Arthur Fallick - 2015-04-07 - Kwantlen Polytechnic, Surrey

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Arthur Fallick - 2015-04-07 - Kwantlen Polytechnic, Surrey

Simon Fraser University Library
Holly Hendrigan, Interviewer |
SFU Library Oral Histories | Tech BC Memory Project

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Holly Hendrigan: This is Holly Hendrigan of the TechBC Memory Project. Today is

April 7, 2015, and I am interviewing Arthur Fallick: , Associate Vice President of Research at Kwantlen Polytechnic. We are having a face to face conversation in Arthur’s office at Kwantlen’s Surrey campus. Hi Arthur.

Arthur Fallick: Hello, Holly

I am here to ask you some questions about your experience at the Technical

University of BC, which offered classes in Surrey between 1999 and 2002. So first of all, what year did you begin working at TechBC?

Arthur Fallick: I believe it was 2000. My memory is a little bit hazy on that

but they hadn’t been going very long. I think they had been in operation about a year. We were in the offices up at Guildford. So that was before we moved down to the Zellers space that became the footprint for Central City. So I think 1:00we can probably get the time by moving backward in terms of the goofy spaces that TechBC inhabited along the way.

Hendrigan: Now you mentioned to me that you ended up as VP academic but do you

remember if that was your job title?

Arthur Fallick: No no no I was never VP academic. I was the Associate Vice

President for Faculty and Academic Affairs, and the Vice President Academic was my boss.

Hendrigan: Alice Mansell

Arthur Fallick: Alice Mansell

Hendrigan: And where had you worked before?

Arthur Fallick: I began with the Open Learning Agency. I was cross appointed, I

had a position as a research associate at UBC in the Centre for Human Settlements and I was working at the Open Learning Agency. And the reason that 2:00those two coincided was because two of the people at ubc were formative in my academic career. Peter Oberlander was the head of the UBC Centre for Human Settlements and Walter Hardwick who created the Knowledge Network and was a VP--he was a chair of the board, or one of the board members at the Knowledge Network and at the Open Learning Agency. And the two of them over the years had kind of nurtured me. And at the Open Learning Agency the registrar at the time was Susan Haglund, who became an associate VP for Student Services at TechBC. And it was Susan who put me on notice. There was an advertisement in the newspaper for a position at TechBC and I contacted Susan and asked her if she 3:00knew anything about the position or if she thought it might be something that fit my skills. And in a very very fast track process I met with Alice I think the following week and because they were building fast and furious at the time Alice was under a tremendous amount of pressure. They were trying to recruit faculty, create the courses. And the problem was the first year had already begun. And they were developing the coursework and they needed to get that all done so the students could move in and get the space done. And Alice was extended every which way from Sunday. And I had an interview with her and came on board as a Manager for Faculty and Academic Affairs. And within a reasonably short period of time, became the Associate VP. 4:00

Hendrigan: OK. Associate VP-Academic. And, as the Associate VP Academic,

what did you do for the most part?

Arthur Fallick: It was the Associate VP for Faculty and Academic Affairs and the

large part of what I did was on the recruitment side. And there were two different categories; it was a fascinating process of recruitment because as you know, TechBC had no faculties, no departments. It was a new model that was an attempt to bring together one innovative crucible in electrical engineering, computer science, business, and interactive arts. All with a technology focus to it. And the idea was that we didn’t hire individual faculty members into a position. We put out calls for recruitment and we would attract half a dozen 5:00people and we’d get them to come at the same time. And we spent three or four days with them, and it was always made clear that you’re not here to compete with one another and you’re not here going after a specific job. We’re trying to see if you fit with what TechBC is trying to do; can you work in an interdisciplinary environment; can you interact with colleagues. And can you help us build. Because a normal university, you’ll come in; the curriculum is already established. You’ve got a teaching load, a research load. We were doing everything from the ground floor including the design of the space and building the curriculum. everything. So a major part of what I did was to organize all of that.

And there was another category: they were called LSAs. Learning Support

Associate. Many of them were graduate students; they were kind of instructors 6:00but it was an odd category. But some really phenomenal people. People finishing up PhDs, people who were in graduate school or had just graduated from graduate school. They were doing instruction; they were doing research with the faculty. And there were a whole cadre of those people and I looked after them. So that was another specific task that I had.

And a lot of it was building a culture of research and scholarly activity and a

culture of how the faculty could work together and with all the stresses and strains that were going on, to work very closely with Alice. And I’m a facilitator and an enabler, and so that’s a large part of what I did. We would have, at the beginning of every semester, we’d get together. People would call 7:00it, instead of a retreat, was an Advancement. And we kept inventing terminology for all the things that we were trying to do. So we’d have an Advance instead of a retreat. So we’d get together, and to really promote the idea that TechBC was something new and special and dynamic and hadn’t been done before.

And it was an amazing experience going to work every day. There was just a buzz.

And we were in the second or third floor of an office complex trying to become a university that was unlike any kind of university that had been done before. It wasn’t the...this was no Silicon Valley kind of thing, it was in Surrey 8:00preparing for something that...people weren’t quite sure what it was going to look like but they knew it was going to be new and innovative and really dynamic.

Hendrigan: So you were reporting to Alice. And, but if we sort of go higher

up the ladder, where did the, who wanted this university to be as innovative and groundbreaking and different than it was? Was it the President, or even further up in the government chain, do you think?

