time coming out of my experiences in both university and in government, that universities have a lot more potential to contribute to social betterment than has been the case with the sort of traditional 'ivory tower university' and by doing so, they have a lot more to gain, to gain in terms of the educational experience they can provide the students, the kind of research environment, the access to community knowledge, the ability to have community impact for researchers. But I also think that as social enterprises, which universities are, social enterprises with very important core functions around education and research, we also manage significant land resources. We have financial investments. We have a lot of talent. We have the opportunity to leverage those to be anchor institutions in our communities at a time when government does not have the resources to invest in social infrastructure or at a time because of globalization where a lot of companies that previously might have invested in communities are much less attached to any one community. Universities that are attached to communities have the capacity to step up and do more and to benefit in the process. And as I said earlier, what I saw in Simon Fraser was a university that was already doing that in various places. But it hadn't really been drawn together in a strategic way, as an institutional commitment that was core to the university. And so the first thing I did when I came here was to test my own sense of the university and we held a very extensive consultation process both within and without the university. I think it was supposed to last four months and it went on for over a year and a half. But what it surfaced was within the university, within the community, a real appetite to have the university make this a defining part of its mission. So while all universities, if you look at their strategic plans, will have some plan that speaks to community engagement. What we did was we drew that into the core of the university. We have three strategic core strategic plans within the university: one, not surprisingly, on education, one on research and one on community engagement. And the idea is that they should work together to reinforce each other. And, like doing so, I think we have shown how a major research university and we're no slouch when it comes to traditional measures. Our research income has been growing faster than any other university in the country on a percentage basis. We continue to rank number one in Maclean's by all traditional measures for comprehensive universities. So it hasn't been at the expense of our traditional measurements of success. But what we've shown is, at the same time, we can do a whole lot more for the communities we serve. And in the process, we can provide a better educational experience. In the process, we can provide a richer research environment. In the process, we can leverage our land, leverage our resources, and do so much more to benefit the community and gain benefit back. And let me just give you one of my favorite examples that's not in the education research area of how we benefit back. When in our Vancouver campus, the food services contract was up, and the traditional thing is you put it out and a large provider - because it's a lot of food - comes forward and you sign the contract, and that's the end of the story. We said, Okay, we accept that probably it'll be a major provider, although local, in this case, thankfully, who will get the contract. But we want that provider to guarantee that they will bring in other food providers: Indigenous providers, or in this case, a refugee group that does food, people in the Downtown Eastside. Let's use this opportunity to create an economic benefit for groups that are struggling in the community and help them get a foothold. Well, we did that. And it's helped those groups and guess what, we got a lot better food, because now for certain events, we have Indigenous food, we have food from Syria, we have food that wouldn't otherwise be available. So here's a classic example of how you can do well by doing good. And that's the philosophy that I think has infused the university. And by demonstrating that I am pleased that it has gained national and indeed international attention, and I think we're being looked to in a number of different ways, not only locally, but across the country and to some extent around the world, for leadership for our leadership in this area.
Am Johal 14:21
We're actually going to be interviewing Tayybeh next week on social enterprise. And I think one of the things I'd add and it's only anecdotal - I don't have any evidence to back it up - but I think that the focus on engagement has also been an incredible recruitment piece of the university in terms of faculty and staff were drawn to the institution that have an engagement focused in their own work.
Andrew Petter 14:45
Yeah, well, I don't have statistics, but I can certainly confirm that based on some of the excellent people we've been able to draw to the university. You can ask Joy Johnson, our next president, but I think the energy around the engaged university was part of what drew her here. And now she's become a huge contributor to it. And now she will, in her own way, with a her own energy and focus I'm sure add to it and all sorts of exciting ways that I could never dream of. And I think that story has been told a number of times. I think it's also you know, the other thing is, it's also it's funny how this works across the political spectrum, because by showing we're providing more social benefit, I think we have gained more social licence not only from the local community but from governments. Governments think, "oh my goodness, if we help Simon Fraser University in some way the return to the community will be that much greater," and it does help us on the margins in terms of improving I think our reputation and the extent to which people in the community and people within government and within foundations are came to support us, those at least that are aligned with the idea of the university as an instrument for social betterment.
