July 2023 marked two years since the college structure launched, bringing together 13 faculties around shared disciplinary areas across the university. To support the consolidation of administrative services and oversee the college’s operational management, the college general manager role was created. Working collegially with the senior partners in each administrative function and alongside the faculty general managers, the college general managers provide operational leadership and administrative services to the college.
We checked in with the three college general managers — Kerrie Johnston (College of Social Sciences and Humanities), Susan Lynch (College of Health Sciences) and Julie Naylor (College of Natural and Applied Sciences) — to learn more about their colleges’ current projects, what they’re most proud of and what they’re looking forward to.
What are the current initiatives/projects your college is working on?
Kerrie (SSH):
We are working on our phase two initiatives, building on the One University vision and responding to the Marshall Report, which provided a review of the college model. The work is focused within three themes and three areas. The themes are efficiencies (across both academic and operational processes), strategic priorities (alignment and connections across the new University Strategic Plan, Strategic Plan for Research and Innovation, etc.), and communication and culture. And then the areas this work is focused on are research, educational programs, Indigenous Initiatives (II) and Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI). For example, our college II & EDI officer is working closely with both the Offices of the Vice-Provost (Equity, Diversity & Inclusion) and the Vice-Provost (Indigenous Programming & Research) as well as leaders and staff in our faculties and partners across the institution, to align and connect people, projects and ideas in ways that build and nurture transformative and sustainable practices and partnerships.
Susan (HS):
There are so many initiatives and projects currently underway and on the horizon. For instance, the College of Health Sciences is pursuing the development of a bachelor’s program in health sciences. This is an exciting endeavour to facilitate interdisciplinary learning in the college. Our college also received a funded Microcredential grant for non-credit courses, and work is underway to create an Interprofessional Healthcare Simulation Series. On September 22, the college is spearheading the Interprofessional Learning Pathway Launch, which brings together over 1,000 health sciences students for group learning, case studies, and discussions with patients and regulatory bodies. This will be the first time since before COVID that the event will be in person. On the research side, the college, Council of Associate Deans Research and research representatives from the health science faculties have engaged in two planning sessions to discuss areas of focus to advance interdisciplinary health research. We are also providing funding for grant editors and illustrators to support our health science researchers, and we are assisting with the PRIHS internal review that the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry has offered in the past.
Julie (NAS):
We are welcoming a strategic initiatives officer EDI & II, who will focus on supporting the faculties in their Indigenous Initiatives and Equity, Diversity and Inclusion efforts in alignment with the college associate sean, EDI and both the vice-provost (Indigenous Programming and Research) and the vice-provost (Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) portfolios. To further support researchers, we will have the college’s Office of Research set up in the coming months as the director comes on board. This office will be an integral part of leading and increasing interdisciplinary research, partnerships and grant support. We are also mapping the recommendations from the Marshall Report into actionable items for the colleges to address, both short term and long term. We want to keep up the momentum in terms of services that we have consolidated at the college level.
In the two years since the college model launched, what has your college accomplished and what are you proud of?
Kerrie (SSH):
I’m very proud that we have accomplished all of the tasks of the original operating model, standing up the college’s Office of Education, the Office of Research and launching our strategic initiatives work in Indigenous Initiatives and Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. The Office of Education is fully staffed and we have successfully moved processes such as timetabling and scheduling to the college. The Office of Research is also fully staffed and providing support to our researchers and their teams. And our inaugural strategic initiatives officer, II & EDI is engaging at all levels of the institution to provide support and guidance on this vital work.
Susan (HS):
Two years ago, it was a very challenging initiative to launch a college with six faculties. Since then, we have established a good foundation to continue to build upon, and we have strong leadership with our associate deans of education and research. The Office of Research is developing relationships with our faculties and striking working groups to discuss and flush out research ideas to promote interdisciplinary research at a global level. The Health Sciences Research and Education Commons (HSERC) continues to provide exemplary administration for licensure/assessment exams, a well-established Standardized Patient Program, and overall administration assistance to the unique simulation space used by our faculties.
Julie (NAS):
How much time do you have? In all seriousness, I am most proud of the way our college has worked together as a team with the faculty deans, faculty general managers, senior leadership, college working groups and faculty subject matter experts to move initiatives forward. The colleges have also worked closely with the partner streams and Centres of Expertise to continually refine the operating model now that we have seen it in practice. Some highlights include: the establishment of an Engineering Mathematics Pedagogy Chair to research and implement best practices in the delivery of mathematics and statistics education, more than 10 interdisciplinary research initiatives currently underway and graduate admissions support and process review across the college with an eye to support the recommendations in the FGSR review. Come September, students will see a helpful new tool as the student systems team has almost finished programming the last of the undergraduate programs into the Academic Advisement Report (AAR) which means more than 13,000 students will have access to map their program progress and understand what they need to complete in order to fulfill their relevant program requirements.
What are you most looking forward to within your college?
Kerrie (SSH):
To the day when our academic colleagues and students are focused 100 per cent on their work, answering the worlds’ biggest questions and dreaming about a bright future. Which means never being distracted by our underlying administrative systems and processes because those systems are designed to actively support excellence, for every member of our community. I’m looking forward to digging in and collaborating with my operational colleagues to refine and extend the work we started with UAT and take it to the next level.
Susan (HS):
Establishing our strategic initiatives work by recruiting an EDI strategic initiatives officer and a strategic initiatives officer in Indigenous Initiatives. And, of course, the continued generation of ideas and initiatives of how the college can continue to support, collaborate and advocate on behalf of our faculties and across the colleges. There are so many exciting opportunities that we can continue to explore!
Julie (NAS):
We have good momentum in CNAS, and I’m looking forward to keeping that going as we work towards implementing recommendations from the Marshall Report. Our working groups continue to identify academic processes that could be moved to the college and we’ll see movement on this over the year. While we have made good progress on evaluating and refining operational processes with the Centres of Expertise, this is a large task and will continue to be an ongoing theme of my day-to-day work. Finally, we will continue to make connections between the faculties to support interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches to strategic priorities around research and education. It’s going to be an exciting year!
