The Office of the President and Vice-Chancellor
Welcome to Thompson Rivers University! Thank you for taking the time to visit our web pages. My hope is that you will Find Your TRU here. We have much to offer.
TRU is both a campus-based and a virtual university. Our campuses are situated on the traditional lands of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc (Kamloops) and the T’exelc (Williams Lake) within Secwepemcúl’ecw, the traditional and unceded territory of the Secwépemc, its people whom we respect and work with.
As we honour the history of our region, the land and its people, we embrace both the regional and global context in which we live, learn and work. At TRU, we welcome all students, whether local or international, in a spirit of fostering intercultural understanding.
Every university is special. Every university has a character, a history, a trajectory into the future. TRU is an inclusive, open-access university. A sustainable university. A locally engaged and global university. A research university. An Indigenizing university. We are new, ambitious, connected, and curious: a different kind of university that offers unique opportunities for personal and community transformation.
TRU continues to evolve and grow to meet the changing educational needs of Canada and the world. I invite you to explore our website and contact us to discover more.
What does the role of the president entail?
The formal job description of a university president is two to three pages of bullets, enough to make any reasonable person’s head spin. A much better way to characterize the job of a president, and something I learned from one of my mentors, is that a president is responsible for four things.
One of those is strategic priorities, ensuring a university has a sense of priorities that are appropriate for where it is and where it is going.
Second is governance, cultivating an environment where people actively participate in university governance that in the end makes the institution sound.
Securing resources is also part of the role of president, and that means helping to ensure the university has access to the resources it needs to fulfill its mandate. This includes financial and people resources.
Lastly, and certainly not the least, is cultivating relationships with all the people who matter to the success of a university. That means relationships with students, faculty, with staff, with alumnae, with community leaders, with government leaders, with transformative donors and supporters.
Of those four things, in a well-functioning university the president must spend the vast majority of their time on relationships. I think that is particularly the president’s responsibility, it is the essence of the job, and it is what attracted me here.
— Brett Fairbairn