Arthur Fallick: This is where the, the heresy probably comes in. The

original idea came with the NDP, came with Bob Williams when he was President? of ICBC? He was certainly…

Hendrigan: Chair

Arthur Fallick: Chair of the board maybe? Something like that. Recognizing that

there was a significant opportunity for BC to be a real player in technology. 9:00And that was the first time there was recognition of the knowledge based economy as something that BC could be a leader in. But the antecedents of it were people like Daniel Bell when they were writing about the post industrialist society in Vancouver while it didn’t have many of the Headquarters of the resource based companies was beginning to have a fairly significant presence in terms of technology. When we were at the open learning agency Electronic Arts opened up in the building right next to us. There were a whole bunch of--Crystal Decisions,

Hendrigan: Creo

Arthur Fallick: Creo, all these companies were beginning to have a real

presence. And I think Bob Williams had the foresight to recognize that the post secondary sector could have a very significant role there as an attractor and at 10:00the end of the day, an innovation incubator for R & D. And so that was very specifically given to us as the vision and the mandate for the university. It was certainly promoted by Bernie Sheehan but i would have to say that it oozed in Alice’s veins. I mean, she really understood that. Tom Calvert and Alice Mansell, as the two, the VP Research and the VP Academic. It was so clear that that was a brand new area that we were moving into in British Columbia.

Hendrigan: And, so can you go into a few more details about what you wanted

to do differently at TechBC?

Arthur Fallick: Okay, the notion that research and development could occur by

11:00bringing together expertise in business, in engineering, in computer science, and in interactive arts, in new and different ways using technology as the medium through which we could incubate innovation. Very very different model from what the faculty that we were recruiting were used to. They were used to working in departments, they were used to being part of a faculty, they were used to doing their curiosity driven research and making strides but largely through their continued personal efforts. And this was a very very different and radical environment at TechBC. The idea that we would have no departments, no 12:00faculties. We wouldn’t have offices; we would have creative spaces that could be customized for a given project, whether it was to design the curriculum or to work on research initiatives. And we customized spaces where faculty could come together in pods, work on creative ideas, and when that particular project was over, we could split them up and move them around. And this whole idea that you were continuously building as opposed to growing roots was a significant change and a radical shift for some faculty. But they were some of the leading pioneers in the day in technology and the use of technology and and in research as well in education. So they had a bit of a flair for the unusual anyway. And I 13:00remember doing the interviews and Steve Di Paolo who is still around was being interviewed for his job by a panel of us. He was in California and he came on the TV with the image of an avatar. And I can’t remember quite what it was but I think it was an animal’s head, his voice. The lips were moving, the whole thing was working and then he was tied into a group of friends and all these avatars popped up and he was talking to them about the kind of research he did and the kind of work he did with them. And you imagine the risk this guy was taking when he was interviewing for this job. And he wanted to come up from California; he was excited about the prospect and it was absolutely mind 14:00blowing, the way that whole interview process went. And then subsequently he would come up and then he interacted with the others who would be around for three or four days doing presentations, listening to presentations, looking around. We--it was an exhausting process but I’ve been doing some work recently with a guy in the city of Surrey in the economic development department in the city of Surrey and he said to me that SFU’s SIAT group had asked his department to go to lunch. And they were essentially making a pitch to the city that they could be a research and development arm for stuff that the city wants to do with its economic diversification strategy. And I said to him, “Well, this is a bunch of good people who used to be at TechBC.” I went and looked at the faculty complement at SIAT and there were 16 people who went to the lunch 15:00and they had all the profiles out there. Eleven of them were still the original group that we hired then. And I’m involved, personally, in a process--in the job that I have now at KPU, took them a year to hire me into this position. And there were fifteen people in the interview panel in a series of interviews. Took them a year. And it’s an arduous and time consuming and resource intensive process whereas what we did, when we were bringing them in--the idea was we needed them to work together to be interdisciplinary, to be collaborative, and eleven of the sixteen have been in place for fifteen years. So I think that speaks volumes to the way in which that innovative process was established and has paid dividends 16:00for them.

Hendrigan: And, and the faculty you hired were receptive to the process and the

ideology of the model?

Arthur Fallick: I believe so. It was an adjustment, there’s no question about

it. And if I had any, in hindsight, one of the biggest challenges was they weren’t just coming in and establishing themselves and their research agenda and hitting the ground running. We had to develop curricula. We had to develop research agendas. We had to work on space. We had to deal with fiscal and policy issues and the emergence of the resistance to TechBC through the government change and everything that took place. And there’s a number of people who were questioning: did they make the right career move? The workload was ferocious. A 17:00number of them--a bunch from the faculty of fine arts, for example, with their MFAs as their terminal degrees--and they’re being told, “You really should layer on a PhD on all of this as well’ and all of that kind of stuff was all new and different. And they had been used to working in the Interactive Arts group; a number of them knew one another, and they had been used to working together. But to put them in conjunction with the engineers and the computer scientists and the business people, and forge really dynamic teams in there as well--was something very new and very different. So it was a challenge. They definitely got the vision; they definitely knew that being hired into this, they were being hired into a unique set of circumstances and the opportunities and the vision was really strong. And i think everybody had literally looked at the 18:00juice and said Yes, we will drink from this cup.

