Introduction

Driving positive change

At York, our vision is to provide a broad sociodemographic of students with access to a high-quality education at a research-intensive University that is committed to enhancing the well-being of the communities we serve. During the first full academic year under the pandemic, we continued to fulfill this vision, finding new ways to drive positive change for local communities and around the world.

Throughout the year, the health and safety of our community members always remained our highest priority. We put in place a multi-layered pandemic defense system to protect our community, and continued to closely follow all public health guidance. At the same time, we delivered a full suite of academic programming to meet the needs of our large and diverse student population, and ensured that our students, faculty, course directors, and staff had the supports they needed to succeed.

We also moved forward on longer-term priorities such as expanding and enhancing our campuses, launching new academic courses and programs, intensifying our research and creative activities, growing our network of strategic partnerships, and working to create a more diverse and inclusive community environment.

It was, to say the very least, a year like no other. This report shows how — in the face of unprecedented challenges — we united to support one another and our local and global communities, maintaining our focus on righting the future.