Question 2

Posted on Saturday, August 31st, 2019

What is challenging us that we need to improve on in order to ensure a sustained future?

• Systems to support our priorities. Technology for collaboration.
• We know how, yet we are not leveraging our systems (e.g. more training, support?).
• Government funding, measures of performance.
• Entrepreneurs but need entrepreneurial mindset. How do we incubate ideas? SIP funding supports our entrepreneurial ideas, is there another way? Is there a different approach to internal or external funding of our ideas?
• Intellectual property. We can monetize assets (approach to curriculum), or sell assets domestically or internationally.
• ***Organizational structure is a problem (e.g. Co-op could be academic, portfolios can be very large).
• Learning and development. Need time to adapt to changes, to support our people/their morale.
• How do we do things differently and avoid the status quo? How do we focus the energy of our people? How can we be entrepreneurs?
• Have to talk – to create solutions, to entertain new ideas. We need to increase staff, enrolments and more.
• Our processes, our systems (e.g. Workday can but does not yet streamline processes).
• Our communications. The frequency, the focus of our communications.
• Systems don’t necessarily support our direction (e.g. systems for part-time students/programs).
• We need to have 1 stop for entrepreneurs, for community partners.
• We need to increase collaboration.
• *We need continuity (with retirements, new hires, loss of corporate knowledge).
• Our challenge is time. There are a number of strategic priorities/strategic decisions/choices.
• Projects are supported. Once they finish, operations are not supported. There is no capacity.
• *Processes. We have a storytelling culture. We are not codifying our business.
• There is a tension in our structure. There is a misalignment of activities.
• People have corporate knowledge. We need focus for our resources, our capacity within a new organizational structure.
• There are new metrics (coming soon). How do we serve these metrics? How do we streamline processes to meet the need? Can we get ahead of it and prepare?
• Learner Development Plan – how do we support it?
• Our people, there is an increase in demand for mental health support. This is an opportunity to live our values by further supporting our people.
• There is a disconnect; we demand a lot. We need alignment.
• ***Operations capacity.
• Organizational structure, changes in management, for longer term stability.
• Avoid flavour of the day.
• We do a lot of projects. When they end, we don’t necessarily have the structure or the capacity to continue on (with the project outcomes) in our operations.

• Workday. For example, we need to know in advance about the changes in Workday.
• Corporate knowledge. There needs to be succession planning when people exit and new people come on-board.
• People here a long time are held back because of their (lack of) credentials.
• Networking among students (1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd years), graduates and industry leaders; please teach this. It is important to:
  • Maintain relationships in/with industry,
  • Share industry stories with students,
  • Create an ecosystem, by developing soft skills between students, creating career relationships.
• Alumni interest and enthusiasm.
• International collaboration for research, capacity building, students, and reputation.
• Programs are stagnant. Need to be current. PQR reports every 5 years include action plans. There are PQR actions, timelines and prompts. There is no escalation if actions don’t happen.
• Information and reports. We need to leverage information e.g. wealth of information in co-op reports, how can we use this?
• Chair role. No time. No resources. In the role, can’t have the all the subject matter expertise to make decisions.
• Subject matter expertise integration. It’s informal. We’re in silos. Formalize what’s working.
• PQR, ACR – need funding to implement and increase changes.
• Chairs and Coordinators are at the center. We need to document best practices. This takes time and investment (e.g. SWFs).
• College is not a business. Student life is not a business decision.
• Collaboration. We work with intention. We don’t give up. We might fail.
• Checking viability before the project starts. Need to study/research or pilot. For example, the summer semester is not likely valid for all programs.
• Motivation/intention is there to innovate. How do we innovate?
• Additional work for job placements. We’ve lost candidates.
• Applied Research. Need funds for applied research. Need simplified approach to start a project, to start research.
• We can publish. We need support to do that.
• Many opportunities come up for support staff to move around the College and learn new skills with other departments. Due to the Challenges that Workday has presented, in speaking with my colleagues, people are not taking these opportunities. Positions are being posted multiple times because internal support staff are not only finding Workday challenging within their own department, but now they need to learn about (Workday) in a whole new department.
• We need to have an employee model that recognizes all employees and treats them the same. Many employees feel and experience a “class” system that I believe is not healthy and puts our long-term sustainability at risk. Messaging from Chairs, Managers, Deans, Executives is currently very inconsistent.
• We need to put in support systems that acknowledge and recognize our increasing 24/7 presence and non-Ottawa centered learners and faculty.
• A better Reduce, Reuse, Recycle program.
• Monday classes. I am teaching the same course twice. I teach one on Monday and then on Thursday. This happens most semesters. I miss two classes on Monday in the fall. Is there a better way?
• Reading week. Our latest reading week does not include Thanksgiving Monday. Wouldn’t it make better sense that it does? Just like the one in winter includes family day.
• Retirees. My understanding is that once a person retires they cannot come back and teach some part time courses. This does not make sense as sometimes a coordinator really needs to hire some part time professor that has done it before and was good.
• Applied Research. I think a deep review has to be done with the applied research. This can be such a great tool enabling student success. I feel that we are not nearly making use of it.

