#SenecaProud

Pat Perdue  00:00

President David Agnew, thank you so much for joining us on our podcast today. It's such a delight to have you here.

 

President Agnew  00:06

Thank you. I'm delighted to be here and this is great. I'm going to enjoy the conversation, I know.

 

Pat Perdue  00:10

Hey, I'm Pat Perdue and I want to introduce you to my latest podcast. This is a co-production between my company YCastr and Seneca College in Toronto. Seneca College is a really great school. I know because over the past couple of years, I've been teaching some marketing and business and customer experience courses there. People come to study at Seneca from all over the world, which makes it a hotbed of innovative thinking. And a big part of that thinking is driven by our amazing faculty, many of whom are well like me, professionals, who are thriving in their own businesses, and teach at Seneca as a way to share their passion for what they do. But needless to say, I've been hugely inspired by the people I've met. And what happens when I get inspired? Well, apparently, I launch a podcast. So here we are. Welcome to the Seneca Proud podcast, where I get to introduce you to some of Seneca College's amazing faculty. So subscribe, download and join me as we meet some of the super inspiring folks who teach here at Seneca College in Toronto. I'm Pat Perdue, and I'm glad you're here today.

Hey, welcome back to the Seneca proud podcast. And yeah, you totally heard right. Our guest today is Seneca College President David Agnew. And not only do we talk about all the really exciting stuff that's going on at Seneca, we also get to learn about what it is to be president of a college. 

Before we get into the conversation, I wanted to share with you some factoids about David Agnew. Before becoming our fifth president of Seneca in July 2009. David was a secretary to the cabinet and head of the public service in the Government of Ontario, Canada, from 1992 to 1995, after serving as Principal Secretary to the Premier of Ontario.  Pretty cool. And he was a prior president and CEO of UNICEF Canada, and he was also Principal in the consulting firm, Digital Foresight, where he led the firm's global initiative on governance and the digital economy, exploring the impact of technology on government and democracy, how timely.  And he started out his career back when he was in high school, as a newspaper reporter in Toronto, then in St. John's, Newfoundland, and then Ottawa and Edmonton. Pretty cool. Right? 

David welcomed us into his office during the first week back for the winter semester. January and September are really interesting and exciting times to be on any of the Seneca campuses; tons of activities, particularly for students who are getting started with their academic life at Seneca. And this January in particular, brought with it some really exciting developments at Seneca, which we touch on in our conversation. What I was really curious about, though, in addition to everything else that's going on at Seneca was President Agnew's career trajectory. I thought it was pretty neat that he started out in journalism, and then decided to take a turn at a certain point in his career. The idea being that if you're a student listening to this, or even if you're not a student, and you're still figuring stuff out, life might point you in a direction that you didn't expect. I love the idea that President Agnew went with that. And clearly it worked out. And that's where we started our conversation. Here is today's Seneca Proud podcast guest, the President of Seneca College, Mr. David Agnew

So you started out as a journalist.

 

President Agnew  03:48

I did, I started out with the Toronto Sun covering High School sports. And then I continued that career and I went down East to work. I had an epiphany. I knew that if I stayed in sports too long it would be very hard to break into the news side. In that point in my career strategy the pinnacle of journalism was political journalism, and being in Ottawa. So in other words, being the columnist for The Globe and Mail, so I knew I had to break out of sports. And as grateful as I was for that opportunity, I decided to go to a small paper, not a Toronto paper, because I knew that I'd be doing virtually everything. And sure enough, I went to St. John's to work. And within six months, I was covering the legislature. I was interviewing the Premier; I was covering major disasters that were happening.

 

Pat Perdue  04:46

Do you draw from that experience today?

 

President Agnew  04:49

I say, you know, it's funny. I think I can draw thread through all my different stops in my career and draw strength from all those things. I mean, as anybody in our Communications and Marketing department will tell you, I'm an irritatingly resilient editor. And I don't ask anybody to write things for me.  I do that myself. One of the things, and I remember this very vividly, I’d gone from the Toronto Sun, I went to a smaller paper, but I was doing a lot of stuff there. And then I got a job with the Canadian Press, which is the wire service and serving all of Canada. I was working there for the editor and got my first copy back. And oh it was full of corrections. Really, it was a learning.  It was a big learning. And that's the old style, kind of plain language, get to the point, tell the story. Because in the old days, in the old old days, when they used to have to send stuff by telegraph, you had to cut it from the bottom. So in other words, all the vital information had to be in the top end of the exchange. So this wasn't, beautiful prose. We weren't writing novels. We were “just the facts, ma’am” kind of writing. To me, that still is a good, a kind of just tell them what they need to know.

