A Measurable Impact

The Longo CfE is also working with the Seneca College’s HELIX to review incubators using the Gender Smart Entrepreneurship Education and Training Plus 
(GEET+) framework and assess the status of equity, diversity, and inclusion in entrepreneurship events/activities/programs, and develop gender-smart materials and supports.

The Longo CfE’s planned partnership programs for this year include the HELIX Summer Institute in partnership with Seneca College. This is a no-cost, six-day intensive virtual “design jam” that provides participants with tools for collaborating and building solutions to pressing social or business challenges.

Upcoming the Longo CfE specialty programs include their Indigenous Entrepreneurship program in partnership with Redbird Circle and Humber’s Indigenous Education and Engagement department. This program will allow students who self-identify as First Nation, Métis, Inuit or are part of an Indigenous nation from around the world to learn entrepreneurial skills and explore their ideas for starting a small business. 

The Longo CfE is launching a Women’s Entrepreneurship program, offering specialized training, resources, and expertise to Humber’s women students and alumni who want to become business leaders. They are also developing an Arts Entrepreneurship program in partnership with Humber’s Faculty of Media and Creative Arts.

In November, the Longo CfE was excited to announce a new partnership with BMO Financial Group, which donated $750,000 to support their Launch Me program. Thanks to BMO’s donation, the Longo CfE now has three streams available for Launch Me: BMO Women Innovators Completion, which encourages women students and alumni to strengthen their entrepreneurial skills, and the BMO Groundbreaker Competition, which supports current students who want to launch their own businesses, and the BMO New Graduate Start-up Competition, which supports students who have graduated from Humber in the last two years and helps them get their start-up ideas off the ground. Humber students and alumni will also benefit from a suite of training and skills development opportunities through the introduction of the BMO Entrepreneurship Workshops that will be offered throughout the five years.

An additional part of the Longo CfE’s Experience Ventures Projects was the Design Thinking Challenge, where domestic students can get paid to learn Design Thinking and solve challenges for community partners. 30 students led a hands-on project tackling a genuine challenge for six different startups in our community. The Longo CfE supported them with a weekly workshop to introduce them to the steps of design thinking and to guide them on how to implement those principles in their work.

The Longo CfE continues to attract more members from Humber students, faculty members, staff, alumni, and the local community, growing their membership to 570 members. There was sustained interest in their entrepreneurship and work-integrated learning programs as well, with 32 participating in the ICE program and 120 students participating in Experience Ventures Projects, including 17 in partnership with the Barrett CTI and the CCBI. 

In October, the YMCA Academy partnered with us to provide an innovation challenge for college students across the Greater Toronto Area. Teams had 48 hours to come up with solutions to the challenge question: How might the YMCA Academy better support students as they transition from High School 
to Post Secondary? At the end of the weekend, the teams pitched their ideas in videos, sharing their ideas of how to offer students greater autonomy, support their independence, give them more access to resources, and give them a better understanding of the supports that they are entitled to once they transition to their post-secondary pathways.

With the mandate and vision set for CIHW and a director to lead it, CIHW is preparing for its formal launch later this year. Many potential partners have already expressed interest in working with CIHW. Stay tuned for more news about the programs, collaborations, and projects.

The Faculty of Health Sciences and Wellness hired a consultant to engage with internal and external stakeholders to develop the vision and focus for CIHW, which was unveiled in Fall 2021. With its new director on board as of January 2022, the CIHW is ready to get to work.

An Applied Research Model, in partnership with Mitacs: eCampus Ontario and the City of Toronto.Cultural Hub construction: Phase 1 of Humber’s Cultural Hub continues to progress since starting construction in November 2020. This phase of the Cultural Hub will be the CCBI’s future home and includes a 250,200-square-foot building with a 130-seat Recital Hall, specialty teaching spaces for arts and cultural programs, and a 300-space student residence addition. The building should be ready to use by May 2023. The second phase of construction will start in August 2023 and should finish by May 2025.

The CCBI is continuing to offer their fellowship programs this year, including the Nuit Blanche Fellowship, the Intercultural and Creative Music Fellowship, the Indigenous and Transmedia Fellowship, the Culture’s Compass Fellowship, and the Tiny Town Internship. They’re also excited to host a major part of Toronto’s Nuit Blanche festival at Humber’s Lakeshore Campus in Fall 2022.

Collaborating on Renewal and Resilience was a two-day virtual event that provided partner faculty members, staff and students, City staff and government representatives the opportunity to join a series of free panel discussions featuring thought leaders from across academia and the Toronto area. These sessions highlighted how research collaborations generate a grounded theory framework that ultimately leads to stronger public policy development in our ever-changing urban environment.

This fellowship is open to all Humber students who self-identify as First Nation, Métis, Inuit, or part of an Indigenous nation from around the world. The fellowship aims to encourage students to further develop their skills in visual culture, digital media, technology, design, and storytelling, and put those skills to the test. This year, three students worked together over the summer break to create and produce a documentary.» Intercultural and Creative Music Fellowship: This fellowship is offered in partnership with the Aga Khan Museum. The collaborative approach to this fellowship allows Humber students to conceive, plan and execute a multidisciplinary original music project inspired by the museum’s collection. This year 11 fellows composed an original piece of music inspired by the collection and performed it live at the museum. They also created a documentary to showcase their efforts and the impact the project had on them.

Culture’s Compass is a free two-day conference showcasing a wide array of panelists, performers, and artists. It seeks to highlight themes that are relevant to the current arts and culture climate, as well as the accomplishments of industry professionals and artists. Five student fellows from CCBI helped organize and produce the conference, working to build the website and creating a mini docuseries. In the process, the CCBI’s fellows also had the chance to network and work alongside cultural industry leaders.

Through Humber Galleries and Humber College Lakeshore Campus, this fellowship supports the City of Toronto’s annual Nuit Blanche event. Under the supervision and mentorship of Humber staff, a team of multi-disciplinary students works together to produce an art project inspired by the annual Nuit Blanche theme. For last year’s Nuit Blanche, seven student fellows created, coded and composed original music for a video game for the event.

Tiny Town is a 30-year-old scaled model of the City of Toronto on display in the main foyer of City Hall. Humber is working with the City to re-imagine and update the physical model with a new concept, which could be 3D, 2D, virtual, movable or flexible. Seven Humber students from different disciplines participated in the fellowship, developing a prototype model that used augmented reality technology to enhance the presentation.

The Barrett CTI is excited to continue to support the capstone projects of Humber students, and the collaboration of Humber students, faculty members and partners in developing innovative technologies.

The Barrett CTI is offering an Introduction to Mechatronics micro-credential course for middle and high school students in summer 2022.

The Barrett CTI has supported many applied research projects in 2021, helping students, faculty members, and partners collaborate on innovative technologies. Those projects include a SEW Power Supply Development, a Harmonic Mitigating Device and Power Factor Corrector, Resonator Testing (an Electrochemical Device), and ElectroMagnetic Lenses for Millimetre-Wave Sensors. They also supported the Capstone Projects for 193 students last spring, including 49 Electrical Engineering students, 80 Mechanical Engineering students, and 64 Electrochemical Engineering students.

Barrett CTI is working with the other COIs in the Network on larger projects, including the Experience Venture Funds project with the CCBI and the Longo Centre for Entrepreneurship, and provided additive manufacturing support for the CCBI’s Tiny Town fellowship.

In 2021, the Barrett CTI reached 3,600 middle and high school students through their STEAM Workshops, in collaboration with Community Outreach and Workforce Development. In addition, Barrett CTI led the STEM Education for Empowerment Program (STEEP) in collaboration with Humber International.