Am Johal 16:04
Now, while you're president, the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report came out and the calls to action, the University developed, developed its own plan called Walk This Path With Us. But broadly in the post secondary sector, you must have been in conversations with other university presidents in terms of the special and important role that post secondary has to play and wondering if you can share some perspectives on how the the calls to action have been brought into the university and how you see this playing out within higher education broadly in the Canadian context.
Andrew Petter 16:39
Yeah, well, this. Let me just back up a little bit and say, I think, while I had many strengths, one area where Simon Fraser University was not keeping up with the times or with what other universities were doing when I first came here was in respect of indigenous programming and rights and recognition. So we started to work on that and made some real headway. And then the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report came down. And I remember Justice Murray Sinclair's quote, which I'll paraphrase. It was essentially "education got us into this mess" - referring to the whole process with residential schools - "and education is what's going to get us out of this mess." And of course, many of the recommendations spoke directly to universities and to the education system more generally, and the responsibility we have as institutions that excluded First Nations in the past. And I think to the extent we didn't exclude them by edict excluded them by virtue of lack of support, lack of programming and a whole range of other barriers that existed. And so when that report came out, it provided an opportunity for us to then take I think another step and I felt to do that ,we really needed to have a process in which Indigenous people within the university and outside were directly involved and their voices would help to guide us. In moving forward, we allocated some significant strategic funding that we had available. And we were very fortunate, we had a wonderful board member who's now our chair, Chris Lewis, from the Squamish First Nation who joined with our Dean of Education to lead that process. And again, it was one of these cases where the process initially was supposed to be a fairly short term process. But it became the process itself became a major reconciliation exercise, an important time for people to talk about what was wrong and what needed to be done within the university, within society and what we could do and the recommendations that came out of that, the Calls to Action came out of that have informed us. Now, other institutions across the country and Universities Canada, as the umbrella institution for other universities, are certainly doing their bit on reconciliation as well. And I think it's an issue that thankfully, the whole post secondary sector is seized of. And we're far from perfect, but I'm very proud of the way we went about it. And I think we've made some major headway already. I'm hoping that we may make some more even in the next few months. I'm hoping there's a process right now to identify a site for our First Peoples Gathering House on the Burnaby campus. I'm hoping that we might not only identify the site, but perhaps have secured the funding. We'll see how that goes. We've expanded our Indigenous Students Centre, we have a very wonderful, unique program in our Beedie School of Business, an executive MBA targeted particularly at building capacity in Indigenous business and Indigenous leadership. And we're doing a lot in First Nations language preservation and restoration and revitalization. And those are just a few areas where I think we are making some real headway and of course, one of the wonderful things that happened In the last 10 years was we became the custodian of the wonderful Northwest collection of Northwest art, Northwest coast art, Indigenous art at the Bill Reid Gallery. So a lot of things have been happening, but it's the first few steps on a much longer journey.
Am Johal 20:15
Each year SFU does very well in the rankings for comprehensive universities. Number one, I don't know how many years in a row...
Andrew Petter 20:24
11 of the last 12.
Am Johal 20:26
Okay, just in case anyone's counting. One area that perhaps asked if you could use a little improvement on or has been identified is around the student experience itself at SFU. And I think one of the challenges it there's an opportunity as well, I guess, with the three centered campus but wondering how that aspect of the rankings that have been identified as an area for us if you to improve how you've approached that question or an investments that can enhance those pieces.