 

Pat Perdue  06:13

And you know, what I love about your story and your trajectory is a lot of folks listening to this are at a stage in their lives, where they're wondering what they're going to do. At that time, when you set out to be a journalist, did you have a sense that you would be the president of a college?

 

President Agnew  06:28

No, I used to believe in career planning, so I had this plan when I was young, it's very deliberate, kind of, All right, so, here's the way the dots are going to work; I'm gonna get this, I've got started in Toronto, I've got this smaller paper experience, give me a broad perspective on a whole bunch of things. I'm going to go to the wire service, and then I'm going to, and then very clearly planned out completely.  And then it went off the rails, and it stayed off the rails. And I have, since the age of about, 21 not had a career plan. My mother used to say that I couldn't keep a job, but, I've had amazing opportunities and experiences. So yes, I'm very grateful. But  it hasn't been, you know, I haven't been reflecting on that, “what's my next move?”.

 

Pat Perdue  07:25

Is there a learning that you would impart for those who are listening that are almost, maybe at the end of their Seneca journey, and either they have a really solid idea, but even for those who don't necessarily have a solid idea of what their next move is and they're a little stressed about it? 

 

President Agnew  07:41

No. And I understand that, because I've had one period of kind of cloudy clouds in the future and it's  always been someone who's had to work. I just share part of  what was drilled into me. I understand that uncertainty. I mean, if I could roll back the clock when I was young today, I would look around and say, oh, my gosh, there's an awful lot of opportunity. You know, these baby boomers are getting out of the way, change is afoot. This is  a very exciting time to be launching into one's career. But I guess, you know, this is not original advice, but we are going to see people's careers changing more rapidly. Oh, yes. I mean, I had that experience. I didn't just change jobs, I changed fields. Of course, part of that is the attitude and the enthusiasm and the confidence with which you approach those opportunities.  There will be opportunities. And I've always pushed back on, measurements of success of an educational institution by are you working in the field you train for, because I think part of the magic today is that we don't want… I trained to be a nurse, but now I'm an entrepreneur making widgets. And I think that's fantastic. Because what employers are telling us and what the world is telling us is, it's great to have the skills and the training and the kind of the credential and X, Y or Z, but what they're looking for is all those kinds of what we call soft skills, you know, the critical thinking, the problem solving, the teamwork, the collaboration, all that kind of stuff that allows you to be flexible as the world changes.

 

Pat Perdue  09:16

And in the conversations that I have outside of Seneca a lot of the organizations don't care necessarily as much about your experience because they know that the role that you're doing within the company is going to change. They hire for fit.

 

President Agnew  09:28

They do.  I mean we do get different messages from different employers and part of the challenge I think today and we’re probably guilty of this ourselves is, you put a job spec out there, you know, I was about to say ad, but of course nobody does that anymore. However, you disseminate this information and it says you know, X number of year’s experience or x y credential, and particularly if humans aren't involved in the process, you can be just sorting out some really terrific people. And that's part of the challenge, how do you get to those opportunities? So the consistent advice I do give to people when they ask my advice on these kinds of things, is it’s all about the network. I've never had an opportunity that I didn't connect with because of the network. I'd like to think that I earned it on my own chequing account. And I can vote on my own accounts, but I wouldn't even have known.  I can tell you, I wouldn't have known about this position but for somebody I knew who had been on the Board who said, hey, you know what?  Seneca is looking for a president and wants you to throw your hat in the ring. 

 

Pat Perdue  10:39

You know, I was going to say it was as simple as that. But you make it sound a lot simpler than I'm sure it was. But that's a really interesting observation about the reality. I think of projecting yourself into the future, that you want. Let's talk about Seneca College. As we record this, this is Orientation Week, in the winter semester, and there's a lot of buzz, lots of excitement happening throughout the halls. Walk us through what's exciting for you these days, as you look into the horizon of Seneca. 

 

President Agnew  11:09

Well, it's very real and recent. We just opened a brand-new building at our main campus at Finch and 404 in Toronto, and it's the Center for Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship, and it's going to live up to all those words. And those are three big words, and you know, huge, and the buildings aren't even finished.  We're still putting parts of it together. But we started classes, we started labs. And what's exciting is that we're starting to put in place the kinds of spaces that we need to get that collaboration, that interdisciplinary learning and teaching happening, creating opportunities for members of the community to come in and innovate and are entrepreneurs, which we're getting legions of from amongst our students and the community to practice and to learn and to try and to, yes, fail and to pick themselves up. So it's a very exciting time, because over these last few months, we've opened up two huge, huge new spaces, and it's not about the bricks and the mortar and never is.  It's about what happens inside, but just also about creating the spaces where that can happen.

