Next Chief of Canada’s Brock U. Is Known as Social-Justice Advocate

An Activist Leader

Wendy Cukier, vice president for research and innovation at Ryerson University, in Toronto, combines a decorated academic career with a national profile as an advocate for gun control and human rights.

In September she will become the first woman to lead Brock University, a large, growing public research institution 12 miles west of Niagara Falls.

She says she hopes to close the gap between “the reputation the university has and the reputation it deserves,” in part by raising its profile in nearby Toronto and by expanding collaborations with American and international institutions.

John Suk, chair of the Board of Trustees, says Ms. Cukier “has wonderful credentials that are a little bit different from some of the other people we looked at.” Those include “the success she has had at Ryerson, plus her social-justice portfolio. All of those things were very appealing.”

The search committee had no reservations about Ms. Cukier’s advocacy credentials, he says. She is president and a co-founder of the Coalition for Gun Control, established 25 years ago after a shooting rampage at a Montreal university in which 14 female students were killed. “It didn’t enter as a factor at all,” says Mr. Suk. “Canada, of course, is not the United States.”

In response to the Syrian-refugee crisis, Ms. Cukier has mobilized Toronto-area universities in a fund-raising drive to assist families relocating to Canada. Mr. Suk says there is no expectation that she would relinquish her advocacy work.

Her academic track record includes 200 research papers on technology and innovation and her founding of Ryerson’s Diversity Institute, in 1999, to conduct research on workplace diversity and promote the use of evidence-based strategies for inclusion.

In addition to an undergraduate degree in English and history from Brock, Ms. Cukier has a master’s degree in history and an M.B.A. from the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. in management science from York University.

“The university of the 21st century has got to be engaged in driving economic development and job creation, preparing graduates for employment and solving the problems that industry and government face,” she says, “and it has got to be engaged in social innovation and in solving wicked social problems.” The issues of gun violence and refugees, she says, are as important as, say, the technology-related challenges of health care. — Karen Birchard and Jennifer Lewington

Helping Syrian Refugees

When Omar Soufan, at age 17, moved to the United States from Syria, where he grew up, he had to spend all his time working and studying. After he transferred to the University of Rochester as part of its Renaissance & Global Scholarship program, he says, he “didn’t have to worry about bills anymore.” So he decided to use his newfound time to do something to help those affected by the civil war back home.

Now a junior studying biomedical engineering, Mr. Soufan — along with his roommate, Ibrahim Mohammad, a fellow junior and scholarship recipient — are helping establish a rehabilitation clinic in Lebanon for Syrians injured in the continuing conflict.

The roommates first applied for a Davis Projects for Peace grant for their $10,000 project, which was co-sponsored by the nonprofit Syrian American Medical Society, or SAMS. The website of the associated SAMS Foundation says it helped more than two million Syrians in need in 2015.

After being named an alternate in the grant competition at their institution, and receiving no money, they decided to raise money independently by asking friends for donations and setting up a donation link on the SAMS website. In total, the two raised about $3,700. Doctors in Lebanon donated $2,000 worth of equipment, and SAMS covered the rest.

In August, Mr. Soufan flew to Lebanon to work with doctors installing the equipment at the clinic and interview patients about their needs.

“When a situation is stable, you might get cold feet for pushing forward with a project like this, but since it’s getting worse every day, I couldn’t afford to sit down and do nothing,” says Mr. Soufan.

Mr. Mohammad, who is a Palestinian refugee, says that when he was growing up, “it meant a lot if someone else came to help us, but no one else came” and so he wanted to do his part.

Though Mr. Soufan and Mr. Mohammad did not promote their role in the fund-raising campaign — they wanted the focus to be on the crisis and not their personal stories — they received help from several people at Rochester.

Jonathan Burdick, dean of undergraduate admissions who advises the Renaissance & Global Scholars, offered guidance on fund raising, and the project received a large donation from the Rev. Brian Cool, faculty adviser of the two roommates’ fraternity, Sigma Chi.

One of Mr. Mohammad’s professors introduced him to Jon Schull, a research scientist at the Rochester Institute of Technology who is also the founder of e-NABLE, a project that organizes volunteers to make 3-D-printed prosthetic hands and arms for amputees. Mr. Mohammad and Mr. Soufan plan to take the e-NABLE model to the clinic in Lebanon.
— Angela Chen

Promoter of Rural Health

Jean Rawlings Sumner, who will become dean of Mercer University’s School of Medicine in July, is known for her deep commitment to rural health. She decided to become a doctor, while her children were still small, because her town didn’t have one. In 1986 she was in the first graduating class of the school she will soon lead.

During the 25 years she practiced internal medicine in Wrightsville, Ga., she helped the medical school by providing community-based training to students.

In November 2014, she became associate dean for rural health. In that part-time role, she continued her quest to train more physicians to work in rural areas. Mercer ranks third in the nation in terms of the percentage of graduates practicing in rural areas of its home state.

It’s important to select students “who are committed to serving an underserved population,” Dr. Sumner says. “You look for students who understand the challenges and want that kind of lifestyle.”

“As a physician in a small town, you can change your community,” she says. Both her father and her maternal grandfather were doctors, and she worked as a registered nurse before pursuing her medical degree.

Rural doctors must be able to solve a range of problems and to rely on clinical diagnosis when technology is not available. One of the greatest benefits of the job, Dr. Sumner says, is the chance to do intergenerational care. “You know the family dynamic, the history of diseases. You’ve treated grandparents and grandchildren.”

Dr. Sumner is working to “re-energize Mercer’s commitment” to rural care. She is leading a partnership that will try to improve health care in an underserved rural county by delivering services through telecommunications technology. That practice, telehealth, can give patients access to specialists hundreds of miles away. The university also plans to train students in telemedicine ethics. Students will work with area providers and telehealth companies to design systems of care and research.

Officials at the university also hope to expand its rural-medical-scholar program for premedical students into a residency track, with 18 months of urban medical practice and 18 months in an underserved rural community.

Dr. Sumner has wound down her practice so she can work full time at Mercer as she prepares to succeed William F. Bina III as dean. He will become dean of the school’s Savannah campus. “Everybody deserves access to quality, safe care,” she says. “It’s imperative that we train doctors to be advocates for patients to help them negotiate a very broken system.” — Kate Stoltzfus

Retirement After Pressure

Thomas R. Rochon says he will retire as president of Ithaca College in July 2017, after nine years in the job.

Months ago, students protesting the racial climate at the college began demanding Mr. Rochon’s resignation, and faculty members voted no confidence in him in December. He had resisted stepping down.

In a message to the campus on January 14, he said he believed it was best that a new president “make a fresh start” in dealing with the challenges “that became so apparent to us all last semester.” — Andy Thomason

Loan Watchdog’s Move

Rohit Chopra, a former top official at the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has joined the U.S. Department of Education to help it beef up services for student-loan borrowers, including those in the military.

During the time that Mr. Chopra was an assistant director and student-loan ombudsman at the bureau, it sued two big for-profit-college companies — ITT Educational Services Inc. and Corinthian Colleges Inc. — over allegations of abusive lending practices.

Mr. Chopra, who left the bureau last summer and became a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, has said it was time for “a major redo” of the student-loan system.
— Goldie Blumenstyk

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