The University of Alberta president discusses using data, collaboration and a positive vision to turn around the institution while minimising internal disputes. The pandemic has been a testing time for all university leaders, but it’s possible none faced as big a challenge as Bill Flanagan. He accepted his first job as a president, at an institution he was new to, six weeks before the university announced more than 1,000 job losses resulting from the biggest budget cut in the organisation’s history, along with a full-scale move to online teaching thanks to the intensifying pandemic. Although he describes the situation as a perfect storm and begins his interview with Times Higher Education by joking that he might not survive in the role, the president and vice-chancellor of Canada’s University of Alberta is a man of seemingly inexhaustible equanimity.
