Academic Council met for the fifth time this semester on Thursday, May 9, 2013, at the Lakeshore Campus. In the interest of keeping the Humber community informed about upcoming events, new initiatives, and important issues, I’ll be reporting on 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
Chris Whitaker, Humber’s President, reported that Humber is now in the final stage of the Strategic Planning process. The Strategic Planning Steering Committee is currently holding Town Hall sessions, with the aim of gathering feedback on the draft plan from the Humber community. President Whitaker is pleased with the thoughtful and reflective feedback that is being heard at these meetings. He feels that the final plan, which will be taken to the Board of Governors in June, will truly reflect the voice of the organization. To view the draft document, please visit humber.ca/imaginehumber/staff/overview-document-2013-18-strategic-planning-town-hall-sessions.
President Whitaker also announced that Humber is now in the second phase of the process of reaffirming our membership in the League for Innovation in the Community College. The League is the only international organization dedicated to the improvement of community colleges through innovation, experimentation, and institutional transformation, and Humber is the sole Canadian Board-Member college. Institutions must reapply for membership when they gain a new president, and the first stage of the process is a self-study, which was published in early 2013 and was recently approved by the League. The second stage, a site visit, will take place in August.
Lakeshore Campus Update
Wanda Buote, Principal, Lakeshore Campus, spoke about developments at the Lakeshore Campus in the past year. The Lakeshore Campus is home to most of Humber’s degree and post-graduate programs, and in Fall 2012, Lakeshore growth was 11 per cent (compared to 6 per cent overall growth at Humber). In her year as principal, she has concentrated on building relationships with Academic Schools and Service Departments, as well as within the larger community within which the Lakeshore Campus is situated. Recent community involvement includes Campus Cleanup days, and on May 25-26, Humber’s Lakeshore Campus will participate in the 14th annual Doors Open event, which gives community members the opportunity to explore Toronto’s historically, culturally, and socially significant buildings.
Centre for Justice Leadership
Members of Council were fortunate to receive a tour of one of the Lakeshore Campus’s most innovative new facilities, the Centre for Justice Leadership, which opened in January 2010.
Derek Stockley, Associate Dean, School of Social and Community Services, and Henri Berubé, Program Coordinator, Police Foundations, showed us around the 18,000-square-foot facility, which features a number of interactive labs: a simulated crime scene with viewing theatre and high-definition cameras; an evidence-processing studio; four interview rooms equipped with cameras; and a courtroom equipped with wireless microphones. Students in Humber’s Criminal Justice (degree), Police Foundations, and Community and Justice Services (diploma) programs learn how to analyze crime scenes, including taking molds of footprints and tire tracks, and analyzing fingerprints, handwriting, and blood spatter.
Two recent graduates walked members of Council through the processing of a crime scene, from photographing the scene, to gathering evidence, to note-taking and sketching. We then proceeded to the evidence-processing lab, where they showed us how to dust a piece of evidence for fingerprints and explained the various pieces of forensic equipment. The students were extremely enthusiastic about the facility, which supports student learning with state-of-the art technology.
The Humber Centre for Healthy Living
Alister Mathieson, Dean, School of Hospitality, Recreation, and Tourism, announced the establishment of a new Centre of Excellence, which will be focused on lifelong healthy living. This exciting collaborative initiative involves several programs in the school, and also offers the potential for collaboration with other schools.
Professors Noah Gentner and Sergiu Fediuc gave an overview of the Centre, which will utilize faculty experts and students from a variety of programs to deliver a holistic service targeting all aspects of lifestyle change necessary for long term weight management, health, and wellness. The goal is that, although the program will be supervised by faculty, it will eventually be run by students from across several programs and credentials, including: Fitness and Health Promotion, Culinary Management, and Nutrition (diploma); Exercise Science and Lifestyle Management (postgraduate), and Kinesiology (degree, University of Guelph-Humber).