 

Pat Perdue  12:22

Now, has the design of the space been impacted by the intended purpose of the buildings?

 

President Agnew  12:27

Oh, completely. Absolutely. And there are two quite different buildings at two different campuses. But yes, absolutely. And part of the joy is that these are purpose-built spaces as opposed to something Oh, we got to make do with. No, no, now we actually sit down with a blank piece of paper and say, how would we build A in the case of this building that I was just referring to at our main campus? How would we build an innovation center if we could do it from scratch? And you know, what's adjacent to that, where there's the, as they call it, the makerspace, or we're calling it the garage where you can actually play with and start to build, the prototypes, where there is the relationship to the researchers, and the faculty are going to be so helpful and all that process.  We can do all that.  How do we show it to the world? How do we showcase it with the appropriate, glass walls and visits in so we could excite people walking by and saying, oh, I could do that, too. So yeah, that's how you do it. If you've got the luxury, and we're fortunate we did to start from scratch from inception. I'm going to call it, it's open now.

 

Pat Perdue  13:31

It's just opened. How long was that process?

 

President Agnew  13:38

Oh, it's incredibly short. I mean, it was sort of two-ish years. In fact, what's ironic is that the two buildings we opened within months of each other, were on completely different time tracks for various reasons I won't go into but the one at our King campus up north,  west of Toronto, is an amazing building where we've got our nursing labs, we've got a great new student center, we've got great athletic facilities all under one roof. But yes, it was on a very much kind of slower, more deliberate track. This one, we just flew like the wind, and it's, it's great,

 

Pat Perdue  14:17

What contributed to your ability to fly like the wind in this one, what was happening? What happened? Was it the momentum, the dynamics that enabled you to pull it off?

 

President Agnew  14:25

Well,  we have a great team, who put together the actual the design, the plans and everything, but it was also very collaborative.   And, I think that's a really important point, because this is again, goes right back to what's the future and, and how our students who are graduating today and next year and so on, in the world they're going to be in and what are the skills they need? So part of that stress that we have now on crossing boundaries, is saying, look, it's not going to be good enough simply to be The School of Engineering, you're going to need some business. In fact, we've been doing this in some of our programs for years.  It's interesting, because you go all the way to the creative field and say, years ago, it was quite apparent, with the advent of technology that you weren't going to wait around to be discovered by Sony Records, you're going to be your own agent, your own producer, right? I mean, you know, as the wave of technology hit photography and our photography courses, in our broadcast, and just the way that people now had to be responsible for so much more than they used to.

 

Pat Perdue  15:32

The art part of it is the starting place. And the business of the art becomes the thing that people do. Yeah.

 

President Agnew  15:40

And I mean, there's obviously a negative side to the kind of gig economy, but of course, in some of the world's careers and professions, that is the reality it's actually the way it does work. All of which says to us, well, then we've got a responsibility to make sure that you're equipped with the skills that you can be your own agent, your own marketing firm, you've got to keep your own books, right. This is a different world. Part of the great interest and fascination of this place is that we've got so many programs in so many areas. There's no One Note Johnny here, right? We're all over the place. And  that's what makes it fun and exciting.  You're sticking with the collaborative aspect of it and the cross pollination from one program to the next.

 

Pat Perdue  16:24

What are the chairs, the co-ordinators, perhaps doing differently in order to facilitate an ongoing culture of cross pollination?

 

President Agnew  16:40

It's interesting, it does depend, I mean, people are being in general, much more deliberate and intentional about that.  But you know, I know, for instance, at King campus, they're saying, well, but wait a minute, under one roof, we have police foundations, we have social service workers, we have people studying, you know, infant mental health. What if in a simulation, we brought four or five programs together, because they're all going to be part of a journey in the real world of what happens when, you know, the police knock on the door and find something inside? Well, the social workers need to come in the nurses need to come in the aftercare needs to happen. What if we started to bring everybody together in these, rather than just running it in little silos? Because that's, that's the way it happens. That's exactly that's the way it's going to happen out there in the in the work world.

 

Pat Perdue  17:33

And how are you being informed by the world outside of Seneca in terms of the partnerships or the industry partnerships or the disciplinary partnerships that are contributing to that mindset?

