Concordia President: ‘Our mission is to help our students succeed’

Dear Concordia parents,

In these exceptional times, I hope you and your family are staying healthy.

Given public-health guidelines and travel restrictions in the coming months, I recently announced that Concordia will deliver its fall 2020 semester almost entirely online.

Next-gen education in action

While teaching and learning online is different from in-person, Concordia is well positioned to deliver a high-quality academic experience to our students.

In a typical year, before the pandemic, our eConcordia online credit courses attracted 35,000 annual registrants.

In fall 2020, with the support of our online production studio, Knowledge One, and our Centre for Teaching and Learning, our aim is to make Concordia's online courses accessible anytime, anywhere, around the world.

Ranked as the top Canadian university for quality education by the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings, Concordia has long been an innovator in both distance and in-person education.

We want to take that innovative spirit a step further this fall by going beyond online course delivery to design an enriched virtual experience of Concordia and Montreal for our students.

We will increase and adapt our student services online to provide:

• More student advising
• More peer-to-peer and mentoring exchanges
• More virtual-learning support
• More mental-health counseling
• Stress-management presentations offered by our health-promotion specialists
• Access to virtual exhibitions, workshops and high-profile speakers
• Virtual campus-life activities and programming to foster the sense of community on which Concordia prides itself

We know that one of the reasons students love Concordia is because they love Montreal, which is why we’re also working to develop virtual partnerships with arts and cultural organizations to showcase the dynamism for which our city is known.

During the summer and throughout the fall, we will be in regular contact with our students to provide them with the latest information.

We will also send you additional updates in August, to allow you and your Concordia student to prepare for the fall term.

Our mission is to help Concordia students succeed.

Their success is our greatest pride.

I wish you all the best over the summer, and I look forward to virtually welcoming our new and returning students in the fall.

Graham Carr

President and Vice-Chancellor
Concordia University

Note for parents of the graduating class of 2020

We regret that current circumstances prevent us from holding an in-person convocation this year. We have a team working on a virtual celebration on June 18 — a multimedia experience that will offer our graduating students a way to mark this important milestone and share the moment with family and friends. For more information, please visit our CU celebrate: class of 2020 page.