• Keep up our ceremonial Indigenous knowledge; its impressive. How do we meaningfully extend this knowledge to our Advisory Councils, curriculum, and overall values?
• Respect for diversity of all kinds (LGBTQ+, international students); there is a mindset that the kindness is a political ideology and a “liberal sociological approach”. It’s an opportunity for internal communications, to develop curriculum, to reflect our commitment to our values.
• Succession planning .There is one leader, two Chairs at regional, smaller campus. We could have junior chairs, leadership positions with professional development ready to fill-in with leave or turnover. We don’t want a lag without coverage. 21C can be ready to carry-on with no lull.
• Minimum standard for student services (e.g. mental health). We need a full-time nurse, counsellor and more.
• Need open dialogue to express different perspectives (not be shut down).
• Align programs across campuses with consultative approach (understanding differences).
• 51% enrolment outside county; need more community supports (e.g. housing, medical services). Is there opportunity for more collaboration with community?
• Retention versus student success. Licensed programs have licensing exams, expectations for safety. We have a responsibility for the College, community and the student to uphold graduate capabilities.
• Supports for the diversity of our population in this community. ESL, international, LGBTQ+, supports for safety in restaurants, on transportation. Failed once (e.g. sponsored Syrian family, they left the community).
• Need alignment and autonomy for programs to reflect employer needs in this region, to prepare students in this community.
• Need to balance workload across programs.
• Online learning. There is still value for brick and mortar, hybrid models of education.
• International student supports. We need to lead, be role models to support students, faculty, to increase community support to welcome international students.
• Challenge – alumni development.

• Trying to accommodate the needs of international students (often we do this one-to-one, we need to improve awareness and understanding of the supports available for international students and newcomers). Need to do more to help the international students. There are two different types of international students, newcomers and international students. We must be sensitive to both groups. Students can transfer their skills to new home; they can bridge (programs with past academic/professional experience) help to start life here. This is a good opportunity for us (at the College, in the community).
• We need to deepen our connections to the cultural community – to heighten awareness, recognition of our programs and services: we are here, we have programs to help, we can support newcomers.
• We need a greater connection to the community to support newcomer employment upon graduation; they can invest their skills in the community (for better lives, for a stronger community).
• We need more promotion. Awareness/recognition of Algonquin College is not there internationally. Prospective students don’t know what we have to offer, such as our best programs. We have to advise students the academic pathways they can pursue, the routes they can go.
• ESL was a window to promote further education and skills. Now, we need another channel to promote their opportunity.
• We may improve our reputation abroad by improving connections to the diplomatic community.
• Increase promotion of Algonquin College with Colleges and Institutes Canada (CICan).
• Increase initiatives to uphold our values, our culture (to ensure we are inclusive, we appreciate diversity – International, Indigenous students).
• Awareness/recognition of Algonquin College is not there internationally. Prospective students don’t know what we have to offer, such as our best programs. We have to advise students the academic pathways they can pursue, the routes they can go.
• There is scope for improvement in terms of quality assurance. Consistency is key. Consistent excellence in teaching provision, dealing with plagiarism, as well as deadline extensions. What I have seen a after a semester here seems rather arbitrary in places. Not everyone is thinking ‘students first’.

