Leadership one-on-oneMatthew Evenden

ME: Integrity paired with vision matters most for me. Without integrity, nothing else matters, but there also needs to be a sense of direction and purpose.

ME: I laugh quite easily at a range of things, but when I need a serious laugh to take some time off, I enjoy watching the British quiz show, Would I Lie to You?. The comedians and situations are hilarious. 

ME: My teachers. I think of high school teachers like Mr. Lindahl and Mr. Urquhart who taught me history and biology, and university professors like Colin Duncan, Elinor Melville and Viv Nelles who taught me environmental history. I was lucky from the start to go through BC’s excellent public system and to learn from teachers who challenged and inspired me.

ME: I think UBC represents something unique in terms of the sheer breadth and variety of the subjects our researchers and scholars engage and excel in, and in the connections we build across these subjects. We have strengths across the board, but it’s a unique blend. Also, our geographical position is distinct — where we are located in the province, country and the world creates all kinds of opportunities at UBC and for UBC in the world.

ME: You don’t know what you don’t know! To make better decisions, you need to talk to others and consult to gain a better understanding.

ME: I enjoy travel — both locally and internationally, although I haven’t been doing that much lately. I also love to walk in the forest with my family and our dog.

ME: Have the courage of your convictions. You might not always carry the day, but it’s good to know you stood up for what you believed in.

ME: I really value collaborative colleagues who are able to communicate well with one another. That allows us to pursue the big goals we set as a team with clarity and purpose.

ME: I would like to make UBC an even better place to conduct research. Part of this vision is to help to bridge some of the gaps that we inevitably experience in such a large institution, between disciplines and Faculties.

ME: While I’d love to have many superpowers, if I were to narrow it down to one, I’d choose the ability to talk to animals. Caring for my dog would be so much easier for one, but just imagine the additional insights we would have into our world and our place within it.

ME: Innovation is sometimes defined in strict commercialization terms, where you make a discovery (for instance, a technology), apply it in the world and then try to license that technology or spin-off a company. While this is a hugely important aspect of innovation, and UBC is a great generator of ideas and creating impact in the community, there is more to innovation than this.

Innovation is also about fostering enterprise among students and colleagues and nurturing external relationships with partners. At UBC, it’s about knowledge exchange as well, and this involves engaging the community, contributing to policy discussions and sharing ideas in a reciprocal manner. In this sense, there are many ways in which UBC contributes to innovation in society and important public debates.

ME: It is certainly true that all of our research community has been impacted, whether that has been through being unable to conduct in-person research projects, restrictions on access to labs or an inability to use library resources fully. One of the big things that COVID-19 has reinforced is how the research environment isn’t experienced equitably by everyone. We have seen how early career researchers, women and racialized faculty have been particularly impacted, and we must focus on how a full re-engagement of research can be done in an equitable fashion, recognizing the many factors that have impacted each one of us very differently.