The pilot project will launch in September 2013, offering services including fitness testing and personal training, behaviour change workshops, hands-on nutrition and culinary workshops, diet analysis, and meal planning. The focus will be not only on teaching healthy habits, but on making sure that people are motivated to maintain these habits over the long term. This is also a research study, which has been awarded a SIRF grant, so results will be tracked over time. There is space for between 20 and 25 participants. If you are interested, please watch for more information on the Communiqué, on Humber TV, and at a session at Showcase on June 6.
Academic Programming
The Business School is applying for consent renewal for three Bachelor of Commerce degrees: Fashion Management, Human Resources Management, and International Business. Humber received consent to offer these degrees in February 2007. The Bachelor of Commerce degrees share a common two-year platform of foundational business courses in such areas as marketing, finance and accounting, economics, law, organizational behavior, human resources, operations management, and business communications. This curriculum is followed in years three and four by courses in the selected area of specialization. These three degrees were reviewed last year, and the committee was unanimous in its opinion that these are strong and successful programs.
Enrollment Update
Barb Riach, Associate Registrar, presented an update on Humber College’s enrollment numbers for Fall 2013. Humber continues to have the most applications of any Ontario college, with 40,927 at the North Campus, 23,854 at the Lakeshore Campus, and 791 at the Orangeville Campus. Enrollment has increased significantly at the Lakeshore Campus over Fall 2012, due in part to recent changes to the structure of the Registrar’s Office at that campus.
Strategic Planning and Institutional Analysis
Ruth MacKay, Director, Planning and Government Relations, and Pat Van Horne, Manager, Institutional Research, presented the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) results for 2012-2013. Every year since 1999, the provincial government has assessed the performance of all colleges in five key areas: student satisfaction, graduate employment, graduate satisfaction, employer satisfaction, and graduation rate. Reviewing and analysing our KPI results helps Humber to assess the extent to which we are meeting our overall goals for students, graduates and employers.
Every year, Institutional Research produces a variety of different reports, including a one-page “Highlights” document, a KPI Institutional Snapshot that provides trend and benchmark details, and program-level report cards, trended and benchmarked against similar programs in the province. New additions this year to the Student Satisfaction program-level reports include a list of other colleges that offer the same program, the response rate, credential-level reports with provincial comparators, and reports on apprenticeship programs. New additions to the Graduate and Employer program-level reports include the response rate, employability skills and employer listing divided into related and non-related employment, and benchmarks and trends added to the employability skills and the program content.
In 2012-2013, Humber scored higher than the GTA average in overall student satisfaction, higher than the GTA average on all capstone questions, first in the GTA in Graduate Employment and Graduate Satisfaction, and higher than the GTA and provincial averages in Employer Satisfaction.
Next, Ruth MacKay and Pat Van Horne presented the Humber Engagement and Learning Profile (HELP) survey results for 2012-2013. The HELP survey offers a unique level of data to support student success, as noted in the Business Plan and the Student Success Framework. The data provided by the survey allows us to profile students at risk, based on predictors in four main categories: levels of engagement, clarity of career goals/expectations and motivation, demands on students’ time, and academic preparedness. This year, the HELP survey had a response rate of 45.8%, with over 1,100 individual student responses, due to school-level support and promotion strategies.
Institutional Research produces “At a Glance” reports that provide aggregate data for each question on the survey, specify the number of eligible students, the number of responses, and the response rate at the program, school, and college level. The reports also provide data on some specific underrepresented groups, including First Generation and Aboriginal students. For the first time this year, the reports benchmark results from Winter 2013 against results from Winter 2012 and 2011, for all questions.
As a result of the HELP survey, Academic Schools and Service Departments receive timely, accurate, benchmarked data at the program, school, credential, and college level to inform and focus existing and planned interventions to improve retention and graduation rates. This allows them to focus on specific at-risk indicators that are particularly relevant to the school/program, direct attention to individual students with the greatest number of at-risk indicators, and reach out to interested students to promote the services and supports available at Humber. Humber is one of only about three colleges in the province that collects this type of data, positions us well to help students succeed and graduate.
For more information on both surveys, please visit humber.ca/strategicplanning