• *How to prioritize and execute the most important. Prioritization of our time, time of our people to efficiently execute. Lots of ideas and smart people; so much (at a high priority now).
• Improve ability to implement creative new ways of thinking. Student Information System: there are great ideas but we may be held back by our systems. Need more flexible solutions to deliver services to students. Learner Development Plan needs flexibility. New SIS may deliver more.
• Need time to plan to operationalize ideas. We have big ideas, great initiative. We rush to implement lacking elegance, scalability, resources. Then when we do scale, there are challenges.
• Need to plan implementation. Planning, preparing before execution would alleviate problems in the future. How do we balance current operations with new ways, new implementation?
• Are we structured for the implementation? When we plan, consider our structure. We haven’t redesigned ourselves to grow with our implementations. We are boxed into our structures. Structure doesn’t fit the intention. Reconsider communications, structure between departments
• Ability to attract staff, new talent to fit our future vision. Make up the postings to fit future vision. Find right talent to right the ship. We lose talent with salary offers, slow speed of offers.
• The union. Need to retain people; this is challenged by our partnership with the union. We get grievances (knee jerk reaction). Need to work on expectations and re-align with the union. Have the tough conversations. Forcing managers to be creative in staffing to fit; cost is prohibitive.
• Financing/ financial aid for students. Academic areas (faculty, Chairs) are making decisions but not financially viable for the student (e.g. scholarship/ eligibility financial aid). Impacts accommodations for the student. Try to help student without understanding implications.
• Retroactive accommodation process. Need to review this process for the student. Need cross-department communications.
• Same people working “IN the business (operations)” and “ON the business (strategy)”. Have someone looking at strategy while not “IN the business”. Tough to capture enough people working ON the business when encumbered IN the business.
• Operational managers are making decisions for staff operations and when to work on projects at the side of the desk. What is the priority? How do we choose? Are daily operations meeting a standard? It feels like we are doing neither particularly well. Fail on both sides. Constantly getting pulled around on what we are doing. Trying to do things above and beyond daily work.
• Capacity issues everywhere (e.g. HR, IT)! Organization redesign needed.Would HR, IT per department work? How do we restructure?
• Disconnect between academic side of the house and the service/administrative side. Need to coordinate across the organization. Need to share across the house completely. Academic chairs are not here with managers. We are separating ourselves.
• Making decisions. We need decision frameworks. We need checklists to choose. Decision Frameworks to know what to do and not to do, and how. The framework needs to be transparent. Need to structure the framework to see/understand what needs to be considered.
• Operationalizing ideas. We conceive great ideas. Need to do an in-depth dive to see what is needed to make it happen (e.g. AC Online had a systems implication). Need to consider business cycles, business flow one year in advance. Need to learn from our past to move forward.
• Processes aren’t written down. What is the value stream, the connections, the networking of the experience? Need value stream written down as reference. Capture corporate knowledge.

• ****We have management systems. The process landscape at the college is broken. Over the past few years, we had a major earthquake that scrambles a lot of those processes and left us in chaos.
• Need to support our processes to make work easier. Make our processes trackable, visible, understandable, and accessible (e.g. SIS). Current systems don’t feel like they are streamlining things –it’s harder. We need systems that help with the day to day. Get us away from manual work, spreadsheets, and charts. We’ve created elaborate workarounds (e.g. Genesis, Co-op). Need to operationalize systems. Genesis is outdated. Need integration of our systems and our processes. Need to map activities. Processes are too manual. There are gaps. There is not a good way to get information into the systems. Systems don’t work together. Two gaps between: (1) processes and systems; and (2) systems and other systems. Informal workarounds. Satellite systems.
• Processes are not well known, not well documented. Processes have changed (with systems). Things are messy by way of implementation. Need to map processes across the College; not just one process. Good system, how do we create processes to work with it? A lot of assumptions of how things are done, especially in Academic departments.
• Current state maps (e.g. Academic processes). If someone is mapping a process, need to validate, revalidate and evaluate how to help. AC way office was a group that was going to help work on processes, not tell me how to work on processes. Mandate is totally different than what I assumed.
• Need training. Need to adapt. Think of the people. Systems are only good if it’s good for the end user.
• **Want to find out how do you completely onboard someone from start to finish. Can’t find the answer for this process; what is step1, step2, etc.) Formalize it! There is frustration on this.
• ***Implementation. ***Write it down. Need to know processes.
• Speak the same language! Mismatch of terms used even in departments, need formal processes across the board.
• Organizational structure. Academic departments need Human Resources, Labour Relations positions. Need Academic HR role centralized in each area so Chairs can keep up (e.g. leaves, fill-ins, recruitment).
• Need to look at organizational structure of the College to strengthen efficiency. Lots of changes, new systems. It’s a “Process and People” issue, not (only) a Workday issue.
• The Chair role itself: can it be done with such a flat organization? With so many reporting to one person? It’s easier because it has low expectations. There are capacity issues. It’s tough on morale. Strategic work falls off due to this.
• We have high tolerance, not low expectations – challenge for decision-making, what are our priorities? How do we spend our time?
• ****There are too many fires. What activities or priorities do we choose (with the time left)?
• ****Space: classroom size and staff space for collaboration. We need to build an 8 story high classroom only building. We have 65 part timers assigned to 1 room with 6 desks. Need to use space differently, get away from traditional idea of space, but we are not being proactive. We truly need more space. Need to find creative ways to be more efficient in our space. Sometimes we just really need that old-fashioned classroom. Places to put students. Online won’t save us space, will ADD to the College need for space.
• Space will be our final frontier. We are now limiting enrolment because we do not have the space to support increased enrolment. We need more classrooms and we also have to house all the professors that we have. Full-time and part-time need a place to hang their hat when they teach.
• Role of the Chair. We could restructure. We need the time, the opportunity, the supports to do strategic work opposed to operational, reactive work. More than time, it’s the capacity, a holistic change (time to reflect). We need to be proactive and be forward thinking. We are following and not establishing our leadership position. We have the potential, its here, but operations trumps everything else – we don’t have time.
• We need reflective time. In the academic context we don’t have the availability to propel forward. This should be an integral part of our role. We’ll burnout by the time you get chance.

