College Council Highlights - November 2021

An assembly of faculty, support staff, students, and administrators, Humber College Council (HCC) is Humber’s collective employee voice, making suggestions to Humber College’s President as it relates to long and short‐term priorities outlined in the institution’s Strategic Plan. To ensure the Humber community is informed of upcoming events, new initiatives and important issues, HCC reports the highlights of its monthly meetings through this medium.

HCC held its third meeting of the 2021-2022 academic year on Thursday, November 11, 2021.

ENROLMENT UPDATE

Barb Riach, Associate Vice-President, Enrolment Management & Registrar and Derek Stockley, Associate Vice President, Academic tabled an update on Humber’s enrolment. Informed by COVID19 transmission rate trends, Humber’s polytechnic education commitments, and multiple student surveys conducted between April 2020 and June 2021 where 46% of students noted a preference for mixed delivery, 28% for in person learning, and 25% for online, Humber’s 21/22 academic year is focused on increasing in-person activity. Currently, ~15,000 students are taking courses completely or partially on campus in accordance with physical distancing and other public health guidelines (masks/screening). Half of all fall 2021 courses are being held fully online with the other half completely or partially delivered onsite. Study abroad activities remain suspended.

Humber student enrolment on Day 10 was 24,507 - slightly short of the budget target of 27,896. However, there has been fewer withdrawals due to process changes related to fee payments and registration and alignment with the scholarship and bursary distribution. Many domestic students have chosen to wait for activity to increase on campus rather than study online, deferring or reapplying to engage in a traditional experience. Meanwhile, the backlog for international students caused by travel restrictions, difficulties securing study-permits and a reluctance to study online, while still present, is stabilizing.

The Core Strategic Enrolment Management committee is reviewing the new funding model with the Ministry as the government moves away from enrolment-based funding and towards one that is performance-based. The committee is focused on ensuring the college makes strategic decisions with these metrics in mind to achieve the best student and performance outcome.

The presenters shared the 2022/23 academic calendar and noted that Humber launched three engineering degrees despite the pandemic.

NEW CAMPUS STORE EXPERIENCE (E-FOLLETT FUNCTIONALITY UPDATE)

Paul Iskander, Director, Campus Services was joined by Dharmesh Patel, Store Manager and Jeff MacLean, Regional Manager from Follett. A global company, Follet supplies Humber’s Campus Store with textbooks and other supplies. To address the challenges accessing course materials faced by students, staff and faculty during the transition to a hybrid model, the company has launched Follet Discover - a new comprehensive set of tools that is integrated into the Blackboard system and allows instructors to easily research, discover and adopt course materials and students to easily find all their course materials in one place. It includes options for students to rent books, to purchase new, used or digital textbooks, and to return/have books bought back.

PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT

New Policy & Procedure: Nichole Molinaro, Dean of Program Planning, Development and Renewal tabled Humber College’s new program development policy and procedure that outlines Humber’s key steps when developing a new program (e.g., stakeholder consultation, alignment to various strategic documents and Ministry requirements, approval process, etc.).

New Health Sciences and Wellness Programs: Jason Powell, Senior Dean and Mojgan Rezvani, Associate Dean, Faculty of Health Sciences and Wellness tabled three new high-demand Humber programs.

  • Specialized Honours Bachelor of Science Degree in Biomedical Sciences: a four-year/eight-semester program that focuses on the study of life from a medical perspective.
  • Ontario Graduate Certificate in Bioinformatics: a two-semester program that focuses on interdisciplinary study and analyzes big data/scientific data to identify and evaluate disease associated biomarkers and determine the therapeutic efficacy of drugs.
  • Ontario Graduate Certificate in Infection Prevention and Control: a two-semester program that focuses on infection prevention and control.

Scheduled to launch in Fall 2023, these new interconnected programs are only offered at Humber and will feed into other Humber programs or external ones which will also feed into them.

New Applied Sciences and Technology Programs: Farzad Rayegani, Senior Dean and Jonathan Kim, Associate Dean, ICT cluster, Faculty of Applied Sciences and Technology, and Barb Martin, PPDR Consultant tabled a new program proposal: Applied Artificial Intelligence with Machine Learning. Launching in Fall 2022, pending Ministry approval, this two-semester program responds to the high demand for Artificial Intelligence (AI). It includes components on ethical considerations and an emphasis on practical application through work-integrated learning (WIL) - a competency that was noted to be in short supply in current graduates from this field.

NOTE: At the December HCC meeting, Erin Gray, Program Development Consultant will lead the review of the template that guides the content for new programs presented to College Council will be reviewed.

NEXT HCC MEETING

HCC will be participating in the consultation process for finding a new Humber president and will be holding a special online meeting on Thursday, November 25 from 4 to 5 p.m.

The December Humber College Council meeting will be held online on Thursday, December 9 through Microsoft Teams.

For questions or comments about HCC meeting highlights, contact regan.mancini@humber.ca. For supporting materials or opportunities to provide feedback, please visit the College Council website or contact shovani.samalia@humber.ca.