Hendrigan: Right. And can you also talk about the academic programming the

school had planned for Industry?

Arthur Fallick: Well, a large part of the research and development that was

being proposed required both relevance and connection to Industry partners. So, individual scholars brought their own industry connections to the table. Ron Wakkary was doing a lot of stuff with Nokia. They had Industry connections but the idea was that this brains trust was going work hand in glove with industry on the pioneering frontier. And, it’s a model that is a very difficult one to 19:00sustain but the tech bubble was in full developmental swing at that particular point in time. And it became clear as technology was advancing and the application of those technologies was: we were doing some amazing things. Intelligent search engines, and stuff of that nature that everybody kind of takes for granted now. The whole idea that you could have avatars get involved in intelligent thinking and learning from your behaviour and they would go search for it. There was one particular project where these avatars were learning from their creators a set of preferences and then going online and trying to match up the aspirations the individual had, and refining the search engine, and then they doing these things where the avatars were having auctions 20:00with one another based on the parameters that the individuals had been setting for them. And they’d go search and they’d find all these things, and then they were negotiating among them. And they were looking to see whether the voice recognition, and the kinds of things that are now the Googles and the Yahoos and the search engines that we take for granted for our entertainment, travel, purchasing preferences: all of that kind of stuff was in its embryonic stages in terms of what was required and the background to make it do-able.

Hendrigan: The algorithm

Arthur Fallick: The algorithms that were required. But secondly the applica--the

potential application of all of this. So we didn’t have as many of the big companies that are now leading the wave and all of that. We didn’t have the social media revolution that made it almost ubiquitous. And these guys were 21:00pioneering a whole bunch of that. And it’s the most diametrically different background from mine. But it was really neat to be in the people dynamic of all of that. You have all the real creative artists and the absolutely Teutonic engineers and computer scientists on the other of all of this. And you’re trying to put them in a crucible and make them play nice.

Hendrigan: Yeah

Arthur Fallick: And enable them to see futures that were literally yet to be

imagined. So it was really cool. Very very cool place to be. And very bitter taste when it all came crashing down.

Hendrigan: Yeah, and in the meantime, the Community’s desire was to have more

of a comprehensive university, almost like a UBC Surrey. Were you involved at 22:00all in the Board, or any of the…

Arthur Fallick: Very peripherally. Jane [Fee] and Alice and Tom were doing the

bulk of that. We were more inside Santa’s workshop trying to...the pressures on delivery were really strong. And building the culture and building the productivity. Because as soon as the first year class came in, then we were set on a sprint that was actually a marathon but we were doing it at sprint pace because we had to get all of the next year’s courses up; we had to get research agendas so that the students could engage in them. We had graduate students coming in; we had undergraduate students. And huge expectations on not letting any of the students down. And we didn’t have nearly the faculty 23:00complement that we needed to be able to pull it off.

Hendrigan: Right. Now the university had only three years of students, which is

not a long enough time to properly assess, but do you think that you accomplish what you were trying to do?

Arthur Fallick: Absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt. And a couple of metrics

that you could use to validate that: the whole TechOne process came about because it was very clear that there were challenges with the students ability in mathematics and computer science. And they came from diverse backgrounds; they were put in a common crucible and they were being asked to handle fairly high levels of technical proficiency at a very fast pace. And the TechOne 24:00process that they put into place to get the students to work together, to work on common, collaborative, interdisciplinary problems--but have a common foundation of skills and expertise. That was all trashed when TechBC was closed. Although it was, as I understand it now, was kept on by SFU in a begrudging way. I think there was a legacy piece there that they had to follow through because some of the students had carried on but subsequently came to realize that that was one of the real innovations that TechBC had put in place and has not got a variation of that, a made in SFU variation. And that’s probably being unkind to them but the sting of losing that position still hurts. And the fact that they took over. We were all wrong; we were heretics, we were Beelzebub 25:00incarnate. And it’s now becoming mainstream fifteen years...If it had been allowed to continue, at the pace and with the vision that it had, taking into consideration that the tech bubble did burst in many respects, we would have been ahead of the game had we persisted with it. Than the way it went.

And it went on the basis of bare knuckle politics and ideology, not on the basis

of pedagogy and innovation and R & D. It’s not a good comparison to make but had it been in California or another part of America it would have been allowed to continue under the new government structure that the other government put in place. But it was destroyed and vilified in ways that still hurt and I think 26:00were wrong.

And it’s very convenient to say that TechBC was an unmitigated disaster but it

was all done for all the wrong reasons. And I get really angry--I had a huge flareup with somebody from SFU one time and they just dismissed it right out of hand as a failure. And I got up and challenged him in the middle of the room and got them to acknowledge that they didn’t know anything at all about it. But it was an easy way to say. They were taking pot shots at it. And there were really a lot of good things that were done.

The students who were there were unbelievably strong. They went through an

amazing trial. And the passion that they brought to it, the work effort that they brought to it; the indeterminacy but the idea that they were onto something 27:00really new and innovative: the relationship with the faculty and the students was extraordinary. KPU can lay claim to some really good relationships: small classes, good relationships between students and faculty --but nothing approximates TechBC. They were all in it together and it was exceptional to be a part of.