• Housing.
• Transportation
• Increase program mix. Create unique programs, can be content modality.
• Need to nimble for program opportunities (after 2 years, what is the next offer?), to offer short-term program offers (weeks)
• How do we sustainability run programs when we don’t have student volume?
• Need to be sufficiently unique in our programming to bring internationally attention.
• Saturation of market / cycle to programs
• Expected program lifecycle for the community, to launch and retire programs; that is, to bring back programs, to create post-diploma, degree, post-grad, specialty offers. Acknowledge program cycles and work with them. Invest in new pathways.
• Programs need an appeal to them. Be more competitive. Create intense, flexible programs to accommodate different learners.
• Market our programs better. Change and refresh.
• Our financial sustainability. We know as a campus we are no longer financially sustainable; we need to capture revenue with alternative revenue streams. Are we able to offer programs on the weekends, evenings? How can we leverage SME knowledge? Offer CE? Corporate learning?
• Need to be forward thinking in utilizing our knowledge and spaces.
• Online learning, who gets the revenue from Perth online enrolment? How do we track and acknowledge our online enrolment? What is successful?
• Are we part of the big picture? Rural costs are inherent. Accept the value of rural programming as part of the overall mix instead of looking at the financial sustainability of a single campus. We provide value to the big ship, value to have presence in Perth to support Ottawa. What is the balance? Discussion is needed to inspire others. We are part of AC as a whole.
• Cutbacks (e.g. library hours needed for our students). Everything is based on ‘Ottawa’. Feel like a second-class citizen due to the cuts and impact it has on overall campus. Make us feel like part of the whole. Cuts seem disproportionate to our context. Cuts here are deeper that in Ottawa. Need to uphold student experience with support resources. To make campus lively, you have to put into it. Its death by a thousand cuts.
• Is online/hybrid the right direction? We are a hand-on campus, face-to-face. Is there an appetite for online learning? If we are hands on campus, online maybe not the way to go – is it beneficial to the students? There is value in face to face. Don’t lose the fundamentals.
• Approach online experience in a positive way; embrace it.
• Perception issue of Perth as a ‘have not’. Per student, they have a lot of advantages here. Need to do a better job understanding we have strengths here and resources here. Help students navigate that. Look at campus as a whole, and it does a very good job. Change our perceptions.
• **Marketing. Look at our strengths and our ability to market them. Articulate these better together. There’s a value to it. Find way to make it real as possible.