 

President Agnew  17:43

Yeah, it's really interesting. There are three sort of main ways that we connect to that other world out there, which gratefully from literally day one of this institution, is the connection with industry. But we do it in different ways. Obviously, we've had an emphasis on co-op, internship placements, what we now fancily referred to as work integrated learning. So, in other words, making sure that during their program, the students will have a chance to actually work in the field that they are studying for. And that takes many forms. But we've always had that connection with the employers. So that's, that's real time data coming back to us via the students about what's out there and what they need to know, to be working in those fields. Every one of our programs has a program advisory committee, which is made up of the people from that industry or sector of the economy that we're serving. They're bringing us again, very real time information on what should be in the curriculum, what their labor force needs are, and so on. And very critical. This is our faculty, because we have lots of full time faculty who have been here for many years, and are very dedicated, committed, we also have lots of faculty who are coming in on a part time basis. They've got a job they're working. But they're giving us, and we're very grateful for it, a few hours a week to bring their knowledge and expertise, whether they're coming from a studio, an office, a plant, wherever it is. And  I've seen this in the classroom, someone coming in literally saying, this is what I dealt with this morning. And that's real.

 

Pat Perdue  19:17

And it's exciting. As a faculty who you've just described, it's really exciting to be able to share that with students and to be able to say, this is how relevant this is because I was having this conversation around a boardroom, just yesterday afternoon, and this is how it went.

 

President Agnew  19:33

Students are over the moon and they love that of course. I mean, we've got these multi-layer relations relationships with some of our employer partners. They're hiring our graduates. They're hiring co-op students, they're giving us equipment in some of our programs that again, is the stuff that our students will be using. And once they graduate or go on a work term, so it's those relationships that are absolutely crucial to our success.

 

Pat Perdue  20:11

And I'm putting myself into the mindset of somebody, either here in Canada or overseas, that's weighing their options. Where do they study? And there's a lot of good choices out there, we've been discussing a lot of the innovations that Seneca is doing.  What might set Seneca apart from some of their other options that would help them make an informed choice?

 

President Agnew  20:31

Yeah, you're absolutely right. One of the things that, I travel a lot, and one of the things that we should be very grateful for in Canada is we have a very high quality, for the most part, public education system. And  you know, I say that with pride as a Canadian. And right now, we are, as you know, attracting a lot of international students. And there's a whole bunch of factors out there, but part of the decision making, absolutely, is that they know that they're gonna get a quality education here and potentially an opportunity to stay, which is not unfortunately, the walls, you know, the doors are closing around the world.  The walls are going up.

 

Pat Perdue 21:09

Yes. Yes. Literally. Absolutely.

 

President Agnew  21:13

I say that as a preface, but of course, I'm very proud to be part of this institution, where it is a sense that we have somebody come in to do some branding discussions with us. And part of the feedback after lots of discussions with students, with faculty, with staff, with administrators, with employers with, you know, our kind of stakeholders was there's this kind of Seneca thing, and it's, this is where you get a little bit skeptical, because I mean, how do you put that in a marketing piece? But anyway, it stems from, I think, I'd like to even think it might go back to our origins because we were from whole cloth,  there wasn't a predecessor organization back in ‘67, that we kind of built on the foundations.  We had a chance to start from scratch. And I think that's probably an important reason why we feel that kind of Seneca thing. I mean, the faculty, the staff here are enormously committed. There's a sense of loyalty and dedication. But look, I've never stayed in a job longer than about three and a half years.  I’m reaching my 10th anniversary here. There is something very special about this place. I mean, we've been known (and I again, I can say it without making a personal boast, because it's really all the work of my predecessors), we've been known as an innovative institution, really, almost from the get go in terms of our commitment. We've also been known as an educational institution. So in other words, the breadth part of this has always been very important. Sure, it's expressed itself in different ways over the years. And, there's now this big focus on soft skills and so on. But I think inherent in what Seneca has always wanted to make sure it's offered students is that sense of it's not just about the credential, or the piece of paper or the accreditation from the professional association. It's got to be broader than that. And we are, in the words of our founding president, “creating engaged citizens”, not simply people who can deal with, automation in the workplace.

 

Pat Perdue  23:21

You mentioned that you travel a lot. I'm going to change gears just a little bit. And talk about a day in the life of the president of a college. What do you do, what occupies your day?

 

President Agnew  23:34

Part of why it's interesting and fun is there aren't too many days that are a carbon copy. While I'm on Friday of this week, I'm heading off to Sri Lanka and India for a week or so, doing partnership visits, so opening some new doors and new relationships. on the education front in those two countries. I could be meeting with faculty, students, staff, obviously, I'm nominally in charge of running this place.

 

Pat Perdue  24:09

And so there's that.  You do have a day job.

