Regis Duffy

Primary tabs

Slide - 50 Years, 50 Voices - Regis Duffy - 00:00
My name is Regis Duffy, and I returned to Saint Dunstan’s College in 1962
and I was of course there until 1969 when UPEI were formed and I was the
first Dean of Science at the University.


Slide - Forming the University of Prince Edward Island - 00:24
Well, Saint Dunstan’s had been in business for a hundred years, it was
totally financed by the Diocese of Charlottetown and everybody was pretty
much a volunteer, I mean, when I came back, I think I got a thousand
dollars a year, that would just about pay for the gas in your car and it
was very clear to me and to the younger faculty that, you know, Saint
Dunstan’s didn’t have the financial resources to take the University
into the modern era. Well the whole occasion of joining the, you know, two
colleges together was the main, you know, topic under discussion and I
think I was impressed by how smoothly it went, really I mean, people
predicted, you know, one disaster after another but they didn’t show up.


Slide - Senate, the Early Days - 01:28
The Senate was the guiding body in the University and the three deans,
Roger Black was the Chairman of the Education department; and Ken Osman,
was the Arts Chairman and I think and of course, myself as Dean of Science,
the main, I think challenge was to get you know the rules of the University
in place because it was a new university I mean there was no tradition of
faculty doing this or that, or something else and I think one of my roles
was trying to get the research, you know funding for research and try to
support the faculty that were in that area. 


Slide - Ron Baker: UPEI’s First President - 02:18
Well I mean you know a gift to the University was Ron Baker and he was a
very experienced academission. He had just finished building Simon Fraser
University and he was an eminently a university person. He knew the
traditions, he’d be in the universities for years in Canada, he knew all
the University Presidents in Canada and he was the guiding light in setting
up the Senate and you know putting rules and traditions in place that he
had been very familiar with. So I think, you know he was the key person in
terms of input into that organization.


Slide - Science and Engineering - 03:06 
Prince of Wales College had been hiring a group of people you know they
were, the last couple of years they were there and they were preparing to
be you know part of a university or an independent college or whatever and
so they had hired a group of very well trained and very well educated
people and for example in the Chemistry, I had you know four PhDs in
Chemistry and I think they hired three so all of a sudden we had seven PhDs
in Chemistry and that was quite a phenomenon in PEI actually a little place
like this. Lawson Drake was the Biology Chairman at the time and I think
Dr. Lynn was the Physics part of it and Engineering was a part of the you
know Science of Faculty program at that time but I found that the you know
two faculties melded together well. One of my talents I think is trying to
get people to talk to each other and to be civilized and try to focus on
the students rather than the faculty because you know the students are the
clients and I think it is much better to talk about what they need than
what the faculty needs, sometimes, not always of course for that’s a
rather cynical approach to reality but I think it’s correct.             
  


Slide - Equipment and Computers - 04:32
We bought a lot of important equipment during the first six or seven years,
like NMR-Nuclear Magnetic Resonance- spectrometers and electron microscopes
and things of this sort and these were mostly research instruments but if
you have a you know group of young faculty members, if you want them to do
research then they have to have the tools to do it. And I think also the
computer part of it was important and we didn’t have a computer at SDU or
Prince of Wales, so we were lucky to get you know an IBM 1640 from UNB and
it was a second hand machine of course backing tubes, a few thousand vacuum
tubes in it, and we were very lucky to get Charles Dawson from California,
Stanford Research Institute, it was a non-profit organization it was spun
off by Stanford about 1970 but he and his wife Jane came up and he had a
strong background in mathematics and computer science and provided a
wonderful program and help for a couple of years and then he, they,
Stanford had a research, had a program where they would let faculty go for
a couple of years and they would take them back and they would restart
their studies again. So I think we were very fortunate in that area because
it was pretty difficult starting from zero and of course this machine we
got from UNB had one megabyte of hard disc and now a days your watch
probably has more megabytes than that but it was a very big challenge to
get the University’s computing system working and I think we were pretty
successful at that.    


Slide - Research at UPEI - 06:31
When I was the Dean of Science we set up a Senate research fund that would
finance a lot of the, you know if you want your young faculty to do
research then you have to provide them with the tools but I think the
arrival of the National Research Council building here was a major, you
know a major thrust. I think Wade MacLauchlan was very instrumental in
getting that building here and it had cooperation with Canada Agriculture,
their lab is down the street, so I think that was very important but in
terms of research probably the Vet College was the most important
contribution because most of their people were in the research field, they
were in Applied Science, you know Veterinary Medicine so it was a different
thrust, a different direction altogether but it had a very strong influence
on the Science faculty in terms of the kind of research that would be
expected of them to do.


Slide - Atlantic Veterinary College - 07:37
Well the Vet College was an important part of the history, I mean Ron Baker
and I spent a lot of time lobbying for the Vet College. It didn’t appear
in my day, I think it was a little bit later but it was probably the major
addition to the University during our time and there’s only four of them
in the University and they brought a very different tradition, I mean there
were our Graduate school programs and they developed Master’s and PhDs
and they had a very important role in developing faculty because most of
the, a lot of the people that they hired, you know had faculty experience
at other institutions. So I think they had a very positive effect on the
whole, total University.


Slide - UPEI Music Department - 08:29
Well when we were setting up the University, you know there were various
departments all the traditional ones of course but in terms of the Music
department there was a question of whether the University could afford it
or if they should, you know, set it up and Ron Baker and myself were very
strongly in favour of setting it up because we thought that could make a
great contributions to the community and I think, you know if you take a
look at the music world on PEI, I think the Music department here has been
very visible throughout the community they have trained a lot of teachers,
they played a lot of kids, and when you take a look at the Arts area in
Canada, including music, theatre, stage, music production there’s more
people working in the Arts area in Canada, then there is in Forestry and
Agricultural areas so you can’t complain it’s not providing jobs
because it is.


Slide - The Institute of Island Studies - 09:44
The Institute of Island Studies has made I thought, has a major input in to
communications with the community and I mean they have looked at various
communication issues between the Government and the University and
they’ve also provided some studies for the Province, in various areas
like the Tourist business for example, you know they had done a fair amount
of research because they are fairly research oriented. I mean they
haven’t, and it’s been taken, it was a stand alone Institution but it
was kind of taken under the wing of the total University faculty over this
past ten years so I think they have been an important part of the
communication tools.


Slide - Final Thoughts - 10:37
Well I think the University has made good communications with the community
and I think that’s a very important part of the Institution’s role,
they also kind of institutionalized the role of the community and expanded
it you know include about twenty five percent international students so I
think for this community that was a wonderful thing to do and I think it
has a very positive and wonderful effect on the students also but I think
the, I always felt the connection of the University to the community and to
communicate with the community has always been a very important function.