Andrew Petter 20:58
Yeah, and this is an area where I'm frankly disappointed that we haven't made more headway. There are reasons why having the kind of student experience that would move us up in the rankings is a challenge for us. I mean, we're not a kind of Ivy colored covered liberal arts college where people are in residence and there's a strong, embedded sense of community. We're a commuter campus where students come and go. In fact, we're three commuter campuses where students come and go, we have traditionally and continue to admit students from a much broader demographic profile than some other universities. And that means many of those students are working one or two jobs on the side or they're single parents. They don't have the luxury of time to spend on the university campus that they might otherwise have, because they have economic and social priorities to attend to. So for all those reasons, it's more challenging and I would say that the campuses have not been designed, much as I love Arthur Erickson's architecture, he was not an architect that designs sort of places indoor spaces for social engagement nearly as well as he did majestic outdoor spaces for convocations. So we have been trying very hard to address that we have a Student Experience Initiative that has tried to do that. There's some major infrastructure improvements that I think are going to help a lot, particularly in the Burnaby campus where a new Student Union Building thanks to our students' support is going to open in the next few months, a stadium where you'll actually be able to come and sit down when you watch athletic events or a concert that might be held on Terry Fox field. I think another component is we've overcome some hurdles and barriers that were thrown our way to be able to build 850 units of single residence housing for undergraduate students, in part due to our own ingenuity, in part due to a new provincial government program. We are very hopeful of getting a gondola link that I think will be transformative.
Am Johal 23:07
It seems really popular. I remember seeing you give a speech at the Board of Trade where that got the biggest reaction.
Andrew Petter 23:14
Yeah, it's getting a lot of reaction and there's going to be a major public consultation process in which I hope people will participate. Our students are very engaged. They have a campaign called 'Give Students a Lift'. Traipsing up and down the mountain is a challenge even in good weather, but when there's snow or there's heavy traffic, and people have to wait for three or four buses, it's just since not a good way to transport students. So that plus the fact I think that we are doing more to provide really exciting alternatives for students and community-engaged education, international opportunities and the like, over time, we are seeing gradual improvements. And you know, if you look at the student experience through some of the surveys that have been done from graduates in this province, I think we do rela-. well, no, we don't do relatively well, we do well, but not relatively well, compared to say University at UVic where I was at UVic, previously, as you said, as dean of law. UVic is much more destination university, many more of their students live on campus, the campus environment provides more social amenity. And therefore there's more sense of community. And UVic will inevitably have, for those reasons, an advantage. But I think this means that to try a little harder, I wish that we made a bit more headway than we have in the last 10 years, we have made some. I know Joy Johnson has said this is going to be a priority of her presidency. And I think we've laid some groundwork that will help but some new energy for a new president and the rest of the university community I think will help us make even further headway.
Am Johal 24:53
Now over at the SFU campus. It's a it's a fascinating presence that SFU has had there. I think you will Minister when the 'Tech University' was going to be...
Andrew Petter 25:02
The Surrey campus.
Am Johal 25:03
The Surrey campus and just the growth of the city itself, where it's eventually going to be have a larger population than the City of Vancouver itself, how would you characterize SFU's presence in SFU, just being on the SkyTrain line and all of that it has an incredible vitality to it.