 

President Agnew  24:13

I've got that day job. You've got to have the administrative meetings, the executive meetings every Wednesday and so on. I started the day with phoning a donor to thank him for a very generous donation. Last year, just before the years changed, wee had a senior executive meeting, I mean, I'm talking to you; and later going over the calendar; I'm trying to get some remarks together doing a keynote speech in India. So I'm trying to get my head around that. So every day is different. We spend a lot of time dealing with government, because they're an important part of our lives.

 

Pat Perdue  24:56

And policy impacts a student's experience here at Seneca.

 

President Agnew  25:00

Absolutely and while we’re in pretty good shape in terms of our relationship with the policymakers, it was a time of change. In Ontario, we have a relatively new government. They're our most important government in terms of our daily lives and operations. But the federal government's also important, and of course, it's an election year. I mean, I'm a partisan person. But I find myself engaged in these discussions a lot, because they matter to us.

 

Pat Perdue  25:40

And without your presence at the table, the conversations may go in a different way than would be best for Seneca I imagine.

 

President Agnew  25:45

Well, yeah, at the end of the day, you know, I love public policy I'm involved in. In fact, in my kind of volunteer side of my life, I'm involved in a couple of organizations, you know really just to keep my, hand and my mind sharp on those things. And I always find a way of relating it back to Seneca. But at the end of the day, my job is this institution. And I've got to make sure that our interests are respected, and our interests are served as much as they can.

 

Pat Perdue  26:17

And, you and I first met at a graduation ceremony, and you spent much of that day shaking hands. And I was curious, this morning, I was thinking about our conversation sort of in advance and thinking, well,  what am I curious about? And in this case, I wondered, how many hands might you shake in the course of a year? Have you ever done the math?

 

President Agnew  26:39

No, no, I haven't, it would probably bring sharp memories, because it's always the least suspected character who gives you the hardest handshake, who basically makes your knees buckle. But no,  I have to say, those are the highlight of the year for us absolutely, at Convocation.  And I always say to people who are going to their first one oh, you know, what's it like?  How often do you get to go into a room of you 1,500 absolutely happy people. It's such a celebration. And you see the pride of the families. We have a lot of what we call first generation students. And by that we mean, their parents and grandparents, they didn't ever get a chance to go to postsecondary education. It’s a huge accomplishment. For them, we have so many of our students work part time, some of them have family responsibilities. Some of them are coming from modest means.  This is really, really big. And it's such a privilege, very emotional.

 

Pat Perdue  27:48

And thank you very much for your time. I have one last question for you. If I had a magic wand, and I could grant you a wish, in the next 24 months, with regards to Seneca, you can make it a personal wish, if you want. But with regards to Seneca, Seneca’s direction Seneca’s vision, what might you ask me to grant you with a magic wand?

 

President Agnew  28:11

Well, I'm going to be responsible in the context, even though this is a magic wish and realize that these are times of fiscal constraints. We're not going to get,  $100 million in capital funding from the government. But to be the institution that we really want to be for the future and to serve the needs of our, first starting with our students, one of the things that would be greatest, if we had a lot more kind of flexibility, we have a lot more autonomy to make the decisions that we need around programs around credentials and so on. We've got,  I don't want to complain, but we've got stuff sitting in the approval pipeline, that that should be on our calendar and accepting students today. And that's what we're good at.  You know, we can respond to what the students need, what the economy needs, what the employers need. But I think we need to be given that kind of running room so we can be responding. Because we've got the ingredients, right. We've got the great faculty; we've got the great relationships with employers and the community. Of course, we've got, the students in great numbers and continuing to come. But of course, it's the magic that happens when you put all that together in a great curriculum and a great program and make it happen.

 

President Agnew  29:31

Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. 

 

Pat Perdue  29:33

And that was Seneca College President David Agnew. Not only is he the President of the College, he's also a really, really nice guy. And I love how we talked about the “Seneca thing” that vibe that energy that creates this unique Seneca pride and loyalty to the college. And when you're here, you can totally feel it. And what great advice regarding building your network, for students who are listening. The Seneca faculty is a great place to get your professional network started

And hey, did you know that this Seneca Proud podcast is available on iTunes? If you've got an iPhone, just go ahead and launch the App Store on your iPhone, search for the podcasts app, download it, and then open it up. Once you're there, just search Seneca Proud and subscribe. For Android users. It's pretty much the same thing. Download any podcast listening app including Google podcasts, search Seneca Proud and then hit subscribe. Then every new episode will be sent directly to your phone. I'm Pat Perdue and this has been the Seneca Proud podcast. Thank you for listening. Until next time, stay proud Seneca.