Hendrigan: That was one of my questions, about what was unique about the

TechBC cohorts.

Arthur Fallick: Pfft! they, I mean what they were being asked to go through

experimentally and knowing the sawdust was on the floor, that they may actually come in and take the surroundings away from you and dispossess you and move you to a place. I mean, we were in the Zellers space at the bottom of a mall and it takes extraordinary courage to realize that it’s not always going to look like 28:00this and you’re on the real front end of some pioneering stuff. And the students felt that the same way the faculty did.

Hendrigan: Can we talk, just quickly, about tenure. TechBC famously didn’t

offer faculty tenure. Was that an issue for the faculty that you…

Arthur Fallick: It was; it certainly was because there was nothing comparable

in their experience and being at KPU and understanding that through a different lens. It didn’t bother me because I was in Administration; that just went with the territory. But the whole idea of publish or perish as the benchmark and the 29:00coin of the realm was something that although it’s a very very challenging process that a lot of the faculty wanted to hold onto, when in actual fact they were in a really dynamic crucible of change, where change was a constant. And so the kinds of work that we were doing; the kinds of research that they were going to do--you knew was going to be groundbreaking. Beyond having the time to sit down and do the work: the publications, the whole thing--it never struck me that this group was going to have a challenge with tenure. Because

Hendrigan: Productivity

Arthur Fallick: the productivity was through the roof. But it was an issue, as

was department’s office space, the whole standard “I want my space, I want 30:00my protection, I want my incubation.” But Alice, Tom--when you saw what the institution was trying to accomplish, and that you were going to be the backbone of all that--it was kind of a give and take. It would have become a significant issue down the line but at the end of the day I’m not sure if it would have persisted that way. I’m always projecting into the future. Some of the ideological pieces that the leaders of the day put into it would not have persisted, I don’t think. I think it would have become more and more conventional as time went on.

Hendrigan: Right. Um, we’ll get to the transition in a minute but before I

just wanted to know: in the heyday: the TechBC culture. Talk about that a bit?

Arthur Fallick: So, you’ve got this idea based around division and based

31:00around the energy and the pace of things, that this was different. This eclipsed the notion of when SFU was built. How it was built as a

Hendrigan: Radical

Arthur Fallick: Counter-radical counter culture to the staid conservative UBC.

And TechBC just blew them all away. There was that sense, that this was not your mother’s university. And then you start to see the projects that they would create. They weren’t capstone projects, because we never got to that point but the projects at the end of term and the presentations that were being done. And the fact that they had gotten through--the celebration of getting through the first year and into the second year. And the projects that were being done and the interest that was being expressed by industry. And some 32:00of the things that you could see developing between the faculty and the students that you knew that they were onto some really amazing stuff. That reinforced the culture; it reinforced the idea. And then we moved from Guildford to Whalley and we moved from being across the road from a huge shopping mall to being in a shopping mall but a very different culture. And again, maybe the parallel now would be Woodwards/SFU and the whole area in between Harbour Centre and the Downtown Eastside. Whalley was a very interesting place to be moving into. Again, the culture being reinforced that this was new, it was dynamic, it was different. That the malls were going to transform because information technology was going to transform. Commerce was going to transform. So it was all built 33:00in this notion that there was nothing traditional or standard about what we were doing. And in that sense, you feel a little bit like an elite sports team or something like that. There’s a camaraderie that comes with being together and stuff that nobody quite gets the hang of yet but you know you’re on to something really amazing. And it was just a blast going to work

Hendrigan: Intellectual boot camp, almost

Arthur Fallick: It was, it really was. And for people like me who kind of not

see themselves as mainstream intellectuals, on the leading edge of all of that But understanding that you were a part of all that, that was radically changing events. It was very very cool.

Hendrigan: So what were the early signs that the University’s days as a

standalone institution were numbered? 34:00

Arthur Fallick: We were always fighting about money.

Hendrigan: Even before the government changed?

Arthur Fallick: Yeah. Because there was a certain amount of money allocated to

the university. But the balance between enrolment revenue and the amount of money we were spending in recruitment, in curriculum development, all the rest: we were always on the edge of...you were looking at the budgets in terms of what you were spending compared to what you should have been spending on. And there was always that dichotomy. And we knew we were always...because universities can’t run a deficit. Because Victoria is very fiscally frugal. And there was always this challenge. We got some degrees of freedom because we were a start up. But it was always clear that they were going to have to...we were going to 35:00have to generate revenue. Significant revenue from those Industry connections and from the R & D that was going to be done. And we were fighting literally and figuratively to get the spaces. I mean, I remember when they built one of the caves, it was like the Holodeck on Star Trek. And there were people working in one here and doing work with a comparable one in Sweden. And the notion that they were working virtually with one another in the same space, in the same project was thrilling. But the notion that that also had to produce dividends. That--there was a sense that this is not playtime. Where is this all going; how is it going to come across; how many contracts are we getting; what kind of R & D is being done. How do you get the Nokias and the others to put in substantial 36:00 amounts of money to make this work. And it not all be pie in the sky. You’re building the curriculum, you’re building the whole enterprise but everybody’s frayed at the edges because the pace never stopped.

