Dear King’s and Dalhousie communities,
If you stand at the edge of our campuses on any weekday morning—somewhere that you can glimpse the Quad at King’s and still spot the sidewalks threading through Studley—you will see something that has been true for generations: our students understand the relationship between Dalhousie and King’s better than any policy document, financial statement, formal contract or memorandum of understanding ever could.
They cross Castine Way with coffee mugs and backpacks, heading from a King’s tutorial to a Dalhousie classroom. They read at the Killam Library and write papers in the Angels’ Roost. They build friendships and find mentors across both universities. They know we are two institutions with distinct identities, yet they move in spaces where those identities overlap, complement and enrich one another. They are also the first to tell us when advising feels fragmented, when a degree requirement gets in the way of curiosity or when our structures don’t yet reflect the interconnected way they think, learn and imagine their futures. In short: they treat our campuses as a shared intellectual neighbourhood.
That shared neighbourhood was born a little over a century ago in a moment of disruption and possibility. When a fire destroyed the King’s campus in Windsor, Dalhousie opened its doors, its land, and its imagination. King’s brought its traditions of conversation, inquiry and community. Together, the two institutions created something new—a relationship that was not transactional, but transformational. That partnership has grown in uneven but beautiful ways. Shared faculty. Joint programs and common academic homes. Students who live in one world and study in another. Distinct cultures that nevertheless fit together like two perspectives in an evolving dialogue.
And now, as we enter the second century of the Dal–King’s association, we face another moment of disruption and possibility. Everyone reading this is well-versed in the financial challenges at our respective institutions, shared as they are by universities across the sector. These times ask us to make careful, thoughtful choices about what matters most to us. But budget concerns are far from the only disruptions we face, and we need only look at those students criss-crossing our campuses to see this. The world our students are moving through and into is interdisciplinary, flexible and restless with curiosity. It demands pathways that cross boundaries, advising that anticipates movement and physical spaces that invite people to belong with ease.
Over the past year, the King’s–Dal Relationship Task Force, which was established in November 2024, has taken on the project of helping us see this landscape with fresh eyes. Their report, which will be released more widely and in full after it has been shared with Senate, King’s Faculty and with the Faculties of Arts and Social Sciences and Science, offers not just recommendations but a renewed sense of the living nature of our partnership. The members of the Task Force found places where our shared ecosystem is thriving. They also found places where old fences stand—not intentionally, but as the natural result of structures that haven’t always kept pace with students’ movements and our intellectual aspirations.
The Task Force urges us to clear those old fences to make space for new routes:
- clearer, more flexible degree maps
- shared advising and coordinated student supports
- streamlined transitions from King’s to Dalhousie programs and vice versa
- new interdisciplinary pathways that match the way students actually imagine their futures, and,
- shared spaces—physical and digital—that reflect how interconnected our communities already are.
There is something humbling and energizing in this moment if we choose to embrace it: an invitation to tend to our relationship with care and ambition, not because it is fragile, or because the budget ledgers ask it of us, but because that relationship is alive and ever-changing and strengthens both our universities. We want future students to feel the benefits of our relationship so naturally that they can hardly imagine it was otherwise: to walk from King’s to Dal and back again and feel that their education fits together seamlessly in every way; to see a single landscape of possibility rather than a set of boundaries to navigate.
In the months ahead, we will work to prioritize the early actions and map the longer-term commitments that will move this vision into being. Some steps will be quick. Others will take time, attention and patient collaboration to make possible. But all of them share the same purpose, which is to build a second century of partnership aligned with the world our students are entering.
The Dal–King’s relationship has always been a story of two institutions that discovered, together, that their differences could become strengths when tended with imagination, generosity and shared purpose. We are grateful for what we have become so far and ready to embrace what will evolve next.
With gratitude and optimism,
Kim and Bill
Kim Brooks | President, Dalhousie University
William Lahey | President, University of King’s College
