When a student arrives at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, they might think the next few years will be all about their art.
And while they will indeed graduate with enhanced skills in their chosen field, there’s another type of learning that has been going on in their classrooms and studios. Their teachers have urged them to be critical thinkers, to explore ideas and push boundaries.
Whether they end up with a career in the arts or explore other opportunities, it’s that ability to challenge themselves that excites the university’s new president and vice-chancellor, Gillian Siddall.
Asked to describe an ideal graduate, Siddall says, “I would want them to have developed critical thinking skills — that they’ve learnt how to identify problems and ask the right questions to solve the problems.”
Not only has this approach made Emily Carr grads so desirable among future employers across a diverse range of fields, but the strong communication skills that complement critical thinking help us “make sense of the complexities of the world in which we live.”
Siddall is no stranger to those complexities. An accomplished jazz vocalist who helped to establish the Guelph (Ontario) Jazz Festival in the 1990s, her music had to play a secondary role as her academic career advanced. Luckily, when she joined Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, the chair of the department of English was a jazz guitarist and they performed at various gigs. (She has an upcoming album with Newfoundland pianist Bill Brennan.)
She also made sure that her love of music infused her own studies; her most recent publication is Negotiated Moments: Improvisation, Sound, and Subjectivity. It examines how subjectivity is formed and expressed through the act of improv, a university press release says.
Improv is also part of her leadership approach.
“Good improvisation requires listening well to the others with whom you're making music, or whatever it is you're doing, and working together to make something sound amazing,” she says in her university profile. “So it's not one person leading; it's really people working together.”
Art and academics merged when she left Lakehead University after 18 years, including six years as Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, and joined the OCAD University (formerly the Ontario College of Art and Design.) Her first assignment was as interim provost, but she later became provost and vice-president, academic.
“[Today] to be in a creative space like Emily Carr is a great joy and it brings the creative side of my life together with the professional side,” she told the Courier. “I’m excited. It has a fabulous faculty and staff and students are the heartbeat of the university.”
She’s also pleased to be part of a culture that shares many of her values, especially those about decolonization, transdisciplinary learning and research.
“I know I will be thrilled by everything I learn from the people here,” she says of her goals for her time at Emily Carr. “It will be amazing.”
