Is there a strong impetus for McGill to review its academic programs?
Yes! All of us at McGill must continuously ask ourselves if our teaching programs are as good as they can be. The ability to challenge our knowledge and our methods is a key part of the academic environment and allows us to advance our knowledge and our method of imparting knowledge to students. This is especially important because students entrust us with critical years of their lives. Our academic program review gives us the information we need to generate a plan to “modernize”, in the broadest sense of the word, all our courses. What makes this initiative different from the way McGill used to review its programs? Previously reviews focused on a unit or faculty as a whole. In fact, many apprehensions about reviews are tied to past processes that were labour intensive, long and sometimes carried a “carrot-and-stick” connotation; positive reviews were associated with budget increases, while bad reviews were linked to budget cuts. Now McGill is taking a different approach: innovative, l
