New territory

But the hiring of people like Sabor to continue what is already going on at McGill is not automatic. There will be new scholarly areas that the University regards as more important.

"The days of the truly comprehensive university are over," declared Principal Bernard Shapiro at a recent presentation to McGill managers. "The costs associated with doing that today are unbelievable. The challenge facing us is to define which are the areas where we can be truly great and which areas will we leave for everybody else."

Says Vinet, "We have been pushing for the University to be much more strategic. In hiring, there is a natural tendency for people to want to reproduce themselves." While Vinet has no intention of letting McGill's strongest programs wither away, he is insistent that room has to be made for emerging disciplines.

"We have created about nine new positions in nanotechnology and another seven in bioinformatics." Nanotechnology deals with the manipulation of materials at the molecular level. Bioinformatics uses advanced computer techniques to assess and evaluate the reams of data being uncovered about our vast array of genes and proteins.

"These are areas that play to McGill's strengths," says Vinet, noting that bioinformatics is a logical next step for a university that has already distinguished itself in such related fields as computer science, biomedical engineering and genetics. "We made choices about areas where we felt we could really make a difference, areas that we see as important to society."

New attitude

McGill's newest professors will likely be a more interdisciplinary crowd than their predecessors. Vinet and the deans are anxious to hire academics who seek out collaborations with colleagues in other disciplines.

"After World War II, there was this powerful trend to professionalize the disciplines," explains Miller. One of the consequences was that each discipline became more insular and standoffish. Things are changing.

"The new generation of scholars is very interested in exploring other points of view," says Vinet.

MNI Director David Colman PHOTO: Owen Egan

"An historical approach to a subject can be richer and more meaningful if it is allied with an economic approach, for example," says Miller. He notes that Arts and the Faculty of Medicine are hiring some of the new professors together.

"If you look at health, so much depends on such factors as economic status and cultural background. Ethical questions surrounding health care have become much more prevalent. The scholars in this faculty have a lot to offer our colleagues in medicine on these subjects."

McGill's commitment to nurturing interdisciplinary efforts is one of the reasons Dr. David Colman recently agreed to become the new director of the Montreal Neurological Institute. Colman, a molecular biologist, is responsible for several influential studies exploring how nerve cells develop, regenerate and communicate with one another. He was the scientific director for a multiple sclerosis research centre at New York's Mount Sinai Hospital.

"I was attracted by the tremendous diversity I saw here among the MNI's really first-rate scientists," explains Colman. "That's a quality that is becoming increasingly rare at most major research institutes in the U.S. They tend to be thematic. I wouldn't want to work some place where everybody you bump into in the hallway is doing essentially the same thing. I want to be able to interact with people who are constantly bringing up things I haven't thought about before."

Important support

McGill's hiring efforts have been greatly assisted by a pair of recent government programs. The Canada Foundation for Innovation supplies universities with millions of dollars to purchase scientific equipment and update research facilities. Its grants are matched by the Quebec government. A big chunk of this money is targeted towards new professors, to help them get their research programs off the ground.

The Canada Research Chairs program enables universities to offer established academic stars, as well as up-and-comers with immense potential, attractive salaries and enticing research-related perks.

Desmond Manderson, McGill's new Canada Research Chair in Law and Discourse, says his decision to leave his native Australia and come to McGill was strongly influenced "by the attractiveness of a chair geared to support top-quality research."

Manderson was the director of the Julius Stone Institute of Jurisprudence at the University of Sydney and wrote Songs Without Music, a book that argues that law is too often seen as a sterile construct, when it should be regarded as a dynamic form of cultural expression.

	Psychology professor John Abela. PHOTO: Owen Egan

Much of his research explores the ethical problems associated with the legal system -- his work has dealt with mandatory sentencing for individuals convicted of crimes and with governmental drug policies. He isn't a dispassionate critic, publishing barbed critiques of the government in some of Australia's leading newspapers.

He sees the move to McGill as an opportunity to add a more international dimension to his work, but recognizes he has much to learn. "I'm in a place now where I don't understand the issues quite as well as I did in Australia. One of the great opportunities provided by this chair is that it will give me time to read and think."

"These programs have had a tremendous impact on Canadian universities," says Price. Mogil, Colman and Saideman are all among the professors who have been appointed to Canada Research Chairs at McGill.

From the start, McGill has used its portion of Canada Research Chairs to lure leading scholars from other universities to McGill. Most Canadian universities use their chairs to hold onto their own top talents.

What McGill did instead was set up a parallel system, the James McGill Professors and Sir William Dawson Scholars programs, which offer Canada Research Chairs-type inducements to top-ranking McGill professors.

"This isn't the only university that is out there hiring," notes Price. "We were concerned about being raided. We identified some of the people here who we felt other universities might target."