Pierre Zundel leaves University of Sudbury for Laurentian University

The University of Sudbury is losing its president to Laurentian University.

Pierre Zundel will take over the role of vice-president academic at the end of the school year a move he says he's making because Laurentian has a top-notch leadership team.

He also says the university is set up well for growth.

"Laurentian University is a much bigger institution and the potential to have an impact in terms of students learning and in terms of serving the communities that the university serves is much greater there," he said.

Zundel told CBC News he's proud of his work with francophone and First Nation students at the University of Sudbury and said he helped launched an education pilot project on the James Bay Coast three years ago.

Zundel says the program has changed those students' lives "in terms of the access it gives them to other employment opportunities, in terms of their own self-confidence, their understanding of their own history and how they came to be. So we, I think, had a lot of success with reaching out to those groups."

When he started working at the University of Sudbury six years ago, there weren't many people who knew about the school or what it did, Zundel said.

Zundel starts his new role at Laurentianon July 1.