Board of Governors and Senate highlights: March 2026
President Graham Carr began his remarks at the March 26 Board of Governors meeting and March 27 Senate meeting by congratulating Concordia community members for recent achievements:
- John Molson School of Business students won 2nd place at two major international competitions in March: the Belgrade Business International Case Competition and the University of Navarra International Case Competition.
- A team of students from the Master’s in Public Policy and Public Administration won gold at the National Public Administration Case Competition. It is the second consecutive year that a Concordia team has taken home the top award. The achievement marks a first in the competition’s 15-year history.
- Students from the John Molson School and the Gina Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science hosted the 13th edition of ENGCOMM, a unique case competition that combines the disciplines of commerce and engineering.
- Three Concordia PhD students have been shortlisted for the Trudeau Foundation Scholarship. They are among 32 candidates having made it to the final round of interviews, out of more than 700 applicants.
- Chunjiang An, a professor in the Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering, has earned one of Canada’s top research honours, a Dorothy Killam Fellowship. An’s research focuses on oil spill response, shoreline protection and the environmental risks of plastics pollution.
- The Stingers women’s hockey team won the provincial championship and brought home a silver medal from the national championship.
- Several Stingers players were honoured for their outstanding performances this year, including Jessymaude Drapeau, captain of the women’s hockey team, named Player of the Year by both the national and the provincial student sports organizations. In men’s hockey, Simon Lavigne became the first Stinger to win Defenceman of the Year at the national level. At the provincial level, women’s hockey coach Julie Chu was named Coach of the Year and Serena Tchida earned the Player of the Year title in women’s basketball.
- Carr welcomed the additional support the university’s Department of Recreation and Athletics (R & A) will receive after students voted in the March elections in favour of increasing the fee levy that goes to the department. The fee levy for R & A had not increased since 2009.
- Eight Concordia graduates, including co-director Maciek Szczerbowski, BFA 94, participated in the making of The Girl Who Cried Pearls, produced by the National Film Board of Canada, which took home the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film on March 15.
The president also mentioned that on April 17 Concordia will award an honorary doctorate to former White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy. McCarthy is one of the United States’ most respected voices on climate change, environmental policy and public health.
Government relations
Carr confirmed the end of Concordia’s legal proceedings against the government of Quebec over the increased tuition fees for out-of-province students, even if the university deems the increase “unfair”. Pursuing the matter further would have meant launching a new case, he explained, which the university cannot afford in its current financial situation.
The president said that the university has opted to pursue a “fresh start” with the government that focuses on the positive contributions Concordia makes to the province. He pointed to the Foire des régions, a career fair for international engineering students and recent graduates that brings to Concordia employers from all around Quebec, as an example of how the university helps its students adapt and integrate into Quebec society.
Carr announced that he would join Minister of Higher Education Martine Biron on the Paris leg of her trip to Belgium and France at the end of March. Concordia is the only anglophone university who participated in the tour, which was aimed at stimulating student mobility and during which bilateral partnerships were signed.
Finally, the president mentioned that the provincial budget tabled the week before included an increase in the overall funding to higher education. While he did not have more details at the time of the meetings, he said that he expected the benefit to Concordia to be “marginal”.
Academic matters
As Concordia looks at ways of increasing its sources of revenue generation, including through innovative academic programming, Carr said that 30 new program ideas have come forward in the past couple of months. He added that the new undergraduate programs in cybersecurity, which received formal government approval only two weeks prior to the application deadline of March 1, yielded some 400 applications. Meanwhile, the new Bachelor of Engineering in Chemical Engineering will welcome its first cohort in the fall.
At the Senate meeting, the Policy on Research Entities, a revision of the Policy on Research Units and Infrastructure Platforms, was adopted. The final version includes modifications made following discussions at the previous Senate meeting and additional feedback received from senators.
Senate also approved the renaming of the Institute for Information Systems Engineering, a unit of the Gina Cody School, to the Department of Cybersecurity and Intelligent Systems Engineering.
Finally, earlier in the meeting, the president informed senators that the Standing Together against Racism and Identity-based Violence (STRIVE) Task Force and its subcommittees had completed their work and that the Task Force’s report would be released shortly.
