Principal's Message
To our SJC Community,
It was such a warm, wonderful, and at times bittersweet, alumni homecoming celebration that we held in April in our beloved St. John’s College, and I wanted to say a deeply felt thanks to all of you who took time out of your busy lives to come from all around the world to join us. I know that many more of you were unable to come but were there with us in spirit, and I know that as we said a nostalgic goodbye to the walls that provided a home away from home for so many of us over the last 29 years, that there was also much joy in seeing old friends (and meeting new ones) and sharing our memories about days long gone. The happiness of gathering again over food and wine was tinged with sadness, but I am glad that many of you had the chance to send a fond and final farewell to our old home with such meaningful messages written on the walls and doors and windows.
This last year has been a busy and challenging time for our SJC staff as they prepared for the “decommissioning” of the SJC building in anticipation of the new and expanded SJC 2.0 to be completed in Fall 2029. “Decommissioning” is of course a euphemism for “demolition”--and I want to thank and acknowledge our staff, the staff of Student Housing and Community Services (SHCS), and the many residents of SJC who helped plan and organize our transition to temporary housing in the Ponderosa housing complex across the street. I know the move was stressful, but I hope that our SJC Fellows can enjoy the beautiful panoramic views of mountain and sea from their new rooms on the top floors of Cedar House—including for some of you a view of our new SJC home as it is being built over the next three years.
I want to especially thank Yuki Kaneki, our Membership Coordinator who has moved for a new opportunity with his family to North Carolina. Yuki stayed at SJC until the move of our residents was completed, and we are all deeply grateful for his adjusting the timing of the next stage of his and his family’s own journey so that he could help with our own transition. We extend our heartfelt best wishes to Yuki in his future endeavours, and our gratitude for all he did for our SJC residents, from the earliest moments of initial applications through the final move outs from the College. Although Yuki and our beloved Alice Lam, who recently decided to retire after more than three decades of service to UBC, will not be joining us in the new SJC 2.0, I know that generations of SJC residents join us in our gratitude for all they did to make our residents feel welcome and at home.
Our SJC staff have temporary offices at West Mall Annex on the same block as our residents in Ponderosa, along with a sitting area with couches, tables, and kitchenette where we can gather together during the days we await the completion of our new home. Stacy, Jenny and Rei will work with our residents to help make this temporary space as homey as possible, and we welcome your help in making it a home away from home for the next 36 months. Drop by if you happen to be on campus and take a look at our new $561 million home being built at 2111 Lower Mall (we will be keeping our old address…), as well as the architects’ plans and renderings of what it will look like when construction is complete.
We are all so excited for the chance to share the spirit of community, camaraderie, and mutual support that has been at the heart of St. John’s College since its founding in 1997. We inherited the resilience and reputation of our Founders from St. John’s University in Shanghai along with their gift of the original St. John’s College building. The unique social and academic community that 174 of you built, each year, year after year over the last three decades, will inhabit our new home. As 1521 graduate students from around the world each year meet and become a community through living together, dining together, and supporting each other through thick and thin at the new Lower Mall Precinct community complex being built, they will learn from each other and forge lifelong friendships and support networks in the spirit of SJC. Our staff will be working with an array of other units across UBC, including our partners at Student Housing and Community Services and Food Services, to ensure that this spirt of international and interdisciplinary learning, and in particular the central role of shared dining and social gatherings in creating a strong and resilient academic community, are the central strategic goal within the programming of life within SJC 2.0. This is who we have been at SJC for 29 years, and it will continue to be who we are for generations to come in our beautiful new home.
Dr. Henry Yu
Principal