And with the government change it became very clear that the whole notion of why

is ICBC funding a university in a mall? That has the architectural hubris that it had? You know, in Whalley for God’s sake? I mean, what’s going on here ? And, I don’t know, we were always under siege. It didn’t matter where it was coming from, whether it was the pressures of developing the curriculum or pressures of the research and development. The financial pressures, the 37:00political pressures. That is what happened every day you came to work. It just--you couldn’t get through a morning without all hell breaking loose. And you would try and remediate that and it would flare up in the afternoon. Or you’d build Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday and it would come apart Thursday/Friday and then it was Groundhog day and you would start all over again.

Hendrigan: Right.

Arthur Fallick: But the Campbell government was not a friendly government in

terms of what we were trying to do. And we went far enough along to withstand a lot of that. And with Bernie Sheehan on the cusp of retirement over a couple of those years and the pitched battles that took place to replace him, it was all...it was “Fun times at the OK corral” for a lot of that! 38:00

Hendrigan: So the Administration is rallying for the continuance of TechBC

throughout the fall; the government changed in May; I believe there was a change in governance with Bernie Sheehan and Jean Watters in the summer, August or something?

Arthur Fallick: Yep. And there was tension there because a couple of the

insiders wanted Bernie’s job; a couple of the insiders thought they were anointed successors to Bernie and Jean Watters comes in. A little guy from, it wasn’t Shawinigan but it may just as well have been! Little French Canadian 39:00guy comes in who had a very different approach because he had been a president in Ontario.

Hendrigan: Laurentian.

Arthur Fallick: From Laurentian. Presidents in Ontario--a significant part of

their expected duties is to lobby the government. Well you don’t do that in BC. Jean was fantastic. Jean would jump the SkyTrain down to the Helijet and go down to Victoria and walk in on Shirley Bond. Because that was his job, you know? To talk to the Minister. And the rumours were that there were sentries posted and when they saw him coming she’d sneak out the back door. There were kind of ways in which the old vision--Bernie was an inveterate procrastinator. 40:00He just wanted to plan. And Jane was his right hand to the pres, his special advisor to the President on all things planning. But we kind of needed to get way beyond the planning stages and into the implementation stages. So there were tensions between Bernie and Alice around that, and Alice was in an awful position, she was, she had to push and push and push to get things done but at the same time had a president who would sort of agree to get things done and then change his mind and then backpedal. And there was always constant tension on her. And then she’s trying to not do the same thing to all of us.

Jean came in. Totally different kettle of fish. I got on very very well with

Jean, and it probably put me in between Jean and Alice toward the end. Alice got 41:00really pissed off at me by my way of connecting with Jean that worked, and persisted afterward. Um, different regime. Different focus, and it was very clear the government was not pleased with us and wanted to change. And it wasn’t us; it was not pleased with the whole arrangement from the beginning. It was the politics of it. And put a great deal of pressure on us and toward the end they sent two guys from Victoria to oversee; we did a business plan at the end that I essentially crafted. I was the, I did the keystrokes for that and that was wild. That was very very very wild. I still think we got set up on that. Jim Reid--I can’t even remember the other guy; I know Jim Reid because I’ve got some other initiative on the go right now with him. He was there. 42:00They literally stood on either side of me watching what was being done. Ostensibly on the basis of making sure that it was the strongest business plan but I don’t think the government ever wanted to see...and probably caused more grief because it was a really good business plan. We essentially decided to go after the government for a couple of years of funding and then to completely withdraw from government funding. That was in the last plan. Essentially, we would become free of government funding by a certain period of time and the whole business case was done to show how we would move away from that.

Hendrigan: So when you say it was politics, it wasn’t the cost per student, it

was politics.

Arthur Fallick: No, no. Those were excuses, Holly, I am convinced that they were

it. The decision had been made, TechBC was going down. And it was going down because Bob Williams was, is, and remains the single most feared and hated 43:00individual that the NDP has ever put up against the Liberals and Socreds in British Columbia. He is a dynamic visionary whose politics are diametrically opposed to anything the Liberals and Social Credit would ever want anything to do with. If you imagine in a Liberal or Social Credit government, they would never have lost power in all the time--we’d still be doing it. It was the classic Big Vision ideas that Bob Williams brings to the table. The ALR. TechBC. A whole bunch of them. VanCity. You name it, some of what have become institutions--not just changes. And that’s why it had to go. And it was convenient in many respects that he had done it through the mechanism of 44:00ICBC--then they could get it because: “What was an insurance corporation doing in the post secondary education business?” Had it not been for that--it was the right idea at the right time on the right track. And with very little interference from that particular government at the time. All the business of the FTEs--not to say that those things are not relevant because all the postsecondary institutions are up against that particular set of metrics in accountability year after year after year. FTE funding and growth and doing more for less. As it isn’t…

There was a core review at that point in time and we all got hammered. And

there’s just recently been another core review, that whole “skills for jobs” thing. “Skills for jobs” was as prominent at the time at TechBC 45:00 was on place as it is now and if Christy Clark had had the opportunity to be in power at the time that Gordon Campbell was in, one wonders whether or not TechBC might have survived simply on the basis of the “Tech.” All of that stuff that they are trying to get us to do now. So it was ideological and then it was political, in my view.

Hendrigan: So it was announced in February that SFU was assuming administrative

control. So where did that leave you?