Andrew Petter 25:21
One of the things I'm really proud of I gave a talk on this last year at the University and City Building is SFU's involved in three distinctive forms of city building. I mean, it's extraordinary for university to involved in one, but we're involved in three: up in the mountain, we've got UniverCity, we're building the community, it's going to be about 9,000+ people where I happen to live right now. Downtown Vancouver, we have nine facilities now. We have very much I think contributed to in rich environment in the Downtown area. And that was the Vancouver Sun about a decade ago called go that referred to us as the 'Intellectual Heart of the City.' And out in Surrey, we have been the catalyst for a remarkable transformation from a struggling suburban area called Whalley into what is now Surrey City Center. And the story here I was in government as Minister of Advanced Education when Bob Williams and Bing Thom - Bob Williams at the time was the chair of ICBC, Bing Thom, visionary architect that he was having, of course, passed away a few years ago. But they came to my office at the time there was I just became Minister of Advanced Education. My predecessor had passed the legislation for a new technical university at the time had suggested it might be located farther out in Fraser Valley and Bing and Bob came and said, "Minister, if you decide to locate this technical university at the Skytrain station, it was what was then called Whalley and if we were to take a shopping mall that was in serious decline and not raise it to the ground but actually raise the roof on it and turn it into a mixed use facility, which combines a shopping center, an office tower and a university, this could not only be a very exciting facility, but it could be the start, the catalyst, for the transformation of this area into a urban center for not just Surrey, but all of Metro Vancouver. Now I didn't understand until much later that that, in fact, was a vision that went way back and some of the plan, regional planning in Vancouver. So when I applied to be president of SFU, or was thinking about applying, I went to the Surrey campus. And you know, you're used to as a cabinet minister to be told things that don't always happen. I don't want to disillusion you, Am, but it does happen that people come and pitch your stories and then they don't materialize. But I went out to Surrey and I saw that what Bing had talked about was actually happening. That the municipality had rezoned the area around what was now Central City. And of course, TechBC had been taken over by SFU because the Liberal government that came in, I think very intelligently, because a tech bubble had burst decided that a free standing University was not the best model. I congratulate them for that decision because they offered it to SFU and my predecessor had the courage to say yes, and it became the third campus of Simon Fraser University. But then the municipality rezoned it, they decided to move their City Hall there, a public library there. Private capital came in to develop residential and commercial space. And now of course, more, most recently, we had federal and provincial support to develop a whole new building, one of the last design by Bing Thom. We've got provincial support to put a new Sustainable Energy Engineering building in there. And the province has recently announced two commitments, one for an algorithms sort of quantum algorithms institute to be based at our campus, not an SFU facility, but one that will really position BC is a leader in quantum computing based at Surrey, and associated with that, a commitment to develop Surrey City Centre as an urban hub with a technical corridor out into the Fraser Valley. So this this is Bing Thom, this is what Bing Thom said would happen. Bob Williams at the time had planned to move the ICBC offices. That didn't materialize when the government changed. But the basic concept of a mixed use facility involving an office tower, a university and a shopping center, energizing the community in this way was something that they both shared at that time. And it's just so extraordinary to see how successful that's been. Now there is one irony in this. I am told by my architect friends, that the idea of bringing together different uses and having them achieve things that are greater than the sum of their parts is part of what's called Vancouverism. And yet, probably the best thing example of Vancouverism is out in Surrey!
Am Johal 30:04
You know, being a university president's a big complex institution. There's a lot of things sort of coming at you and geopolitical events happen with Canada and other countries that affects grad students. We have Coronavirus happening right now. We have snow days whether you're going to call the snow day or not. On Twitter, things can get pretty active. What did you find the most difficult thing about the job as you journeyed through it?
Andrew Petter 30:31
Well, the basic rule on snow days is whatever decision you make is, in retrospect wrong. It is infuriating and trying to figure out the best decision and the reason I say that is that you can never please everyone and it's a very difficult call, we want to keep the university open. But on the other hand, we also want to take account of people who can't make it or inconvenience or might run a risk of trying to navigate roads. And it isn't always getting up Burnaby mountain, they may be students who are located out in the Valley where the snow conditions are very different than they are in Burnaby. Yeah, universities are complex organizations. They're a bit like they have this a political dimension to them. They're very decentralized. Students and faculty believe correctly that they have a right to direct the university in respect of different things. SFU was the first university to have students on its Senate, so we've embedded the idea of students having a direct role in student governance, faculty members not only participate in governance along with students, both in the board and the Senate, but if faculty members of academic freedom they're free to, to voice their opinions on anything and everything and many feel moved to voice their opinion on why the university's direction may not please them in some respect. But you know, that's also a wonderful thing. It's a wonderful thing that there's so much creativity, so much energy. People are thinking all the time about where we can do better. And I think if one approaches is that way, although the challenges can be really agonizing. We had to make a decision three days ago about whether the the major conference that we were due to host later this month for the Asia Pacific Association of International Education should go ahead. We decided it shouldn't for a range of reasons of which Coronavirus was one - well the main one. But because of the virus, we were seeing that we weren't going to get the participation from Asia, which would have been ironic for an Asian education conference for the first time in North America. Thankfully, we were able to come to an agreement to host the conference, but next year, so it'll still go ahead. But these are tough decisions. And there's lots of people in the university who will tell you before, during and after the fact why you could have done better but I take that is a sign of just how deeply people care about the institution. You know, they, if they didn't care about the institution, they wouldn't invest the time they do in telling us how they think we should do better or advising us about what to do and it's what motivates us to make to make the progress we do.
