Forty years at Concordia University

 

A speech delivered by Professor Frank Chalk, Department of History, on May 12, 2004, at the Long-Service Reception.

Rector Lowy, Mr. Benedetti, Chancellor Molson, friends in the administration, faculty and staff. It is my honour to address you on this, my 40th anniversary at Concordia.

Nineteen sixty-four was an exciting year to arrive here. Sir George Williams University had rented offices and classrooms in the building on Drummond St. north of the Norris Building. The beat of the belly dancers at the bar on one side of the building and the Gypsy violinists of the Tokay Restaurant on the other side reverberated through its narrow downstairs hallway.

Just a few blocks away, under the watchful eyes of Principal Robert Rae, Douglas Burns Clark, Jack Bordan and John O’Brien, the foundation of the largest university structure in Canada, the Henry F. Hall Building, had recently been poured.

This was pretty heady stuff for a newly minted assistant professor moving from his first full time job, a post at Texas A&M University, where undergraduates traded guns, not hi-fidelity stereo equipment, and halls were adorned with ads for chrome-plated 45-caliber automatics, including some with two spare magazines.

Three advantages drew me to Montreal: I could immediately introduce a year-long course about the history of Africa, a new field not yet taught at 99 per cent of the universities in North America, although it was already being taught by Donald Savage at Loyola College; the Sir George Williams math department offered my wife, Jean, a teaching position, so there were jobs for both of us; and thanks to Steve Scheinberg’s cleverly planned tour of Montreal, replete with thrilling stops for bagels on St. Viateur St. and croissants at Aux Delices,

I fell in love with Montreal. Mind you, Steve never warned me that I would gain 10 pounds in my first year here. Forty years is a long time to encapsulate in five minutes, but let me try to remind you of the high points:

• The exhilaration of erecting greatly expanded academic departments on the firm foundations established by our predecessors and the flood of original ideas which arrived with new faculty every fall, a thrill we are experiencing again.

• The serendipitous merger between Sir George Williams and Loyola which brought to my department treasures like Mary Vipond, Bob Tittler, Geoff Adams, Walter Van Nus, Graeme Decarie and Ron Rudin.

• The planning and completion of the expanded Vanier Library, the McConnell Library Building, the Richard J. Renaud Science Complex, and the Psychology Building.

• The introduction of smart classrooms and the vigorous support provided by Instructional and Information Technology Services.

• The evolution of a Concordia University administration led by Rector & Vice-Chancellor Fred Lowy which encouraged innovation from below, respected the academic enterprise, and built the bridges that secured government and private funding to help us become as good as we could be. We still have a long way to go:

• We must raise the priority of library funding within our budget and mobilize donors to provide bridge funding for library development until government recognizes its importance.

• We must expand and extend our internship and co-op education opportunities so that more of our students truly possess a real education for the real world.

• We must devote more resources to improving the writing ability of our undergraduates even if that means tying up resources in small writing seminars for first-year students. What is Concordia about? Forty years of participation and experience lead me to these conclusions:

• Concordia is about conveying skills to people, especially people who are often the first in their families to attend university.

• Concordia is about talented individuals, be they brilliant scholars like Jane Stewart, Renaissance women like June Chaikelson, or first-class secretaries and departmental administrators like Donna Whittaker.

• And Concordia is about innovation, new horizons and dreams that can come true, not just for students, staff and faculty, but for the sake of humanity.