{"id":53593,"date":"2019-02-12T15:07:55","date_gmt":"2019-02-12T20:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=53593"},"modified":"2025-10-17T16:37:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T20:37:18","slug":"mayors-breakfast-benoit-antoine-bacon","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/mayors-breakfast-benoit-antoine-bacon\/","title":{"rendered":"City Partners: Carleton Focuses on Collaboration"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n City Partners: Carleton Focuses on Collaboration\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

Carleton University is woven into the fabric of Ottawa, and in today\u2019s age of partnerships, the university\u2019s collaborations with government, industry and non-profit institutions will play a key role in its ability to successfully navigate the fast pace of societal change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These ideas, the central theme of a speech delivered by Carleton President Benoit-Antoine Bacon<\/a> at the Mayor\u2019s Breakfast Series at City Hall on Feb. 12, 2019 drew vigorous applause from a council chamber packed with nearly 300 local business, political and community leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The event was co-hosted by Ottawa Business Journal<\/a><\/em> publisher Michael Curran and Ian Faris, president and CEO of the Ottawa Board of Trade<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"President
President Benoit-Antoine Bacon and Mayor Jim Watson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bacon was introduced by Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson, a Carleton alumnus, who noted that extra seats had to be set up to accommodate the large audience. Watson also welcomed two other post-secondary leaders \u2014 Algonquin College President Cheryl Jensen and University of Ottawa President Jacques Fr\u00e9mont \u2014 who were seated beside Bacon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis shows the importance of post-secondary institutions to the ecosystem of the city,\u201d said Watson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA big part of Carleton\u2019s success is due to being in this great city,\u201d said Bacon. \u201cA city that matters. The national capital. We leverage the strengths of our city as much as we can, and we try to be as open and accessible as possible so that the city can leverage us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carleton was recently ranked as one of the top 10 universities in Canada<\/a> for graduate career success, Bacon said, and one of the top 200 internationally \u2014 well within the top one percent of more than 20,000 universities worldwide.
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Core Elements of a Smart City<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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Moreover, Carleton has an economic impact as an institution estimated at well over $3 billion annually, with an overwhelming proportion spent in Ottawa. The university will receive about $70 million in research funds this year, supporting projects in areas such as telecommunications, public policy, energy efficiency, accessibility and autonomous vehicles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTake them together,\u201d said Bacon, \u201cand they are the core elements of a smart city.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also delivered some news: Carleton officially surpassed the $300-million goal<\/a> of its \u201cHere for Good<\/a>\u201d fundraising campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis has been the most ambitious fundraising initiative in the university\u2019s history, and it is a success because of what \u2018Here for Good\u2019 embodies,\u201d said Bacon. \u201cIt speaks to our commitment to enhance social, economic and the common good \u2014 that\u2019s our purpose. Everyone wants to contribute. You cannot have meaning in your life if you don\u2019t feel that you\u2019re contributing to the greater good.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is an exciting time to be at Carleton, Bacon said, but also a challenging time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"President<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cAs a sector, higher education faces a number of challenges. The most pressing one could be the dramatic paradigm shift for all content-based businesses brought about by technological evolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt has hit the media and music industries hard and they had to adapt. Universities have followed a fairly fixed approach for decades and now we must adapt \u2014 and adapt quickly \u2014 to remain viable and sustainable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo face these challenges, we can\u2019t operate independently. No one person, or institution, is an island. We live in an age of partnerships, and we could not achieve any of our ambitious goals at Carleton without collaborating with our many partners in the government, industry and non-profit sectors. Together, we are stronger and more resilient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of the ways that we\u2019re adapting is by incorporating much more experiential learning \u2014 learning by doing \u2014 into our programs. But we have to do this in a smart way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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Creating More Learning Opportunities for Students<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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In terms of specific partnerships, Bacon highlighted Carleton\u2019s Dev Degree<\/a> collaboration with Shopify and the Education City<\/a> initiative, where Carleton, the University of Ottawa, Algonquin College and La Cit\u00e9 Coll\u00e9giale work together to create more learning opportunities for students so they better meet workforce demands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"President<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWe\u2019re working with our post-secondary partners on autonomous vehicle research and development,\u201d Bacon added. \u201cThis work is supported by Invest Ottawa and includes the City of Ottawa, BlackBerry QNX and the National Capital Commission. We\u2019re building on Ottawa\u2019s strength in communications technologies and cybersecurity and will help the city to lead in the autonomous vehicle sector.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The speech also covered Carleton\u2019s efforts on the sustainability front, including its recent move to join the Carbon 613<\/a> green economy hub, the fact that Efficiency Canada<\/a> has established its headquarters on campus, and the university\u2019s new co-generation energy plant which will provide 40 per cent of all campus electricity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHydro Ottawa provided a $5.2-million incentive for this project \u2014 about a quarter of the total budget \u2014 so thank you very much to the city for its support!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carleton University is woven into the fabric of Ottawa, and in today\u2019s age of partnerships, the university\u2019s collaborations with government, industry and non-profit institutions will play a key role in its ability to successfully navigate the fast pace of societal change. These ideas, the central theme of a speech delivered by Carleton President Benoit-Antoine Bacon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":53612,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[28],"cu_story_tag":[],"class_list":["post-53593","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_story_type-community-partnerships"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":"blueprint"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/53593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/53593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98536,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/53593\/revisions\/98536"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=53593"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=53593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}