Celebrate and recognize the great work that your colleagues are doing. Nominate them for the Innovation of the Year Award 2024.

Purpose or goal
The purpose of the Innovation of the Year Awards is to recognize College employees who have designed and implemented a significant innovation that positively impacts the Humber student experience.

Eligibility
All employee groups (full and part-time faculty, administrators and support staff) are eligible for nomination.

Criteria
The merit of an innovation will be judged on the following criteria:

• Creativity: The selected innovation will be an original or unique adaptation of a current program, process, task or concept.
• Effectiveness: There is evidence that the innovation leads to a better process for accomplishing a task(s) or a better overall outcome.
• Replication: The significant components of the innovation can be replicated across courses, programs or institutions. Best submissions will include a description of conditions necessary for replication.
• Timeliness: The innovation will have been initiated no more than five years previously and will have been implemented for enough time to have viable information about its impact and effectiveness. Its impact will address a current issue.
• Collaboration: The best submissions demonstrate connections between colleagues, programs, departments, Faculties or College teams.
• Quality: Students and/or staff agree that the innovation increases quality in the course program, department or institution. Evidence of quality may include student ratings or letters of support for colleagues.

The Innovation must have a positive impact on the Humber student experience.

To make a submission, email the completed nomination form (attached) and forward supporting documents to falisha.rowe@humber.ca.

The deadline has been extended to Friday, March 22, 2023.

Humber’s Sexual Violence Committee Faculty/Staff Awareness Working Group encourages you to familiarize yourself with Humber’s Sexual Violence Policy and Procedures. 

It was most recently updated in June 2023. If you have not taken the updated training and do not currently have the “Sexual Assault Sexual Violence Awareness Training for Employees” in your Blackboard. Please email humanrights@humber.ca to request the training be added. 

Instructions for obtaining your certificate are available in the final section of the training once you have completed all other training elements. Please keep a copy of the certificate generated at the end for your records. 

If you, or someone else, has experienced sexual violence or sexual assault on Humber College property:

Immediate Response

• Go to a safe place, including your work site, the Department of Public Safety or your home  
• Seek immediate support by telephone:  
  • Department of Public Safety: 416.675.8500, or open the Guardian App and select “Call Humber Security” 
  • Call Police: 911  
• Seek medical attention if necessary. Go to an emergency room that has a domestic violence and sexual assault care centre (if accessible) or a local hospital
• Seek help/counselling/resources - view the Employee Sexual Violence Resource Sheet  

Formal Report

If you would like to make a formal report of having experienced sexual violence, call:  

1. Department of Public Safety: 416.675.8500 (ext. 4000 on-campus phones) or email publicsafety@humber.ca  
2. Office of Human Rights & Harassment: 416.675.3111 ext. 5864 or email humanrights@humber.ca    

Please contact humanrights@humber.ca if you require any additional information. 

We thank you for your continued commitment to addressing and ending sexual violence.

Research shows accommodations are often underutilized by learners with disabilities. Curious to learn why? 

A 2018 study involved a systematic review of 36 articles from the US, UK, Canada, Belgium, Norway and Ireland involving youth with disabilities and accessing accommodations. 

Below are some findings: 

• The most common barriers to disclosing disability and requesting accommodations were stigma, discrimination and a lack of knowledge of supports.
• “Students with disabilities are often reluctant to disclose their condition for fear of differential and discriminatory treatment from their professors and peers." 
• Many youth encounter difficulties accessing and obtaining accommodations and supports. For example, people with disabilities often encounter significant social exclusion, negative attitudes, discrimination and stigma, which are substantial barriers for youth entering and completing post-secondary education.
• The most common barrier, noted in 19 studies, included stigma, discrimination and the related concerns about the negative effects of disclosing a disability.  
• A second barrier for youth (noted in 14 studies) included lacking knowledge of potential supports and accommodations (e.g. note takers, tutors, extra time, physical access, assistive technology) and how to access them. For example, Holloway (2001) described that students found it stressful and time consuming to arrange their accommodations. Some youth had negative experiences with faculty who often had insufficient knowledge about disabilities. 
• Others found that the physical, mental and emotional demands of disclosing presented challenges to receiving accommodations.
• Many studies conveyed that disclosing was a complex and personal issue that depended on many factors such as disability type, extent of self-advocacy skills and availability of support to access them, type of course and instructor, coping styles, and type of disability.  
• Consistent with previous research, our review found that those with non-visible disabilities often encounter additional challenges with identifying their need for support. 

Understanding the barriers learners may encounter and the reasons they can then be hesitant to connect with Accessible Learning Services can help faculty and staff who are working with learners who disclose they have a disability but have not connected with Accessible Learning Services to request accommodations.  

Source: A Systematic Review of Barriers of Disability Disclosure and Accommodations for Youth in Post-Secondary Education. (2018) International Journal of Disability Development and Education.  

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. 

Journal of Innovation in Polytechnic Education (JIPE) is pleased to announce the publication of “Understanding hope from the voices of service users and providers across Canada” by Cristina Alexandra Guerrero, PhD, and Tina Lackner. 

Abstract:

Although Canada is home to the second largest non-profit and volunteer sector in the world, there is an absence of an overarching framework to guide human services (HS) delivery (Hall et. al., 2005; Rahmani, 2022). This paper documents the first phase of a three-year study that seeks to begin to bridge this gap by learning from both HS providers and users’ narratives, specifically in relation to the topics of hope, self-compassion, and authentic collaboration.

The first phase of the research focused on the topic of hope via the following questions:

1. How do HS consumers and service providers meaningfully experience hope in the course of HS delivery within their lifeworlds?
2. How might these experiences inform a guiding framework for Canadian HS delivery?

A thematic analysis of surveys and interviews collected from six partner organizations across Canada revealed the following themes:

1. The importance of human connections
2. The building and evolution of hope
3. The futurity of hope

These findings point out several implications for practice and research, including a need for human-centred training that focuses more on topics like sensitivity and compassion. Respondents, particularly the service providers, also spoke to the need for strategies and opportunities to take care of oneself physically, mentally, and spiritually. This call is especially prevalent in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and funding cuts across Canada.

This study was funded by a three-year College and Community Social Innovation Fund (CCSIF) grant, which is managed by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

Read the article on JIPE.ca.

About JIPE

Journal of Innovation in Polytechnic Education (JIPE) is an online, open-access journal that mobilizes knowledge and insights generated by the global polytechnic community. JIPE is electronically published by Humber Press at Humber College’s Office of Research & Innovation. JIPE is accepting submissions on a rolling basis. To learn more about JIPE, please visit jipe.ca or email humberpress@humber.ca.