Office of the Provost
Message from the Provost
Dear Niagara,
I want to tell you a story before I tell you my title.
Grimsby is where I grew up — where I spent my adolescence and my early twenties figuring out who I was going to be. It's where I had my first job working in the family business, my first heartbreak, and my first real conversation about what I wanted from life by dreaming big and working hard. The escarpment, the orchards, the lake that never quite warms up until August — these were the backdrops of everything that made me, me, long before anyone called me “Doctor” or “Provost” or anything else.
Just over ten years ago, I left Ontario to build a second career in academic administration after spending over a decade working in the federal government — a path that took me across the country, into rooms I never imagined I'd sit in, and toward work I've come to love: helping universities become places where students, and the communities around them, genuinely thrive. It was the right path. But it was also, quietly, a decade of missing home.
So, when the opportunity came to return to Niagara — not just to the region, but to serve as Provost and Vice-President Academic at the University of Niagara Falls Canada — it didn't feel like taking a job. It felt like being handed my own history and asked to do something meaningful with it.
I know this community. I know what it means when people here say they'll show up for you — because I watched this region show up for my family and relatives, for my neighbours, for people who needed a hand and got one without having to ask twice. That spirit is exactly what drew me back, and it's exactly what I see reflected in the students, faculty, and staff I'm getting to know at UNF: people who work hard, who care about getting it right, and who believe this region deserves a university that matches its ambition and passion to serve the community.
I won't pretend I'm arriving with all the answers. I'm arriving with something better, I think: a genuine stake in this place. I'm not observing Niagara from a distance — I'm coming home to it. And I intend to spend my time here the way you'd want someone from here to spend it: listening first, working hard, and building something we can all be proud to point to and say, that's ours. We built it together for a bright future filled with hope and prosperity.
In the weeks ahead, I hope to meet as many of you as I can — at the Grape and Wine Festival, at community events, in conversations that have nothing to do with a title and everything to do with neighbours getting reacquainted. If you see me out and about, please say hello. I'd love to hear your story too.
Thank you for the warm welcome already extended to me. I'm honoured to be coming home — and I can't wait to get to work, together.
With gratitude,
Dr. Sandra Song
Provost and Vice-President Academic, University of Niagara Falls Canada
