College Council had its final meeting of the fall semester on Thursday, December 4, 2014, at the North campus. In the interest of keeping the Humber community informed about upcoming events, new initiatives, and important issues, I will be continuing to report the highlights of the monthly meetings.  For more information on any topic, or to give me feedback on the reports, please feel free to contact me directly, at lisa.salem-wiseman@humber.ca

PRESIDENT’S REMARKS
Humber’s president, Chris Whitaker, highlighted some of the recent activities and events that Humber has been involved in, including the following:

• Humber won second place in a competition held at the Polytechnics Canada Applied Research Showcase in Vancouver.
• Humber won two awards at this year’s Premier’s Award Gala: one in the Recent Graduate Category (Chef Candice Ekonomakos, Culinary Management, 2012) and one in the Business category (Peter van Stralen, Landscape Technician, 1990).
• The University of Guelph-Humber is on the list of 13 proposals to be evaluated for consideration for major capacity expansion. A detailed timeline is expected mid-year.
• College budgets are being reviewed by the executive team and a series of meetings have been set to assist in developing a reasonable budget for presentation to the Board of Governors.
• The Business Plan for next year is also being finalized.  Priorities identified in the business plan will advance Humber’s strategic priorities.  A draft of the Business Plan will be presented to College Council prior to the Board of Governors. 

The President closed by acknowledging that 2014 has been a very busy year and predicting that 2015 will be full of fun and excitement. 

HUMBER GIVES CAMPAIGN
Eileen de Courcy and Adelia Marchese spoke about the Humber Gives campaign, which raises funds for students through employee donations. They emphasized that 100% of donations go directly to students.  Last year, the campaign collected $54,000 through employee donations. This year’s campaign was launched on December 2, and already almost $44,000 has been raised.  No donation is too small; a $2 deduction from each paycheque will go a long way to supporting students through scholarships and awards. To donate online, please visit humber.ca/giving

Supporting the Strategic Plan through Institutional Research
Rani Dhaliwal introduced Dr. Corrine Johnston, Humber’s new Director of Strategic Planning and Institutional Analysis (SPIA).  SPIA is involved in survey and data collection, in order to support evidence-based decision making in strategic planning.  The goal is to support the institution in the identification, implementation, assessment, and evaluation of strategic goals and investments.

Amy Kaufman, Manager, Planning and Government Relations, provided a detailed overview of the department, whose goal is to ensure that Humber has access to accurate, timely and useful data and analysis to support decision making and continuous improvement.  SPIA supports the ongoing development of Humber’s Strategic Enrolment Management structure through the development and dissemination of institutional data such as enrolment projections, student behaviour research and environmental scanning.

The data is gathered and disseminated through the following instruments:

• The HELP survey provides data that is available at the student, program, school, campus, credential, international/domestic and institutional levels.  This online survey of first semester students identifies characteristics of persistence/retention, asks students about their preparation for college, educational and career goals, seeks out early opinions about their program and Humber generally, and asks about the particular student support services they might use.
• The Entering Student Profile (ESP) data is available at the program, school, campus, credential and institutional levels.  The survey provides a Day 10 snapshot of available administrative data.  The academic schools are provided with a picture of their incoming student population highlighting demographics, academic readiness indicators and other areas of interest.
• The Student Feedback Questionnaire reports are at the course section level with school and institutional benchmarks.
• Retention Reports are available by program-campus, school-program length, credential-program length and institutional-program length. Charts are created for each cohort to demonstrate retention, academic withdrawals, graduates, transfers, transfer/grads and Humber leavers.
• The KPI Survey is administered to more than 22,000 students each year and detailed reports are available at the program, school, campus, credential, international/domestic, and institutional levels.  KPIs include student satisfaction, graduate employment, graduate satisfaction, employer satisfaction and graduation rate. 

For more information on SPIA and its activities, please visit www.humber.ca/wearehumber

In keeping with Council’s new mandate to report back to the President on key items, members of Council met in small working groups to discuss the evening’s presentations and to make notes that will be brought to the President.

The next meeting of College Council will be held on Thursday, December 15, 2015, at the North Campus.