An interview with Dr. Vicki St. Pierre, CapU’s new Provost & Vice-President Academic
Written by Asmi Toor Sogi (she/her) // News Writer
Visuals by Ren Zhang (they/them) // Contributor
Dr. Vicki St. Pierre, (she/they), did not exactly follow a linear path to becoming Capilano University’s new Provost & Vice-President Academic.
Before stepping into one of the university’s highest academic leadership positions, St. Pierre spent years as a freelance classical singer, opened three voice-teaching studios, conducted various community choirs and eventually earned a doctorate in music.
“I feel like my style grew with my understanding of who I was and how I wanted to present,” explains St. Pierre, who stresses how crucial it is for them to “present as queer.”
Her move into university leadership came unexpectedly during the pandemic. When remote learning was put in place during lockdown, she had to choose between learning how to teach online or apply for the administrative job available. She applied for an acting dean position at Mount Allison University.
Now, as CapU’s new Provost & Vice-President, Academic—a position they assumed on August 4, 2026—St. Pierre brings all those experiences with her along with her main focus: “student experience.”
But first, what exactly does a provost do?
“The provost was […] the academic disciplinarian of a university,” St. Pierre tells the Courier, but now, “It’s just a title that means Vice-President Academic.” As provost, St. Pierre oversees the university’s academic and academic-adjacent side. It includes the deans, academic programming, Indigenous education and affairs, as well as students’ success areas. In other words, her role sits somewhere between a dean and a president. It is much broader than a dean, but focused specifically on the university’s academic mission unlike the president’s university wide mission.
For St. Pierre, that academic mission ultimately comes back to one thing: students.
“I am very focused on the student experience,” she says. “I want academics to serve the students.” That means looking at the entire student journey, from the moment a student considers applying to CapU to the day they graduate. St. Pierre says she wants to hear from them about what is working, what’s not and what they need from the university. Whether that means better academic support, changes to programs or to simply make the university feel like a “one-stop shop.”
Her first year at CapU comes with plenty of issues to tackle.
The university is currently facing a difficult financial situation, and St. Pierre says that one of her priorities is helping solidify its finances while maintaining “excellent academics and programming for students.”
She wants to review programs and renew curriculums to make sure they reflect both what students want and what the job market needs.
If a student has an issue with a course or an instructor, Vicki encourages them to start by addressing it with the person closest to the issue. She suggests starting with the instructor, then moving to a department chair or coordinator, dean or another appropriate level if necessary. She describes the university’s hierarchy less as a barrier and more as a way of making sure questions reach the people with the relevant knowledge and expertise.
She encourages students to speak up and share their thoughts. Communication, transparency and listening are central to how she wants to improve the student experience. When making certain hard decisions, she emphasizes that “we are going to try to make them together.”
And even when the answer isn’t what the students want to hear, St. Pierre says she wants students to receive as transparent an answer as possible. That desire to listen was part of what attracted her to CapU in the first place.
St. Pierre did not move from New Brunswick to Metro Vancouver simply because she wanted a change of scenery. She was also ready for the next step in her career and wanted a position where she could make change at a higher level.
“Every person that I ran into was lovely,” she says. More than that, she sensed a “collective desire within the university to move forward.”
“I felt this strong desire to move the campus forward into whatever Cap’s going to be in the future.”
That feeling ultimately helped convince them to take the job. Her wife and two cats remain temporarily back home in New Brunswick while her wife finishes her teaching contract at Mount Allison.
What began as an unexpected pandemic-era decision became a career shift. St. Pierre says how leadership gave her an opportunity to make changes and centre voices that are not always centred in academia.
She describes academia as a space shaped by colonial and patriarchal structures and says she wanted to help challenge some of those patterns.
St. Pierre’s background in music has shaped the way they lead.
“Teaching voice is not a one-size-fits-all process” because the voice is an invisible instrument, St. Pierre talks about how she learnt to constantly adapt and teach students accordingly. If a visual image does not work for a student, she might try a physical sensation or another way of communicating the idea.
That experience helps them pay attention to how different people learn and what they need in a particular situation.
St. Pierre explained how her musical background inspires her teaching style and her leadership. “For different areas of my leadership, I draw on different things—sometimes I’m the conductor and sometimes an ensemble member,” she noted. “It’s very much about figuring out, ‘What am I in this situation?’ and knowing how to adjust.”
“When people think of musical training, I think they think, oh, that seems easy. God, it’s so challenging and wonderful, and I don’t regret it for a moment that I have a doctorate in music. I think it makes me a better leader than a lot of people.”
Their path to CapU may not have been linear, but perhaps that is exactly the point.
The new provost wants students to know that neither their university experience nor their lives have to follow a predetermined route. Sometimes, the unexpected path can lead to somewhere that’s worth going