College Council Highlights – April 4, 2019
The Humber College Council (HCC) met on Thursday, April 4, 2019 at the North Campus. To ensure that the Humber community is informed of upcoming events, new initiatives and important issues, College Council reports the meeting highlights. For more information or to provide feedback on these highlights, please contact marie.kyrinis@humber.ca. We apologize for the delay in posting the highlights.
Business Plan and Financial Budget
Sanjay Puri, Vice President, Administration and CFO, Sanjay Gandhi, Director, Financial Planning, and Corrine Johnston, Director, Institutional Planning and Analysis, presented an update on the 2019/20 fiscal budget and Humber’s Business Plan. The Plan and its supporting actions are meant to reinforce and to achieve Humber’s Strategic Plan pillars and priorities. The financial budget is developed with the Business Plan in mind.
Significant factors include funding reduction at the provincial level for all colleges, and flat year-to-year domestic high school-to-postsecondary enrollment. International students now account for 29 per cent of Ontario’s postsecondary market and are key to enrollment growth for Humber and other Ontario schools.
Humber’s standard operating procedure is to balance the financial budget year over year and to be strategic with investments and expenses. This allows Humber to operate with some flexibility when times are unusual. This year’s budget will give way to planned expenditures amid the reduced funding, which may not balance out at year-end. Highlights of the budget include the approval of 42 new full-time employees. The total revenue budget is $482 million and the total expense budget is $481 million.
Building a Culture of Student Mobility
Judy Tavares, Manager, Student Transfer Services spoke of building a culture of student mobility at Humber. Improving accessible learning pathways and transfer support, into and out of Humber, is continually explored as more students are coming to college with previous credentials and prior learning. The research shows benefits of a transfer culture: higher student retention rates; backfilling attrition; and richer classroom experiences.
Ontario has started to recognize and to invest in pathways and transfers. Visit www.oncat.ca and www.ontransfer.ca for details. About 55,000 students are transferring in Ontario, and the trend has shifted away from the traditional college to university transfer path. We are seeing more students transferring from university to college, and often multiple transfers.
In 2018-19, 30 per cent of the student population at Humber were transfer students. Seventy per cent of Humber’s transfer-in students come from university. As a cohort, they exhibit greater retention rates and stability as students through to graduation.
Judy highlighted next steps and the need to build a transfer culture at Humber that focuses on processes, policy, marketing, communications, recruitment, and events.
Sustainabiity Plan
Lindsay Walker, Manager, Office of Sustainability presented an update on the Humber Campus Sustainability Plan 2019-2024.
In the past year, Lindsay and her team have spent their time on townhalls and stakeholder engagement activities so they can build a vision of Humber’s sustainability future. The outcomes from this research will help build the 2019-2024 Sustainability Plan.
Results show that the top elements of Humber’s vision for a sustainable future include: being a leader in energy efficiency; having a waste-free campus; building a strong sustainability culture and awareness; being leaders in embedding sustainability and the Sustainable Development Goals into curriculum; and food sustainability. Noted priorities include: recycling and waste management, green buildings and landscapes, sustainable transportation, energy and climate change, outreach, curriculum integration, and social equity and well-being. Lindsay shared commitments identified by students and staff, as well as institutional support. The final plan is expected to be completed by June 2019.
College Council will next meet Thursday, May 9, 2019 at the Lakeshore Campus, in Room A170. For minutes, highlights and supporting materials, please visit: humber.ca/wearehumber/committees/college-council.
College Council Retreat is scheduled for Thursday, May 30, 2019 at the Lakeshore Campus.
