Award Recipients

Noreen worked on campus during the pandemic when many of our faculty/admin and support were on a WFH, or Hybrid working arrangement. Noreen approached this challenge with a smile, and created innovative ways to support students and faculty from campus during that challenging time. Noreen consistently went above and beyond to ensure that both faculty and students had the resources and materials that they needed to get their job done, while at the same time presenting a positive, collaborative, and enthusiastic attitude towards her work, and her colleagues.

Noreen exemplifies Humber's core values daily, and this was more evident during the last two years. Noreen was the first person to return to work after the WFH mandate lifted, and Noreen ensured that the office was a safe place for people to return to. Noreen's treatment of both students and staff reflect how important she values the health and safety of those who work at Humber. Noreen is known in the faculty of business for her positivity and equity with how she treats both students and faculty.

Noreen is often first in line when any new changes/technology/policy, etc is put into place to ensure that she learns and understands how to do it, how to support it, and how to help others with it. Noreen also does not hesitate to ask questions of other support staff or administrator in order to better understand what they do, and how she can help to support those actions. During the pandemic, the Longo Faculty of Business was short staffed for a variety of reasons. Noreen was always the first person to lend a helping hand. She learned new skills by working on projects with International, Work Integrated Learning and Marketing. For example, she worked on a Faculty of Business student recruitment project where she called over 500 student applicants and encouraged them to come to Humber and the Faculty of Business.

As front of the house customer service, Noreen is often the ‘first contact’ for any student who is visiting the faculty of business. During the pandemic, she was the main point of contact for the Faculty of Business office. As such, Noreen is involved in many aspects of the student experience when they are in our office. It could be that the student has simple questions, but she also deals with students in distress, student support for faculty members, registration issues, disputes, etc. During Covid, Noreen was responsible for ensuring that students were able to connect with their faculty or administrator who may be working remotely.

Noreen’s positive attitude and welcoming personality are key to how she is perceived by both her friends and colleagues. Since the reopening of the college, Noreen has taken on a lead mentorship role to three new support staff. She updated all training guides and personally trained all of them and continues to provide guidance on a daily basis. Her college, faculty and customer service knowledge is endless.

For many staff and faculty who have had the pleasure of working with Franc in the nearly three decades he has worked at Humber, they would agree that Franc embodies not only the criteria for this award, but the mission, vision and values of Humber College. Franc has supported the growth and operation of the Math and Writing Centres during his tenure at Humber. He has built a program that has serviced students at our North and Lakeshore campuses in an open and safe way, and one which employs a dedicated group of tutors, many of whom have worked with Franc for several years. Professionalism, enthusiasm and dedicated work are only the tip of the iceberg when describing how Franc approaches his role and those whom he serves. His passion for what he does is a driving force in the success he has had, the success of the Centre at Humber, and has led to his nomination for this award.

As the longest standing Coordinator for the Centre, Franc has consistently sought to empower his tutors to gain the skills they need to support our learners, and focus on their growth in an honest and kind way. As shared by John Stilla, now Senior Dean (who was originally hired at Humber by Franc as a tutor), Franc constantly empowers his team to grow in their roles. He connects frequently with the Department of English to present on writing curriculum, assessment types, and trends in student strengths and challenges. He has been instrumental in developing a shadowing program for tutors where they audit WRIT/ESOL courses to understand what students are learning to better serve them in the Centre. He has used creativity to explore initiatives around group tutoring for specific cohorts of students such as Law Clerk and Paralegal Writing Support, and a former ESOL grammar achievement project. In this way, Franc continues to align his approach with Humber’s mission to develop “global citizens with the knowledge and skills to lead and innovate” by collaborating with colleagues that have a common goal. In addition, his passion for supporting English language learners specifically is a huge asset to making our services inclusive to the international students on our campuses.

Franc has built numerous strong and meaningful relationships with faculties and departments over the years of his work. He has spearheaded approaches to providing in-class and co-curricular learning supports across Humber and Guelph Humber, and continues to seek out opportunities for collaborations with new partners such as the International Graduate School and the Engineering Degrees. Franc is an active participant in the Academic Integrity Council and partners closely with the Libraries to ensure students are receiving high quality, learner-centred support to be academically successful. These collaborations align closely with the strategic pillars, aiming to create career-ready citizens with a strong academic foundation, creating equitable access to our services in person and online for students at all campuses, and contributing to students’ health and wellness in managing the pressures of academic work by receiving dedicated learning support from a team of passionate tutors.

Franc has demonstrated that he is a lifelong learner. As equity, diversity, and inclusion become part of our personal and professional responsibility more than ever before, Franc has taken every opportunity to learn from his colleagues and through professional development that is provided. In the wake of the pandemic, Franc showed dedication to learning how to make online services as accessible and easy for learners as possible. Luckily, he had a great deal of experience as the Math and Writing Centre had been providing online tutoring for a long time already. In the recent years, Franc has experienced a great deal of change around him, from his colleagues in the Coordinator role, to Managers, and even changing departments from the Faculty of Liberal Arts to Student Success and Engagement. Through these changes, Franc has shown courage, care and consideration in learning ways to integrate the Math and Writing Centre into the fabric of those teams. This is a direct reflection of how he seeks out opportunities to learn from and collaborate with colleagues, innovate our services to meet learner needs, thus enriching the learner experience on our campuses.

Overall, Franc is known to be an excellent team player, a kind and friendly colleague, an expert in his field, and a passionate contributor to our learners’ academic journey. He embodies the values of Humber, and is a truly skilled educator in how he approaches his leadership of the tutoring team, the Math and Writing Centre services, and in his ability to inspire through sharing stories of the growth and change at Humber over the years. Distinguished is just one way to describe the achievements that Franc has made in his time at Humber, and to receive the honour of this award would be nothing less than deserving for a dedicated colleague and Humber champion like Franc.

Risha Toney is and continues to be a great example of what Humber truly stands for. She is a passionate believer in education and its impact on people's lives. As a student herself, she experienced the challenges of balancing academics, work, sport and family obligations, and it is through this lense that she tackles her work each day. She believes every student and prospect is worth taking the time to engage with and she finds new and creative ways to do this.

Her use of social media platforms to engage transfer and mature students is something no one else at Humber dared to persue, but she took on the challenge with a vengeance. Working along side her colleagues in recruitment, she created events that support Humber's strategic initiatives and help to increase enrollment for the college. She looks at things outside the box and is always willing to try something new to reach and help a student. As an admissions officer, she worked dilligently with faculty to launch new programs and devise program specific strategies to meet and exceed enrolment targets.

As a recruiter, she lead the implementation of a CRM and many community based initiatives to build relationships with guidance counsellors, teachers and school boards and as a Recruitment Coordinator, Student Mobility, she continues to use her passion and talents to increase enrolment in our non-traditional market space. Her willingness to always help a colleague, be part of a group, train and share her knowledge at Humber and with the sector, is truly what sets her aside. With over 15 years of experience, this award should have been given to her much sooner, but I am proud and honoured to be the one to finally give her the credit she deserves.