Mount Allison's eastern promise
Mount Allison University president Robert Campbell likes to tell a story to illustrate the way life works at the small red-brick campus in Sackville, N.B.
After he arrived at his job last year, a group of students heard he used to run a reading group at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario. Less than a week later, about 25 students had read a selected novel, Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden, and were eager to discuss it-over dinner at his house.
"It all happened in a matter of days." Dr. Campbell remembers. "It just projects the whole way the community works together here. You get that sense of community that you just don't get at a big school."
Mount Allison, another standout in the University Report Card survey, is one of a handful of small schools on the East Coast that have built a name for themselves that extends beyond their province and exceeds their size. With roughly 2,000 students-all undergraduates-Dr. Campbell boasts that even after only a year on campus, he can greet many of the students by name.
The school also has a strong alumni network-something it relies on to help fund its small-campus model. Between 10 and 12 per cent of the university's operating budget came from its alumni endowment last year, which Dr. Campbell says is the largest in the country on a per capita basis.
Mount Allison is best known for its arts, fine arts and music programs, but has a strong reputation in the sciences, as well. Class sizes tend to be smaller than on other campuses and most courses are taught by full professors rather than part-time instructors or graduate students.
Dr. Campbell, a native of Montreal who did graduate work overseas in London, says he understands the excitement that going to school in a big city can bring. (One of his own daughters just started at York University's Glendon College in Toronto, while another is a Mount Allison graduate.)
Still, he argues the atmosphere at Mount Allison and the range of people on campus with different interests means students get a rich experience. And because nothing in Sackville is that far away, he says it is easy to do lots of different things.
"In a place like Sackville, there are just more hours in the day. For a student living in a smaller community, there is a lot of time to do many things."
When it comes time to get a "city fix," Dr. Campbell says the Moncton airport is close by and Halifax is a few hours drive.
Like other Maritime universities, such as St. Francis Xavier in Antigonish, N.S., Mount Allison attracts students from outside the province and the region. Between 30 and 35 per cent of its students come from across Canada and abroad.
Their numbers are likely to increase given forecasts of a decline in the university-age population for the region. Indeed, in the past few years, declining enrolment has sent student numbers down and forced the university, which charges some of the highest tuition fees of any public university in Canada, to get by with less.
In response, Mount Allison is using a number of targeted methods to get the word out to potential students. A website-mymta.ca-features student profiles and blogs and short films made by students last fall. Mount Allison also hosts events, such as summer conferences, designed to get high-achieving student leaders to campus.
"Recruiting students is my top priority," Dr. Campbell says. "We can talk as much as we want but if we don't have the students, we don't have the revenue or the raw material to be doing what we want to be doing here-educating people."