Arthur Fallick: On the street. Literally. Um, I was among the...I had just

finished the business plan and then was taken into HR and sat down and said that we were the first wave to go. And we submitted the business plan and had a big forum in the atrium and it was really quite stunning. And we said we had 46:00submitted the plan. I got acknowledged for having written the plan (I didn’t write the plan; I transcribed the ideas--I can wordsmith and I can synthesize really well.) And I got tapped to do that for the business plan. And we were all brought in --all the administration were at the same time-- and it has taken me fifteen years to get back to that position. Took me fifteen years to get from AV-P to AV-P. If you stay in the postsecondary system in BC. And I hadn’t done anything radically different over those fifteen years. But it’s snakes and ladders--it’s such a small pool.

So we were all marched out and it was very very difficult. Very very difficult

47:00time. Because a number of the faculty got kept and two or three--Jane stayed, Tom Calvert stayed. Everybody else was immediately “The TechBC problem.” It was brutal--absolutely. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. Devastating to your pride and to your self worth, to be told that for the last couple of years you have been building an edifice that was Mission Impossible and then turn round and have people say it was an absolute disaster and a mistake and wrong. And that was just horrid. And wasn’t right. Still isn’t right.

Hendrigan: Right. So what was your first post-TechBC job at?

48:00

Arthur Fallick: It was...must have been Kwantlen. I ended up going to work for a

company, a Vancouver based company that did international based student recruitment in China. Which was wild, absolutely wild. So we would take Canadian universities to China on a two week seven city tour, specifically to recruit for them. And then we’d drop them off and we’d pick up the next one so Concordia came in and we flew to Shanghai and Nanjing and then moved over to Beijing and Tianjin and then two or three other places depending on what they 49:00were looking to recruit. And we’d take them away and Lethbridge would come in and so it would be a month at a time in China and then you’d come back and get things sorted out and then you’d go back and you do it over again with other universities. And I did that for a couple of years. It was a fascinating experience because the company had no interest in the educational side of things. It was a numbers game. They had made their money on what do you call it “business entrepreneurial immigration” and I think you had to put up half a million dollars if you wanted to come in as a business--if you wanted landed immigrant status on the business model. And they were doing that so they would get them visas, they would help them get through that process to bring them 50:00to Canada, get them settled. And they’d end up--they’d give them back half the money quite quickly, but they kept half the money. And then there were all these other fees. So they applied the same process to student recruitment. And they had a whole bunch of agents and this company had offices in every province in China. And they had an office in the World Trade Centre in New York when it got blown up, and the World Trade Centre in Australia. They spent big and they made many many millions of dollars. And when they applied it to the university recruitment process they did the same thing. And it was a real challenge--they were always; it was--[laughs] But my experience in China was really quite something. Bubble boy went to China because I was completely 51:00enclosed by this company, and handlers, and we’d travel with the Dean or the VP or Associate VP and it was all 5 star stuff. So, I was in Beijing at one point in time. We got kicked out of our hotel in Beijing because Colin Powell was coming and we had to give up the room.

Hendrigan: security threat [laughs]

Arthur Fallick: But it was living in that kind of environment and it was an

amazing way to see China. But very very difficult to get into the post secondary system, and certainly at the level I was in. That, as I say, that took fifteen years to get back to doing that.

Hendrigan: So I want to talk a bit about the legacy of TechBC, or what it might

have been, could have been. Um, if you had the opportunity to start a postsecondary institution from scratch again, what would you keep from the 52:00TechBC way of doing things?

Arthur Fallick: Well, in actual fact, that’s happening in a small way with

what I’m doing with...I just created a Research Plan. And the challenge with KPU is that we get no money from the government for research. Our faculty are exclusively, they are beautiful creatures of eight equal bands of teaching. And if you want them to get involved in research you have to buy out the time. You have to find the money and resources to do that. And that’s a constant challenge. The way that I’m proposing to get around that is by focusing in on themes. Sustainability is a theme. But it’s a combination of themes. The clean technology, health technology: are themes where Industry has indicated to us that they are interested in pioneering and willing to put money into research 53:00and development. I built a conceptual model that is a combination of experiential learning for students and innovation and discovery for faculty and students in these sectors. And we’ve taken options on sites: there’s one in clean tech; there’s a company called Foresight Cleantech Accelerator. And they got a couple of million dollars from the BC Innovation Council and they’re trying to help companies that are trying to be innovators in clean technology: clean air, clean water, clean energy, and waste management. And they run this accelerator program over six months where they have something called a challenge dialogue and the idea is to identify a challenge that the industry has. Say, for 54:00example, mitigating greenhouse gas. And they will find half a dozen startup companies that want to make innovations in that particular challenge. They will help them understand what the clean tech sector is all about and how they need to thrive in that sector. They bring CEOs with experience, they bring the venture capital people, they immerse them in the sector and they give them tips on how to survive and thrive and at the same time this company is developing the innovation that it wants to develop. They go through a six month process to get to a prototype and then one company from the half dozen or so went through that process is selected to go from prototype to full commercialization in the industry.

