Welcome to Fall 2019

It’s almost the end of the first week of the fall semester and by now I hope you have figured out where all of your classes are and you’re excited about the first semester with the Surrey campus expansion.

Whether you are a returning student, staff or faculty member or new to SFU, I welcome you and I wish you well.  I also hope you got some down time over the summer.

I would like to give a special shout-out to the new sustainable energy engineering (SEE) students, staff and faculty as we launch this first-of-its-kind-in-western-Canada school in the brand new SFU Surrey building located adjacent to the main Surrey campus. 

The SEE students are truly trailblazers. Years from now when they have graduated and are looking back on their amazing career, they can always think back to this moment: when they were part of something very new for SFU, and more importantly, for themselves. 

There was a lot of thought and blood, sweat and tears into both the development of the program and the new building. In three years, the building design, municipal approvals, construction, design of the SEE program, hiring of faculty and staff, recruiting students, ensuring operational and IT implementation happened. All of this was accomplished in three very short years.

What a great thrill it was to walk in the building Tuesday morning to greet and connect with the faculty, staff and students who shared the watershed moment of transforming the space from an idea into an active and engaging place for people to connect and learn.

And I do want to give a shout out to Gaitri Yapa and her first-year statistics class. Gaitri, from the statistics department, taught the very first class in the SRYE Lecture theatre on Tuesday morning at 8:30 am (see picture).  This is a big honour.

Now, as Executive Director of the Surrey campus, I want to encourage everyone – students, faculty and staff - to move between the two buildings; both locations are now part of the Surrey campus vibe! Both have great places to hang out and study like the hot tub areas in SRYC and the new tree pods in SRYE. And where SRYC will be home to most student services and the Fraser Library, the new building has a 400-seat lecture theatre and a multi-purpose room – can you say yoga classes! Both buildings have an IT Help Desk where our amazing problem-solving staff are there to support all your technology needs.

In closing, welcome to SFU, welcome to the Surrey campus. Thank you for choosing SFU and I hope you have a great semester.