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This article was published 22/9/2014 (2317 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Don't expect to see many headlines about University of Winnipeg megaprojects.

Do expect to see the university getting as much or more attention than its new president.

And whatever happens on campus, it will be slow in coming and done in collaboration with a whole lot of people, new president Annette Trimbee said Monday.

Trimbee is the U of W's seventh president, a Transcona native who's inquisitive about her Métis and francophone roots, coming here as a senior civil servant from Alberta. But she's also an academic researcher specializing in the health of large lakes, with degrees from both the U of W and the University of Manitoba.

"We're going to be intentional about our growth," Trimbee said several times Monday, well aware of the enormous growth of the U of W under retired predecessor Lloyd Axworthy.

The U of W has to question why it would want to grow and whether it can sustain a particular type of growth, Trimbee said.

"We can be a magnet for indigenous students from around the world," Trimbee said.

University officials called Monday's ceremony a presidential inauguration, explaining the term inauguration is reserved for major public leaders. This was no coronation. It was a simple ceremony featuring performing arts students in convocation hall, in which a humble Winnipegger seemed somewhat amazed people were celebrating her before, as she pointed out, she really has done anything.

Trimbee said she has told faculty she wants to emphasize collaboration over competition, and to continue attracting not just obviously capable students coming out of high school, but using "our openness to discover those diamonds in the rough."

Trimbee said she's been told the university tries to do too much with too little.

She said in a later interview that came from faculty who want the U of W to be innovative, but who also want to keep the school's core values strong in the face of rapid expansion.

"We remain a place that nurtures a social justice conscience," Trimbee said, reminding the inauguration gathering that, "The indigenous resurgence is real."

She later acknowledged she's aware Education and Advanced Learning Minister James Allum doesn't want to see local schools duplicating each other.

"We should collectively talk about our growth plans and make sure they make sense" for the province's needs, Trimbee said.

Where the U of W and the U of M overlap, she said, whether it be education, business or human rights programs, they should take different approaches and different areas of emphasis.

"Growth should be intentional, that's tied to our core mission," she said. "I'm going to be talking a lot about developing leaders."

At the ceremony, Allum avoided politics, but told Trimbee, "Welcome back to the 'hood."

That, said Allum, includes the place the U of W has made for itself in the downtown and larger community.

Psychology Prof. Wendy Josephson, speaking for the president search committee, joked the university has "vetted you within an inch of your life."

Speaking for the faculty association, Josephson said the union is confident Trimbee will deal collegially with the professors. "I felt as though you really get the faculty," she told Trimbee.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca