The race for the rectorship is officially launched at Laval University. On the starting line, two candidates who clashed in the last election: former vice-rector Éric Bauce, who was beaten in 2017 by Sophie D’Amours, the outgoing rector who is now seeking a second term. . The university community will deliver its verdict on April 13. The newspaper met with both candidates ahead of the ballot.
The former number two of Université Laval, who is once again trying to get elected as rector, is betting this time on a renewed vision of his institution, which he wants to modernize thanks to a new mode of management based on collaboration and collegiality.
Éric Bauce was part of the senior management of Université Laval for ten years as Executive Vice-Rector, until 2017.
This professor of forest engineering nevertheless today takes a dark look at his alma mater. The institution has walled itself in a “bureaucratic” and “pyramidal” style of management, guided by a “monarchist vision” which has led to a need for “control” and a “lack of transparency” which serve a logic of ” competition,” he says.
Ironically, his opponent Sophie D’Amours made similar criticisms of senior management in the last rectorship race, which she won five years ago.
At that time, Mr. Bauce had begun to become aware of this dysfunction but he had not yet identified the solutions, he explains.
He now sees his defeat in the last election as a “benefit” which allowed him to “take a step back” from the organizational structure of his institution, in the light of the collaborations carried out abroad during the last years.
A new mode of governance
The former vice-rector is now proposing a new mode of management based on “collaboration” and “collegiality”, two key words that will come up several times during our interview.
To achieve this, Éric Bauce proposes reducing the number of vice-rectors and expanding the management committee so that professors, employees and students can sit on it.
“University leadership should respond to the demands of the community rather than the other way around,” he says. The enlargement of the management committee would also “eliminate” the “culture of opacity”.
This new mode of governance would make it possible to avoid certain “errors” recently committed by the management of Laval University, starting with the support for the controversial Laurentia project of the Port of Quebec, according to him.
“It is not the role of the university to take a position in this way,” he says.
More collabs
The university would also benefit from expanding its collaborations externally with other institutions, as researchers do on many research projects, rather than maintaining the competition that currently exists between institutions, adds- it, referring in particular to the establishment of a campus of the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières in the Vanier district, in Fleurs de Lys.
Mr. Bauce also affirms that the “collaborative management” that he wants to put forward “will transcend all ways of doing things”, which will make it possible to lighten the administrative structure and reduce the accountability process.
Result: teachers will have more time to devote to their students, he says. He also promises to improve the resources dedicated to their supervision in the faculties.
Éric Bauce also asserts that online education, which is here to stay, must be better regulated. A course that only includes texts to be read and work to be done is “unacceptable”, according to him. “The level of interaction with the teacher is very important,” he says.
Mr. Bauce also wants to offer contracts over several years – five years for example – to lecturers, which will motivate them to improve the content, he says.
In terms of research, he considers that Université Laval is losing ground, compared to other institutions, and wants to tackle the bureaucratic heaviness to remedy it.
“What I’m told is that people are setting up projects but it’s taking so long (before getting the necessary approvals) that we’re going to do them elsewhere,” he says.
“I want them to be able to debate, to engage and to want a collective life. We, the universities, are there to provide space for construction. That excites me a lot.”
How is Laval University doing?
+ 4.2%
- Increase in the number of students enrolled at Laval University at thefall 2021 compared to the previous year, compared to 0.6% for the provincial average
+ 44%
- Increase in research funds by $357 million in 2017 and of $515 million* in 2021
- From 8th to 7th rank in the ranking of the largest research universities in Canada
*Data being validated by CAUBO
University rankings: a more mixed picture (over 5 years)
- Of the 372nd to the 414th position: QS World University Rankings
- of the 12th to the 9th position: Maclean’s University Rankings
- Status quo (category 250th – 300th): Times Higher Education