I’m trying to develop a comparable process where our students who at one

55:00level, the next prospective generation of employees in that sector-- introduce them to that sector and build the equivalent of a challenge dialogue that fits with the rhythms of academia. So in the past, Kwantlen has had “Teaching and Learning,” some research and scholarship and community engagement. But they’re all working in parallel. And I’m saying the concept we have developed is the full integration of experiential learning with discovery and innovation and knowledge transfer. Working with these companies to learn about the sector and how to work with them so the students can end up becoming gainfully employed. And over the course of the time, we want the students to get various skill sets for when they graduate. In critical thinking, in creative thinking, in effective communication and in research skills. And we’re doing 56:00that by having them immerse in experiential learning where they can work with industries and companies and individuals in solving complex human problems in real world conditions. So that’s the conceptual model for the research plan here but you apply that to what we were doing at TechBC in terms of interdisciplinarity, in terms of bringing business, computer science, engineering and interactive arts. What I’m saying in terms of the model that we’ve developed, we have things that we describe as “design thinking” and “sustainability thinking” and the question at the end of the day is “what’s distinctive about KPU’s contribution to design thinking in these sectors or sustainability thinking in these sectors. I would say we could go back and do pretty much the same at--that what TechBC was all about. Making 57:00distinctive contributions; that interdisciplinary environments that were addressing complex human problems in real world conditions.

Hendrigan: And do you ever speculate how TechBC would look like now if it had remained?

Arthur Fallick: Every single time I go near Central City. You can’t avoid it.

It took me eighteen months before I could actually go near the building. It hurt that much. I still have a physical reaction when I’m in the building. Yes, I believe fundamentally, and not because of my contribution. Because of the contribution of the faculty and the visionaries that were a part of TechBC. They were absolutely onto something that could have withstood the tech bubble. And so 58:00the other aspect of it, is you look around at all of these large companies that created what they call their own universities. They were all doing it--Microsoft did it, Google’s done it. They’ve all got their own R & D and they’re trying to have a combination of the leading edge and visionary thinking all this stuff through. And TechBC was doing that from day one. And KPU is trying to learn to do that. SFU is learning to do that, in its own way, hubris notwithstanding, UBC is trying to do the same thing. And I think maybe more constrained in their effectiveness because of the rigidity in the way the Academy is structured. And we went in the knowledge--there wasn’t just because they didn’t want to do it. It was because they put so many constraints on 59:00interdisciplinarity. And we’ll go back to the issue of tenure. Tenure is anathema to interdisciplinarity if your benchmark is publish and perish. Because why would you get involved in the risk of an interdisciplinary venture if it’s not going to lead to the publications in the journals that you’re traditionally bound by when you’re in a faculty or a department. I mean, we’re trying to avoid all of those structural constraints to free up the opportunity for innovation and discovery.

Hendrigan: Right. So I’ve got an alternate history question now. What would

the post secondary landscape in Surrey look like if not for TechBC?

Arthur Fallick: Um, the city of Surrey is in a huge forward momentum. It wants

60:00to eclipse Vancouver; it wants to burnish its image and it wants to change how the world views Surrey. Now, an interesting challenge is although it’s designated as a city, if you put Surrey in America it would be a county. So it’s very--geographically, it’s a big challenge to be a fully functioning dynamic city when you’re the size of a US county. But our President and myself, we were at a meeting at Innovation Boulevard last week. And we were talking to, I think, the CEO or the CAO of New Westminster. There was a woman that I taught in Geography in the 80s at UBC. And we were talking about this 61:00very thing. And we said, You know, if this was America, Surrey would have two or three of its own universities, post secondary institutions. It would have a big one, it would have the equivalent of a second tier one, it would have colleges, it would have all the rest. TechBC would have been Surrey’s university. It would have been sole in tune with everything that Dianne Watts has been trying to build: the economic development strategy that the city has developed where they have classified the 8000 companies in Surrey into 5 categories that they are investing heavily in. In clean tech, Health Tech, Agri-Innovation, Creative Arts, and what they call Aerospace but what is in effect, precision 62:00manufacturing. The way in which we are integrating the campuses and the focus at KPU from teaching and learning and discovery and innovation toward knowledge transfer. That’s the kind of stuff that TechBC would have galvanized for the City of Surrey. And it would have been on a par with the major research universities. Without the shadow of a doubt.

Hendrigan: Can you comment on SFU’s Surrey campus and, I mean, you’ve

already mentioned this SIAT program but how does SFU Surrey interplay with KPU?

Arthur Fallick: There’s always been a tension in SFU between what happens on

the Mountain and what doesn’t happen on the Mountain. I remember from the very beginning of Harbour Centre, and it was absolutely clear and adamant that there 63:00would be no credit based courses taught at Harbour Centre. You could have Continuing Studies, you could have night classes, you could have commercial classes, you could have the peripherals. But none of the serious business of being a University was ever coming off the mountain. And there’s still that tension. But it’s incredibly difficult running multi-campus institutions. It’s just--there’s never enough resource to go around. And challenges between centralized and decentralized initiatives and all the rest. Um, I never investigated and I probably should have, if I’m true to what I’m about to say, but there had to be something in it for SFU to take it on. And I think their pot got sweetened for taking on the role of not...they couldn’t kill the 64:00university because there were students involved. If the students hadn’t enrolled, they would have killed it and they hadn’t given it second thought about it. So SFU had to save the students, and in return I think, got breaks that were not given to TechBC, that should have been given to TechBC. I bear no animosity toward SFU around it except when the description of TechBC as a failure and as an ill-conceived thing and I will always challenge that. They’re doing a number of things that are continuity from the original aspirations of TechBC but it was never given the same degree of investment and vision. It was always, kind of the attempt to integrate it into mainstream. But 65:00it wasn’t going to be Burnaby Mountain. There are faculty that refused to go anywhere near it. And there are faculty who are at Central City who have got virtually nothing to do with Burnaby Mountain. I think what happened is they lost the core idea and ideal to petty politics. It would have been incredibly neat for the brain’s trust at SFU to have taken it over and made it better than it had begun. And unfortunately, it didn’t have the vision or the gumption to do that. And I think it’s a missed opportunity.

