 I can give you an update, the video link between Spy Hill and Foothills will be updated in December. So we have another six weeks to go through it. They were planning on doing it next year, sometime March, April. And Ed Stafford and Emma and we all made quite a bit of fuss about that. It's going to happen during Christmas holidays. Hopefully that will be a New Year's gift for everybody. In January, we will get on with a more proper linkage between the two sites that we have. Thank you very much for your patience and thank you very much for coming in today, where we are going to talk about launching the strategic planning process to think through some of the possibilities, opportunities for the next five years of our faculty. This is a slide from my presentation that I made in March 2016 as part of my interview process. At that point, I was imagining that in the first three months of my job, I will undertake series of meetings with the community within the faculty and outside. Starting on September 1 until today, that's what I have been doing. During this period, I have met with a large number of students, staff, faculty and our partners in the DVTH community. In addition, I have been taking meetings with fellow deans, university officials and trying to understand their perspective about the faculty that we have. In addition, I also had meetings with the Alberta VMA, Canadian Veterinary Medical Association Leadership, American Veterinary Medical Association and also with the Council on Education that does the accreditation of veterinary medical programs. The last component was the provincial agencies. At that point, it was a bit of naivety on my part that I could go and meet with all of them within two to three months of me starting at University of Calgary if I were to get the job, which I did. I understand that University of Calgary has a well-structured process. When we approach any provincial ministry, you have to go through the central system before you can meet with a deputy minister and so forth. That process is working out. We are following those steps to set up some meetings with some of the colleagues who are our stakeholders. During these meetings and I thought after these meetings, I will come in front of this community and present my understanding that I have gained from all the interactions with the staff, student and the faculty. And I was imagining of doing that between three to four months of starting as the dean and then I was imagining that between fourth to the sixth month of my appointment, we will undertake a process to refine our objectives, our goals, our priorities. It seems that you have been very effective in bringing me up to speed that we are about a month ahead in my proposed schedule in March that I spoke to in this room. So, thank you very much for that. Now, based on many discussions, the observations that I have are as follows. The faculty that we have is very unique. The community that makes this faculty is exceptional. The passion of the staff and the faculty and the students and our stakeholders for the growth and sustainability of this faculty is second to none. Which is fantastic. The DVM education that we provide to students is second to none. And the graduate program that we run in this faculty are of very high quality. The research that the staff, student and faculty undertake is very impactful. It is already influencing the policies. It is creating solutions for complex problems and it works very closely with the industry partners that we have. Therefore, within a ten year period, we have accomplished. You have accomplished. I am the new person here. Significant amount of work to put this faculty on a global map just to be one among the best that we can have in Canada, North America and probably around the globe. During these meetings, many of you have also told me that the amount of work that you have put in over the last ten, eleven years is leaving you with fatigue. You are exhausted. It is not easy to establish a faculty from scratch, set up the program, have it accredited, have the graduate programs, bring in tens of millions of dollars in funding and graduate large number of MSc, PhD and DVM students. So I understand that. During those discussions, there has been conversation around renewing our vision, looking at our curriculum, reviewing it, revising it and also the culture of collegiality, transparency and inclusiveness. Many of you have spoken to me about that. That we need to work on building a team across various disciplines, departments, research groups and also the physical footprint that we have within this building at Spy Hill and across the DVLC where our students go. It is not an easy task to accomplish. Silo's develop, when there is a faculty located in a single building, we are located in multiple places within the city and across the province. So there is a desire to develop a more cohesive and a unique identity of the faculty within the city in Canada and across the globe. And when we look at doing that, we cannot accomplish that without building the teams and developing more cohesiveness among the people who make this faculty, among the people who make the community that we call UCVM. So therefore these are some of the observations that I have after discussing with all of you. I hope I captured it right. I reviewed all of my notes over last week which run into about 150 pages now. But so this is the summary that I have. We can have discussion about it. I'm sure over the next few more months I will continue to meet and learn and maybe some of these observations will change. But that's where we are today. And the foundation that we have is exceptional. I commend you. I commend Dean Alastair Cribb for doing all the work for the last 10, 11 years. This is a slide that I presented. This is the framework I call it. It's covered under that little window up in the right-hand corner. I always imagine that the administration has to be collegial. It has to be simple. The purpose of having administrative setup, department heads, associate deans and the deans is to provide