Message from Dr. Henry Yu, Principal of St. John’s College
As St. John’s College entered into its second quarter century of existence in 2022-23, we took the opportunity to reflect over our first 25 years. We surveyed the over 2000+ residents who have lived at SJC since 1997, and the results were illuminating. The many alumni among you who responded overwhelmingly confirmed what is perhaps obvious, but has always been at the centre of of our mission—that SJC provided a home away from home for so many graduate students coming from around the world.
You also affirmed in both the focus groups and broader survey that the greatest thing about SJC is our communal dining. Through eating together every day, the benefits of living at SJC were the result of getting to know each other while sharing a meal. Our alumni told us that their years at SJC helped expose them to other disciplines, other cultures, and other ways of thinking. All of these came as a benefit from meeting people and making friends through shared social activities—but what was the most important activity that had the highest correlation to the benefits of interdisciplinary and intercultural learning? Those who gained the most from living at SJC were those with the highest frequency per week of sharing meals in the Dining Hall. The survey confirmed in detail the value of what we have come to call “The World Around Our Table” at SJC.
Our gratitude to all of our residents and alumni who helped shape and advise the survey, and thanks to all those who took part through focus groups and filling out the survey online. Our gratitude especially to SJC’er Edgar Liao and SJC staff Joanna Yang, Stacy Barber, and Jennifer Lu; and the Institute for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning at UBC, for creating the survey and helping make this insightful piece of research both rigorous and revealing. We are also thankful to Demet Kirmizibayrak (see the UBC news story about Demet’s role in supporting her fellow residents during CoViD) for working on the newsletter attached to this email and all of her work on alumni connections and past newsletters. We hope you enjoy the updates on what is happening at SJC, and wish Demet the best as she heads to the prestigious CalTech for her postdoc!
Knowing so clearly who we have been for the last 25 years, and what makes SJC work in bringing people together, also allows us to enter our second quarter century with the confidence to grow and to expand our impact on new generations of graduate students. We are excited to announce that SJC will be a crucial part of the expansion of graduate student housing from the current 175 beds at the site of SJC to 1508 student beds in 2028. Our own SJC residents Grace Snippe and Patrick Fung stood beside Premier David Eby and Minister of Housing Ravi Kahlon of BC, along with UBC President Benoit-Antoine Bacon on August 20, 2024 to announce the joint funding partnership between the Province of British Columbia and the University of British Columbia of this exciting $560 million project—the single largest expansion of affordable student housing in the history of both UBC and in the Province of British Columbia.
St. John’s College will anchor this growth, doubling the number of our own SJC residents that can be welcomed to the “World Around Our Table” in 2028, and becoming a core part of a larger graduate student community hub that promises to transform the lives of UBC graduate students in general. Design consultations will begin this fall, although construction will not commence until 2026 at the earliest. Current residents will continue to have SJC as our home, and we are excited that our residents, our alumni, our faculty and staff fellows, and our amazing SJC staff will be involved in shaping the future home of St. John’s College at UBC.
Stay tuned for how to share with us what you think makes St. John’s College a special community, and advice on how to maintain our core values as we enter this exciting stage of growth for the next 25 years of our history.
If you have any questions in the interim, please email us: sjc.expansion@ubc.ca.
https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2024PSFS0036-001343#
