In this week's SVPA blog, Gina shares her gratitude for the Barrett Family Foundation's support to Humber and the impact this gift will have on the Academic Division.

View the SVPA blog

ATTENTION FULL-TIME AND PARTIAL LOAD EMPLOYEES

Sun Life reviews the utilization of group insurance benefits at regular intervals. From time-to-time, premium rates for these benefits are adjusted either upwards or downwards to reflect the level of usage, cost to provide these benefits, anticipated cost to maintain the benefits in the future, and the cost of inflation.

Effective February 1, 2023, premium rates will be adjusted as itemized in the table below. These premium changes have been reviewed and approved by the Joint Insurance Committees (JIC) of OPSEU, OCASA and College Employer Council.

Employees may see an increase or decrease in the employee portion of the benefit premiums depending on the type of benefits they have elected.

The current employee/employer cost-sharing arrangements will continue as shown below.

ACADEMIC STAFF

PARTIAL LOAD STAFF

SUPPORT STAFF

ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF

Please note that the Retail Sales Tax of 8% needs to be added to the above rates.

If you have any questions on the above, please contact your Pension & Benefits Specialist.

Humber’s Centre for Social Innovation and the Office of Research & Innovation are collaborating on CMHC’s Housing Supply Challenge “Building for the Future Round: Innovative Construction for Housing Affordability.” This challenge is about finding ways to make it easier to build houses. It addresses construction-related barriers to housing supply. This can be done by funding activities that support the adoption and preparation for replication and scaling and accelerate the use of:

• construction processes
• techniques
• systems
• materials

The challenge prioritizes solutions that accelerate the creation and preservation of housing that is affordable, climate compatible and meets people’s needs.

If you are a faculty or staff member with potential solutions and potential community and/or industry partners for this challenge, please review CMHC’s Housing Supply Challenge website and send the following to Tania Massa, associate dean, Applied Research and Innovation at tania.massa@humber.ca by February 8, 2023:

• Your name
• Your email
• Your faculty/department
• Areas of expertise
• Name of potential community and/or industry partner(s)
• Describe the potential solutions and partners to address this challenge. Explain how the potential solution may tackle the following barriers: access to materials and resources, complexities in retrofitting existing housing supply, the complexity of project delivery, high costs and sunk costs, knowledge management and sharing (250 words maximum).

For questions or comments, please reach out to Tania Massa at tania.massa@humber.ca.

Learn about some resources to respond to students experiencing mental health issues:

• According to the Canadian NCHA Report, 31.1 per cent of students felt overwhelming anxiety in the previous two weeks and 20.1 per cent felt so depressed that it was difficult to function (National College Health Assessment. (2019)).   

• The More Feet on the Ground initiative was developed to help faculty and staff learn more about student mental health. 

• Learn effective ways to respond when students choose to share information about their mental health with you. 

• Explore the resources including useful videos on the More Feet on the Ground website. 

Visit our ALS Information for Faculty website to learn more about accommodating students with disabilities.       

Please email us at accessible-learning@humber.ca with suggestions for key accessibility-related topics that you would like us to address through the Communiqué.