a level of service to the faculty, staff, students that they can fulfill their professional academic goals of delivering a program and growing as academics in their careers. And the research, teaching, and the community engagement to achieve excellence in that cannot be done in a day. There are universities that are 600 years old and they're still trying to achieve a level of excellence which is better than what they have today. Therefore, what we are trying to accomplish is the very beginning phase of defining excellence in battery medical education and biomedical research. And lastly, the foundation that we have in place. We need to solidify it. Ten years is a very short period of time in the life of an academic institution. Some of the colleagues who come from European or Asian countries they know that academic institutions have been, universities have been in existence for centuries. So we continue to build on the foundations and we always remain careful that we don't create unnecessary risk and we continue to grow in a positive manner. So we have to have a vision and a mission. Then we need to develop a strategy. Then allocate resources in proportion with what we have so that we don't exhaust ourselves trying to achieve a goal which is beyond our resources and physical capacity. I'm a believer in that. Now, why do we do strategic planning? What is the reason for that? One thing is that we always plan. We plan for our children, retirement, our death, and variety of things. We are always planning. Now, lastly, we really only one slide with animation and it doesn't work. And it was not even much of an animation. Because the world which is around us always changes and I firmly believe in that. Calgary of today is not the Calgary that was 20 years ago. Western Canada is not what it was 50 years ago. And the world around us is not what it was when the Berlin Wall was still up. So things do change around us. This is my favorite graphics I always show. If you compare the research output through publications and patents between G7 countries, that's Canada, USA, Germany, Japan, UK, France, and Italy, and the BRICS nations which is Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Korea, and South Africa as well. You see in 1992 the ratio of publications between BRICS countries and the G7 was 1 is to 12. We are down to 1 is to 2. The number of patents that define our prosperity, innovation, jobs, trade. It was 1 is to 6 and 92. We are down to 1 is to 1 now in 20 years. When you look at investment in research infrastructure in India and China and multiply that by 2.5 billion people, I guess this ratio is going to change very quickly in the next 5 to 7 years. So once you change the scientific knowledge creation process and the intensity and the level of that process, the economic levels are going to shift. So how do we capitalize on the world which is changing around us? We could make the argument that veterinary medical faculties are so small it doesn't matter what we do. I beg to differ from that. If you ask a beef rancher in Alberta, she or he is looking at our faculty to create innovative programs, research policies so that the animal food production continues in a meaningful way, profitable way that trade routes remain open to India or China or wherever the beef has to go. We have a major stake in growth in these countries because that's where the demand is. So how do we develop relationships in these places to grow our connections, collaborations, scientific outputs? So this to me is a telling story as to the change in 20 years. Now why do we again do the planning process? We need to align ourselves with the mission that we have. Quite often we drift away from the foundational mission and the objectives of the institution. We need to look at that and see as to what we are doing today is aligned with the foundational mission of the UCVM. And then identify again our core competencies because competencies change with the change in the staff, faculty and the resources. And the values also undergo change because people from multiple cultures, disciplines, places come together and that brings a shift in what we are as a community. And then setting priorities, allocating resources, working as a team towards common goals is important. What more is important is that this type of process enables us to be quicker at grabbing opportunities out there. To be the first mover or a quick follower in the game for innovation and creativity because this type of process allows us to look deep in ourselves and understand what our culture is. And culture is not simply getting along together. Culture is do we drive innovation and creativity? Do we set higher goals for ourselves and for our students? Do we go beyond simply asking our students to pass the Naveli exam and pat ourselves on the back? So that allows us to develop a culture of innovation and creativity for ourselves and for our students. And the last part is very critical to me to disrupt something that we are doing. Not simply disrupting because we want to change something. It's a very planned and thoughtful disruption of something we have been doing for number of years. A, because we may have met our goals. B, it's not relevant anymore. C, we tried it, it doesn't work. So for a variety of those reasons, the strategic planning process allows us to disrupt something and build something new. We hopefully will keep that in mind as we undertake this process that we are about to start today. And the context is very critical, what is around us and how do we relate to everything. Now, setting up the process. Since many of you spoke to me about inclusiveness, collegiality, transparency. So I undertook a process where I spoke to the leadership council that is department heads and associates about launching such a process. Then I sought their advice and wisdom how to constitute the committee and each of them from their departments provided me with a couple of names for including in the leadership, in the steering committee. I took those names and I got them approved by the leadership council and