President’s Town Hall highlights enrolment pressure, budget challenges and campus infrastructure
By Danijela Marcinkovic, February 20 2026—
On Jan. 29, students and faculty gathered in the MacEwan Student Centre for the President’s Town Hall, where President Dr. Ed McCauley, Provost Dr. Sandra Davidson and the rest of the executive leadership team discussed updates on major projects and answered questions.
“There’s no big announcement, no specific news to share and there’s no shoe to drop,” stated McCauley. “This is going to be a candid conversation, and I’ll spend about 15 minutes giving you a broad overview on several topics. Then we’ll take questions. Some submitted in advance, and others from the floor.”
McCauley began by discussing student enrollment, which is 38,113 as of this past fall. This number includes nearly 31,000 undergraduates and over 7,200 graduate students.
“We took in almost 500 more undergraduate students, and it was 500 fewer graduate students,” stated McCauley. “We had another year of record high domestic demand for our academic programs.”
“We’re under immense enrollment pressure,” said McCauley.
“For every student accepted, the University of Calgary turns away four fully qualified applicants, and that’s just a simple matter of supply and demand,” he stated.
He stated that this is why Kate Hamilton, Vice President External Relations, and the government team are focused on advocating for a new funding framework.
“To ensure we have a sustainable operating funding model for the decades to come, and to enable us to grow our domestic student enrollment and keep pace with the demand from our community,” he stated.
He went on to discuss updates in various faculties.
“Science is offering an energy science program, preparing undergraduate students for involving careers in all forms of energy,” said McCauley. “Haskayne is launching a new 16 month master of finance degree. This is the first of its kind in Alberta, and the only dedicated master of finance in Western Canada.”
“We’re also ready to welcome the first students into our Southern Alberta Medical Program. Students can now earn a University of Calgary medical degree while studying in Lethbridge.”
Next, he discussed updates in research.
“We brought in 632 million in external research revenue,” McCauley stated. “[This is] an endorsement of the quality of our research, and a sign that our communities are eager to invest in us because of the world-changing impact of our research.”
“The Government of Canada is investing 1.7 billion dollars…into their global impact and research talent initiative,” he stated. “This country is going after the best minds in the world, and UCalgary is ready to lead the pack.”
Talks of budget followed.
“Our…annual consolidated budget is now 1.8 billion dollars,” McCauley stated. “Like all universities, we are facing financial strain. The cost of living is on the rise.”
“University of Calgary is already the most administratively efficient university in Canada,” he stated. “[This] means we’re maximizing the dollars we have to support our core mission of teaching, learning, research and community service.”
“There’s also a limit, and eventually a trade off between efficiency and effectiveness,” he said. “This budget cycle, Wilbert has begun implementing some process changes.”
Wilbert Arends is the Vice President Finance and Services as well as the Chief Financial Officer.
“We’re not sure yet what the funding from the province will look like in the year ahead,” McCauley stated. “We are very optimistic that we’re now on a path towards a long term, sustainable operating funding model.”
The construction on campus was also addressed.
“We’ve got the new Taylor Family kinesiology building, which is going up in parking lot 13,” he stated. “It will feature a world class concussion research centre, and space dedicated to studying human performance, movement and sports science.”
“Planning continues on the multidisciplinary science hub, and when it’s complete it will enable space for 2000 new students.”
“We’re also looking at how to best use the space that we already have,” he said.
“The University of Calgary is in the planning stages for two new residences, one for undergraduates, and another for graduate students,” he stated.
Following these updates, the panel took time to answer various pre-submitted questions as well as questions from the audience. They alternated between pre-submitted and audience questions.
Davidson began by answering a question regarding how UofC will look to create a more seamless and easy to navigate student information portal.
“We are developing…a student engagement hub, which brings together everything that we have online, and in one easy place to find,” she stated.
Hendrik Kraay from the Department of History posed a question regarding the Faculty of Arts.
“We’ve been receiving some rather discouraging budget news around the 6.7 million dollar deficit in the Faculty of Arts,” Kraay stated. “I’d like to know what it is that the central administration really is doing to assist the faculty of arts…and it appears right now to be the only faculty that is dealing with this type of financial situation.”
Davidson responded.
“We also had a couple questions online about this, so we’re double word score here,” she stated.
The online questions relating to this topic were not presented.
“I don’t know if it makes arts feel better, but it’s not the only faculty that’s going through transition and change,” Davidson stated. “Across all 14 faculty and units that I oversee, there are unique budget challenges in each faculty.”
“Arts has come together from a previous constitution of a bunch of other faculties that were amalgamated, and so that process of evolving is continuing,” she said. “The way we’re approaching this is looking at…how do we create streamlined paths of study that allow people to have specializations…and still have the types of learning experiences they want.”
“Some of those restructuring pieces that I think is the approach that we’re certainly supporting with from central, we’re supporting with data in terms of what those programs are, in terms of enrollment, in terms of cost, in terms of opportunity for how you organize yourself differently,” she said. “Please note that it’s not the only faculty that is having to make decisions and choices and structure differently going forward.”
A pre-submitted question asked if there is a way for faculty to submit requests under pillar four of the Ahead of Tomorrow plan for efficiency and streamlining operations.
Vice President Digital Transformation and Technology as well as Chief Transformation Officer, Nipa Chakravarti responded.
“There is a website on Process Excellence and Transformation that people can submit requests [through],” she stated. “What we do from there is we take those and…respond back to the individual that raised the question.”
Eric, a fifth year student in International Relations and Political Science, posed a question about how U of C plans to care for older buildings at the school.
“Some of us were wondering if some love would be shown to some of the older buildings on campus…[namely] Science Theatres,” he said. “I remember finishing my summer exams and there was a heavy rain storm at the time…there were buckets everywhere catching rain.”
Arends responded.
“There’s a room utilization, a study that has been going on, and that shows that some of these buildings are more occupied than others,” he said. “What we’re trying to do now is…to see how can we free up…bigger spaces so that we can do proper renovation on the entire floor or even the entire building.”
Kristine Bauer, an Associate Professor from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, asked a question regarding the support of researchers.
“[Is there] some centralized way to support researchers to help us be more resilient in the face of the changing landscape?”
Vice President Research William Ghali responded.
“We have a job of connecting people with opportunities,” he said. “ We have teams that go on and find opportunities very, very actively.”
The Town Hall ended with one final pre-submitted question for McCauley.
“When you go to the dining centre, do you still have to swipe your card like the rest of us, or is there a special secret passage that you get to use?”
“Believe me, there are no special doors for the president of the University of Calgary,” stated McCauley.
McCauley gave thanks to those who asked questions and stated that the executive leadership team will remain to continue conversing and to follow up with some topics.