President's Message

Western University is committed to openness and transparency in all our operations.

We are an institution supported by and accountable to the people of Ontario and of Canada, and we make every effort to provide information describing our activities and monitoring our performance in key areas of interest for all the constituencies we serve.

Western’s current Strategic Plan Achieving Excellence on the World Stage (2014) defines our vision, mission, priorities and aspirations as an institution and serves as the cornerstone of our public accountability. Another element of our accountability lies in our annual publication of a Performance and Activities Indicators Report, produced annually since 2005. This annual report includes data from three well-accepted comparative surveys based in the United States: The National Survey of Student Engagement, the Graduate and Professional Student Survey, and the Consortium for Student Retention Data Exchange.

Western is also a participant in the Common University Data Ontario project, providing accountability measures for all Ontario universities. Finally, we include on this website our annual Operating and Capital Budget, audited financial statements, and Western Factbook and Databook, which provide an additional view of the University’s current and planned revenues and expenditures.

Taken together, this information offers a clear and accurate documentation of Western’s commitments as an academic community and the means through which we are working to realize our objectives.

Alan Shepard
President and Vice-Chancellor

A Message From The Board Chair

It’s been said that accountability is the glue that bonds commitment to results. Western has long maintained and advanced a culture of accountability across a diverse and inclusive community including students, faculty, staff, alumni and the general public. We are accountable for embracing quality in our student-centred teaching, a relevant and engaged curriculum, and research that elevates and augments current knowledge and often focuses on real-world challenges that is performed by teams that cross disciplines and traditional academic boundaries. Our success is affirmed not only from an academic perspective but also a moral, social and innovative mindset. We recognize our boundary-spanning role in engaging the local as well as global community in expanding knowledge, embracing opportunity, supporting entrepreneurialism and enhancing society.

To this end, we pursue Western’s goals in an environment of fairness, broad participation and openness in which information is widely shared and the processes for decision-making are understood and respected. The information on this web site outlines the various measures to which we hold ourselves accountable and use to gauge our progress in pursuit of our mission of providing Canada's best student experience among research-intensive universities.

Rick Konrad
Chair, Western Board of Governors