"She transformed the Faculty. Without Marie-Eve Sylvestre, we would have kept the Faculty afloat, but we wouldn't be in the same place today," says Pierre Thibault, Assistant Dean of the Civil Law Section.
Marie-Eve Sylvestre has served as Dean since 2019. Under her leadership, the Section has grown significantly, welcoming some fifteen new faculty members and achieving record student enrolments for the second year running. The growth in research activity has been equally remarkable.
Innovative projects such as the Jurivision.ca platform, which aims to make legal knowledge accessible through audiovisual means, and the Certificate in Indigenous Law, Canada's first French-language Indigenous law program, were launched during her term. She has also deepened the links between the Faculty and the community it serves: in 2022, she created an Alumni Advisory Council, and the following year, she helped set up an interdisciplinary social law clinic in the Outaouais region.
Marie-Eve Sylvestre has been able to gather the right people around her and empower them to bring her projects to fruition, observes Pierre Thibault. She agrees: "That's the key to my success. I'm going to find teams at head office that are just as strong as the ones I had at the Section.
For Dean Sylvestre, no initiative is considered too bold. “I've always encouraged my colleagues to believe that anything is possible,” she says. "Law is an open discipline, and as a faculty we can always reimagine and reinvent ourselves.
The Université de Montréal and Harvard graduate will succeed President Jacques Frémont for a five-year term. She wants to transpose this “culture of possibility” and willingness to expand boundaries to the central administration of the University.
Forging lasting partnerships
The first female president in the history of the University of Ottawa intends to prioritize two issues in her new role, which are also at the core of the Civil Law Section's mission: the development of indigenous knowledge and the influence of the Francophonie, both in teaching and research.
She will also be working to strengthen government and community relations. “The University is an essential social, economic and cultural player,” she asserts with determination. “It's essential that our governmental and private-sector partners understand that research is changing the world, that we're training tomorrow's next generation of leaders, and that we're responding to society's needs.”
Marie-Eve Sylvestre believes that it is even more important for the University to be in tune with these needs and to be rooted in the broader community, at a time when knowledge institutions are navigating a difficult context, both financially and in terms of institutional autonomy.
"When we have lasting alliances with industry, with government, with community organizations, there's a whole ecosystem that can come to our support when the University is under attack. Their voice sometimes has a greater impact than ours," notes the President-designate.
Despite her departure for the University's central administration, Marie-Eve Sylvestre does not feel she is really leaving the Civil Law Section. She will continue to work closely with the Faculty, she emphasizes.
"The Section has changed me profoundly, and I am extremely grateful to all the members of our community. It's an exceptional environment, where there's a unique sense of community, support and capacity for action," she concludes.
To learn more about Marie-Eve Sylvestre's strategic priorities and vision for the future of the University, read her interview in the Gazette.