Hendrigan: Um, just another couple difficult questions. What did TechBC teach

66:00you about government relations in the BC post secondary sector?

Arthur Fallick: I’m pointing to the two-faced (laughter). The politics

are...politics is an invasive inhibitor to innovation in the post secondary sector. The number of politicians we’ve had to deal with over the years who are anti-intellectual and anti-education is astounding. So you’re always up against this notion that somehow we’re scamming the system, and that we don’t work for a living. And that’s dispiriting because my experience with 67:00Industry right now and community and government to some degree, but mostly local government, in partnerships with the things we are doing, are hugely profitable all the way around. For students, for our faculty, for our institution, for the industries themselves, for the communities that are engaged, and for the government--people that I am working with. So it’s all there to be done if this notion that has always...because of the people that I studied under at UBC: a number of them in the Geography department were contributors to the original McDonald Commission, on the whole structure of the postsecondary system, was put into place in BC. And it has never been seriously looked at since. And it needs to be seriously looked at. The level of unnecessary duplication and competition. And the model of competition set up among the postsecondary institutions is just 68:00stupid. It’s just plain dumb. There isn’t enough money to go around; there will never be enough money to go around, to have us all compete and do the same thing. It’s just plain dumb. So, if the politicians could just get ahead of that and understand the brain’s trust that the public purse enables as a catalyst for change, instead of always beating on it for not doing the right thing. A little bit of ingenuity and vision from Victoria would be liberating for the postsecondary system. And well, for the entire system. We should have, in British Columbia, one education system that is lifelong learning. We should be investing in it from cradle to grave and back again. It’s the most sensible, cost effective and proficient system that you’ll ever have. Invest 69:00and people will succeed.

So, it’s goofy the way we go about doing it but half the time you’re

fighting stupidity and inertia, when you shouldn’t be. There is complacency in the system and there is a lot--I’m struggling with colleagues who tell me I way too aligned with Industry and the University should have nothing to do with that and we should be pondering...that’s bullshit, from top to bottom. It perpetuated a system in the UK that had the Ivory Tower as somehow completely dissociated from what was going on in life, and public funds should not be allocated for that. Hubris.

Hendrigan: What are you most proud of as a TechBC pioneer?

70:00

Arthur Fallick: Um, being allowed to go there every day and make a small contribution

without being one of the central players. I’m very proud of that. To be able to hold my own in that environment, bring the skill set that I brought was radically different was needed. Well, not what was needed. They needed people like me but we weren’t the core of the engine of intellectual growth of the place. We weren’t the engineers, the computer scientists, the interactive 71:00artists, and the business people. But getting them to be able to align and do things together took particular skill which I have. And that was neat. And, the legacy of the vision is still valid. I think the logistics--at times, it was crazy. It was absolutely crazy. At times it was so dynamic it was like walking onto the floor of the stock exchange. You were alive with energy. But some of the other things we did were absolutely nuts. [laughs] I’m proud of all that. And there were things we absolutely could have done better which had we been allowed to mature we would have gotten there I’m sure.

Hendrigan: So is there anything you’d like to say about TechBC that hasn’t

come out yet? 72:00

Arthur Fallick: I don’t think so. I think--I wish a better legacy for TechBC,

which is why I’m hugely grateful to you for the work that you’re doing in allowing us the opportunity for us to historically revisit it. And with some time, sufficient time elapsed, hopefully there will be a more balanced interpretation of it but I don’t think that is going to be the case. I think it has been tinged with defeat and that’s the bit I hate about the political side of it. They did a brilliant hatchet job on it and I don’t know if it will ever regain its credibility. Because it lost its credibility.

Hendrigan: Well, if you listen to the transcripts: the students, the staff, the

faculty and other administrators. Um, there are voices that dispute that it’s lost its credibility. 73:00

Arthur Fallick: Oh good! I’m happy about that.

Hendrigan: The students especially have spoken volumes about what they

appreciated about their experience.

Arthur Fallick: Yes. I can see that. And they were special. They remain special,

and a number of them have gone on to great things.

Hendrigan: Yes. Well Arthur this has been a fascinating conversation and I

really appreciate you taking the time out of your schedule to tell me the story of your time there. Thank you.

Arthur Fallick: Thank you Holly, it’s been great.

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Arthur Fallick - 2015-04-07 - Kwantlen Polytechnic, Surrey

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Arthur Fallick - 2015-04-07 - Kwantlen Polytechnic, Surrey

Simon Fraser University Library Holly Hendrigan, Interviewer | SFU Library Oral Histories | Tech BC Memory Project

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Simon Fraser University Library
Holly Hendrigan, Interviewer |
SFU Library Oral Histories | Tech BC Memory Project