Am Johal 33:19
Yeah, I'm gonna ask you one final question, which is what was most exciting things about the job the past nine and a half years, you're not done yet. There's still another six months to go, Andrew, we'll ask those questions later. But in terms of what is it that you remember about the job that was really meaningful in terms of your time?
Andrew Petter 33:38
You know, it's really the little things that I really find exciting. There's big things I find exciting. I'll give you a few examples of big things. But these are not the and it's not the answer your question. Like I mean, we, the opening of the Surrey building and welcoming the first class there and seeing that expansion take place was exciting. Being able to work with the Student Association on a plan to bring a Student Union Building, which is so sorrily needed, it was exciting. But actually the things that really excite me, I get a news summary every morning of things that are SFU related. And almost every day, there's something in there I didn't know, and very often it's about a student or a faculty member who's doing something and about 90% of the time, it's something that is really positive. 10% of the time, not so much, maybe. But 90% of the time, it's a student or faculty member whose research or whose contribution to the community or whose new idea and innovation and I'm thinking, wow, this is really exciting. And I'm just so privileged to be part of an organization and institution in which people are getting the opportunity to do these things. That really turns... turns my crank, am I allowed to say that? And I guess coming out of the vision, the engagement vision to see - and I understand not everyone in the university feels as strong an association to that vision as some do, certainly no one feels it as strongly as I do, I'm guessing. But to see how people have stepped up and have embraced the vision are showing in different ways. This very building, which we're recording right now in 312 Main, which we just took a position in as a university to be part of, of this facility that Vancity has helped to create, and to see how our board so quickly said "yes, let's do this!" How you and others said, "Yeah, we want to be here." How we suddenly provided a platform covering community-engaged research, and to see how it's all come together and this isn't isolated. But Radius up the street or the Surrey Community Engagement Center or the First Nations Business Accelerator, I mean, these things just and I'm not doing these things. These are things that people are doing because they are inspired by the opportunity that they have within the university to make a difference. I think many of them are getting affirmation from our commitment to be an engaged university, so they know what they're doing is not seen as collateral or something off the side of the desk, unless it's the top side of the desk. And that just makes me feel wonderful. It makes me feel like wow, we are an institution that's doing things differently. And I'll confess it I'm in love, I have a love affair with this university. I have colleagues at other universities who can move from university to university from presidency to presidency, I just can't imagine it. Simon Fraser University and I are kind of hitched. That doesn't mean I'm going to interfere with my successor. I know the main job of a president when the term is done is to get out of the way but it does mean that not only my heart but I'll stay connected with this university in appropriate ways and want to be part of it and want to find out what's going on. It's such an extraordinary place and I've just loved and feel so privileged to have been part of it.
Am Johal 37:01
Andrew, thank you so much for joining us on Below the Radar.
Andrew Petter 37:04
Well thank you, Am, for the opportunity!
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Rachel Wong 37:10
Thank you again to Andrew Petter for joining us on Below the Radar this week. Stay in the loop with Below the Radar by following us on Twitter and Facebook. And be sure to subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Overcast, Player FM, and many others. And please be sure to leave us a review. As always, thank you to the team that puts this podcast together, including myself, Rachel Wong, Paige Smith, Fiorella Pinillos and Kathy Feng. Davis Steele is the composer of our theme music. And thank you of course for listening. We'll be back in two weeks with a brand new episode of Below the Radar.