With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1173482
But, like other post-secondary institutions of the era, SFU's so- called "radical campus" was physically isolated and somewhat inaccessible. "That was a leading inspiration for building a Vancouver campus," says SFU President Andrew Petter. "My predecessors saw a demand for continuing education in the downtown core and wanted to make that easily available." So, 30 years ago, SFU stepped into the Harbour Centre space vacated by the Sears department store, a move that Petter says has transformed the university as much as it has revitalized downtown Vancouver. "It was a defining initiative," Petter says. "It set the stage for SFU to become what it is today: Canada's most community-engaged research university." Larry Beasley, former co-director of planning at the City of Vancouver, says that SFU opened in Harbour Centre "just as we [at the city] were trying to implement Vancouverism" – an urban planning innovation designed to bring more jobs, people and vitality into the downtown core. SFU's arrival, Beasley says, was pivotal, injecting educational opportunity, energy and invest- ment, and attracting colleges and the Vancouver Film School to the same neighbourhood, Beasley says. With support from some of Vancouver's most venerated leaders and philanthro- pists, SFU has since added eight other facilities, including the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue, the Segal Graduate School of Business, the Goldcorp Centre for the Arts and the Charles Chang Innovation Centre, creating what the Vancouver Sun has called "the intellectual heart of the city." SFU's subsequent engagement with Vancouver's citizens and business community engendered such vibrancy and social relevance that the university was emboldened to establish a third campus in Surrey. Situated in a stunning structure that also includes an office tower and a shopping mall, the campus fulfilled the vision of the late architect Bing Thom, who predicted the facility's potential to be the catalyst for a new Surrey City Centre. Beasley is again enthused. Instead of creating an inde- ENGAGED SFU IS AN ENGINE FOR CITY BUILDING Leveraging its public and private resources, SFU has added social and economic value across Metro Vancouver BY RICHARD LITTLEMORE Simon Fraser University was always going to be an activist and innovative force. Established atop Burnaby Mountain in 1965, the university's faculty and staff showed from the first day that they were determined to engage – creatively, sometimes boisterously – with the wider world. SFU's direct engagement now extends to campuses in Surrey (left), downtown Vancouver (top right) and to the development of UniverCity (bottom right) adjacent