University of Sudbury appoints new president

There's a new leader at the University of Sudbury as it plots a path to becoming a stand-alone French language university.

The university announced Thursday that Serge Miville is the new President and Vice-Chancellor. He replaces Father John Meehan who was appointed in September 2019. Meehan is moving on to a new job at Trinity College at the University of Toronto. 

Miville told CBC he has a vision for a "collaborative, engaged, inclusive, student-oriented university."

Laurentian University severed its federation agreement with the University of Sudbury and the two other federated universities, Huntington and Thorneloe, in April during restructuring brought on by a financial crisis.

The university of Sudbury is working to become a stand-alone university for and by francophones. The university said Miville will lead the institution as it fast-tracks an application to open its doors to students by this September.

"After a careful review of candidates from across Canada, the University decided that Dr. Miville, an accomplished historian, was the ideal candidate to lead the University through this next decisive step to continue its evolution in support of leading-edge higher education by, for and with the North's resilient Francophone community," the university said in a press release.

Miville said the task at hand of having the university's door open in September may not be easy, but he said it is crucially important to the francophone community, and the north in general. He said keeping students is his main priority. 

"We're seeing a student brain drain right now, and we have to stem that," Miville said. 

"Most of the people I talk to they're like, 'well, we're moving to other institutions right now to complete our degrees.' And that is terrifying, because our future is our students."

Miville was a professor of Franco-Ontarian history at Laurentian until recently and is originally from Smooth Rock Falls.