Don't Worry, Be Happy

You're just in from Vulcan, Alberta, and it's your first time away from home. You step a little warily onto a McGill campus teeming with people of all ages and nationalities. All are heading off in different directions to dozens of buildings scattered around downtown Montreal. All seem purposeful and prepared as they head off to their first classes of the term, carefree as they hang out on the green, tree-lined expanse of the main quad. You? You don't have a clue, and are frankly afraid of asking for help and looking like you just fell off the turnip truck. Where's my Biology class? How do I join the Ultimate Frisbee club? Where can I meet with other Vulcans?

Rosalie Jukier, BCL'83, LLB'83, the popular dynamo from the Faculty of Law who's just finishing up a six-year term as Dean of Students, has all sorts of answers for all sorts of student problems.

"McGill students have a reputation for being incredibly bright, ambitious and likely to succeed," she says in her office on the second floor of the newly constructed home of student services, the William and Mary Brown Building. "And that's all true. Our success rate is higher than any Quebec university. And the fact that they are so smart and going to do well, combined with a look at our retention rates -- all that can lead someone into a false sense that these students don't need any other help.

"But they still have health problems, life crises, they may hit a course that they don't understand. They still need to be properly oriented in the University, need help finding a job when they graduate, or a part-time job on campus when they can't make ends meet."

That's where Student Services comes in: financial aid, physical and mental health services, services for international students and for students with disabilities, a work-study program and a career centre. You can find all of these and more in the Brown Building and other spots on both McGill campuses, all of them geared to easing the burden that comes with the challenges university life holds. Some services are what you'd expect to find at a university: counselling and tutorial programs, or residence and housing help. Others are new and not necessarily obvious: the First-Year Office, a dental clinic, the First Peoples' House and many others.

"We've started a lot of new services over the last few years," says Dean Jukier. "The dental clinic is new in health services and has been very well received. Similarly, within certain services we've started new ventures: for instance, we have an eating disorder clinic in mental health services. We've revamped our tutorial program and put it under the auspices of our counselling services, where it really belongs."

McGill Principal Bernard Shapiro is also pushing to make customer service and satisfaction a mantra among University administrators and staff, and Jukier takes this very much to heart.

"It's extremely important," she stresses, "because whether it's true or not, we haven't had a good reputation in that area."

One reason may be the Maclean's magazine annual ranking of Canadian universities, which last year placed McGill ninth -- up from eleventh -- in spending on student services, at 3.54% of the University's operating budget. Cuts in the last decade to government funding have hampered the University's ability to serve students on all fronts, with revenue per student declining from $12,280 in 1992-1993 to $10,069 in 1997-1998. Expenditures per full-time student stood at $7,764 in 1999-2000, seventh in the Maclean's ranking.

The picture painted isn't quite accurate, says Jukier. "The Maclean's ranking is based purely on a mathematical formula with no emphasis at all on quality or quantity of services. For example, we are one of only two universities that offer a mental health service (with psychiatrists on staff) and yet we still rank ninth. Nor do they consider things like a new building in the equation."

Jukier adds that most of her $10-million budget (covering salaries, program costs and building maintenance) comes from a direct government grant, student services fees and revenue generated through activities like the summer sports camp run by the Department of Athletics. "Since we are primarily self-funded, any increases have to be made up by the Student Services fee, and we are very reluctant to raise that. As a result, we are very economically conscious, and have always felt penalized by our cost efficiency."

Whether the reputed deficiency in customer service is real or perceived, the University's reputation should start changing with the renewed focus that runs through Dean Jukier's office and the new student services building. For McGill, the importance of the issue is heightened by the feverish competition among Canadian universities -- and increasingly the much better-funded American universities that are offering substantial scholarships in U.S. dollars -- for the best and brightest students. The customer service model should ultimately help in the University's recruitment success.

"We view students as our clients and they have to be served properly," says the dean. "But it also doesn't matter how nicely and politely a student is told by a front-line staff member, 'I'm sorry, you're in the wrong place, we can't help you,' after they've waited in line for 45 minutes. No matter how client-centred that staff person is, that student is going to be upset. So the key is not only to focus on making our staff as pleasant and polite as possible, but to not boomerang students from place to place. One way of addressing that is to further centralize services."

Certainly the most visible change in Student Services at McGill is its new five-storey home rising up from the corner of McTavish Street and Dr. Penfield, the William and Mary Brown Student Services Building. Opened in the fall of 1999, this new student hub has united many services under one roof and the $10.5-million project is Jukier's crowning achievement as Dean of Students.

"The response has been overwhelmingly positive," she says. "First of all, the traffic going through the building -- which connects the main lower campus and the upper campus -- is remarkable. Every student knows that it's there, so when they need something, it doesn't require much of a leap to say, 'Oh, that's where I go.' Before, the student services building [the Powell Building on Dr. Penfield] was extremely hidden." Jukier confesses that when she was a student 20 years ago, she didn't even know what the Powell Building was.

Raising money for the project was a challenge, says the dean, who had to don the cap of fundraiser for the first time in her career. Despite this unfamiliarity and some initial resistance -- support from charitable foundations tends to dry up when bricks and mortar are involved -- Jukier says she enjoyed the role "because I learned that when you care passionately about a project it's not difficult to do whatever you have to do to make that project come to fruition. Every time we were successful in getting a donation, it moved me closer to the goal that I wanted."

McGill eventually found major support from a former president of the Students' Society, John MacBain, BA'81, who understood from his experience the importance of student services, and that led to other former presidents getting involved. And what Jukier calls the "holistic well-being of students" was the key to winning the support of the main donors, William and Mary Brown. A student needs to be healthy, not overly stressed, supported financially when needed, says the dean. "The Browns were very devoted to the well-being of students and linking their philanthropy with this project."