this is the list of the members of the steering committee that we have. There are two members from each department. There's a postdoctoral fellow, there's a representative of managerial group as somebody from the AUP group. In addition, we have Colleen Ferguson doing the support, communication and large amount of work to make this process happen. Because we are not experienced in doing the planning processes, we have Mr. Marty Hague who has exceptional experience in facilitating and guiding these types of processes. Now if you look at the membership of the steering committee you will see colleagues who are newer versus those are established. There is gender balance, there is representation from various groups from within the community. Now DVTH, DVLC, Alberta Veterinary Medical Association they all will be engaged by the steering committee. Steering committee is not going to write a report in isolation. There is a huge degree of consultative process that I'm going to talk about in a minute. So that's how we set up this group in a very collegial, consultative and transparent manner. The initial steps are that the process will be widely consultative but that doesn't mean it will be a slow process. I don't do slow very well. It will be an efficient, nimble but an effective process. Many times people spend years developing a plan by that time the world has changed again and whatever is planned is old. So we need to be quicker with that. Today with this presentation we launch the process. The online survey is going to be up and running right now as we speak. There are five days to complete the survey and then the retreat will take place on December 3rd. That's the first one on a Saturday, full day retreat. By that time the data from the survey will be analyzed, presented to people who will be at the retreat on December 3rd. A new idea is that we are going to send a notice to the students for competition. The veterinary medical, graduate students, interns and the residents and the post-doctoral fellows will be asked to give us their innovative ideas. They are the one who experience our academic program. They will have 500 words to define an idea. Right back to the steering committee, there will be a competition. The committee will pick top three innovative ideas either themselves or through some consultative process and we will recognize those ideas with awards from the dean's office. They can write these ideas individually or in groups. So this is bringing in their input into the planning process that we have. There will be focus groups, opportunities for meeting with the committee. I would encourage that if you are doing work in community engagement in Calgary or in northern communities that you might want to get together as a group, make a submission through the committee so that you are talking about a theme, an idea that resonates with the full faculty not your own individual program. That is the onus on my colleagues to marshal this group gathering activity and generate the idea in a robust manner, in a consultative manner, then give it to the committee. You can also ask the committee members to come to your group meeting, your departments and even to you as an individual. Either the whole steering committee or couple of members will come, listen to you, take in your presentation and get back to the steering committee. It's a two-way process. Steering committee will have some ideas to consult but you are also free to invite the committee to your office, to your lab or to your department so that they can listen in your ideas that you have. So therefore, this consultative process hopefully will bring up some ideas that we can all get behind and then we can allocate some resources next year in the spring and get on with the task of execution of the plan as we will do. So, just the initial steps that we have listed on this slide. My role as a dean is to simply coordinate the process as you would have noticed. None of the department heads, none of the associate deans is a member of this committee. I did it on purpose because it has to be very grassroots consultative process. Associate deans are going to act as the resource people for the steering committee. They need any information. The associate deans and the department heads will provide that to the committee. The report is due on March 15th. We have booked a venue for March 30th to release the report so it has to be done by that time. If there's no report on that day we will announce that the steering committee didn't do its job and we don't have the report. So it has to be ready by March 15th. The process and the outcomes are going to depend on your involvement, your engagement. There's no other way for me to say it. And let's get involved and I'm going to see my invitation again. If there's something you want to tell me, you want to see me, set up a meeting, Mary is always there to find time in my calendar to meet with any of you or individually or as a group and I'm very happy to undertake those meetings. I'm on the road quite often visiting with the veterinary practices. I have done about 10, 12 of those now. I will be going to Edmonton next week to visit another half a dozen on my way. So I'm trying my best to meet with as many people as possible to gather up the information about our faculty from their points of views. Lastly, I'm very thankful to you for your tremendous support. Not only you ask me how I'm doing, you also ask me how my family is doing because it's very important. It's not only me moving to Calgary to become a dean. I have a son and a wife as well. So really thoughtful of you to make an inquiry to how my family is settling in, how my son is doing. I really appreciate that. It means a lot to me. And I think I could not have picked a better faculty to come and be a dean. So thank you very much. I stop here. Mr. Marty Hague is here. If you have questions about the process that we plan to undertake, any questions about the planning process itself and any question that you might have for me, I will be more than happy to answer those. Thank you so very much.