• Retaining good people with PhDs. Ability to have time built in to conduct research within workloads. People need dedicated time to do this.
• *******We need space. As class sizes continue to grow, resource budget doesn’t (e.g. not enough books for the class, can’t book the gym or space for act, for ECE). Sharing space has been difficult.
• Keeping continuity of faculty. Part-time is wonderful but when you change them annually, nothing is continuous. Can affect student experience and also their results. Material gets changed, and loses consistency. Experience needs to be well qualified.
• Our staff (Chairs, coordinators, faculty, support) hard to stay focused on sector and growth when we are always focused on training staff and maintaining what has already been established.
• ****Coordinator role needs to be reviewed. Most are being held by part-timers. It’s such a challenging role, and its burnout rate is high. Hard to fill. We need the history to help develop curriculum and continuity. The expectations of coordinators; it’s a tough role.
• **The Chair role, like the coordinators, they have too much on their plate.
• **Super saturating our community with field placements. Community partners are telling us there are too many. What are we doing with the feedback? Partners telling us clear things, but not seeing outcomes. No longer have interviews or volunteer experience for field work. Partners didn’t know it was taken away – want it back. Lost standards for placement. Students lost what they are applying for, what they are taking.
• *****Field Placement: we’ve heard comments they no longer want to take students, they lack in quality.
• ** Need to understand market forces. PAC information should apply now. Too much time in-between formal reviews. We did informal reviews and made changes in a work around.
• Shortage of placements – there is saturation. There are unique possibilities; we could be more creative (regionally, internationally).
• **Time to create systems and formalize processes. Can’t just add it on top of the work we do. It gets lost if it’s not formalized. More ad hoc is not sustainable.
• Moved to spring and summer schedules. Spring workloads weren’t full so we had time to work on stuff. How do we protect time? If you have full load, you will miss everything else. Individual faculty teams, holistic teams don’t happen without full-time faculty. Need collaboration time amongst teams. We want to be innovative, but without time it creates very isolated individuals. Action research comes from seeing, knowing, and doing (and learning). Before I became full-time I was impressive, I don’t feel that way anymore.
• Take time to update courses. IF we are teaching things that aren’t updated, students are not ready in a dynamic field. How do we manage these changes -> protecting time is imperative.
• We are okay being accountable for time. Fear that it disappears and won’t get it back.
• **Don’t have adequate supervision in our clinical field placements. Problems arise from not having onsite supervisors in our placements. It’s required to have, but we are sending people out by themselves and they have a liaison but it’s not enough. We are losing credibility by not supervising. We have agency reps doing assessments that result in Pass/ Fail, instead of us. It’s unacceptable. We need someone there to see them operate in the field as faculty, for safety. Attrition of standards as a result.
• Online seminar hard to make changes on aspects that are not working. Online seminars aren’t working and we can’t adapt or fix it; not allowed due to space, time. Consolidating sections, or putting it online – afraid to try it because you risk not getting it back. People often don’t want to make a recommendation, once underway, can’t adapt.
• Time is a big issue. Rushing things that could be executed better – execution is too fast.
• Increase in international students being accepted. We have supports to enter college, yet once they are here, needs to be better. Sometimes with growth, there are cracks. As growth continues, need checks and balances.
• Increase in accommodations, use of CAL. I don’t know how to accommodate students or feel supported to help students. Nervous about support. Worried about isolating a student.
• Can’t forget newcomers who arrive and haven’t had opportunity to be fully immersed. Tons of international students, but no supports for newcomers.
• Emails say we should be accommodating to events (climate change day). What do we do to meet this?

• Language problems: ESL. Students cannot comprehend or articulate properly. Our supports are not great to meet their needs. Not setting ourselves up for their success, they can get lost. Not just international, it’s blended students. Maybe competency tests or qualifications for enrolment in credentials, etc.
• Cheating is a strategy, instead of learning (e.g. languages). It’s a symptom, not the cause – are we helping these students?
• International students, newcomer, off-campus time at work impedes study time. They are working 20+ hours a week in-class, and 2:1 study outside of class to 40 hours a week. Time management is tough. Possibly recruitment needs to be more honest with study time, cost of living and school commitments. There’s an inappropriate assumption on the minimal in-class time commitment for the student.
• Increase in international students. Students get here and there’s a lack of basic support. It’s already a steep hill to climb for basic students to navigate campus – they are new to Canada! Instead of Day 1 have Week 1. We are rushing students through too fast. They don’t know campus, Ottawa, or their new autonomy. Resources and supports for this student are essential. There has been a 400% increase in international students, are we prepared? We need to align investment to better the student experience.
• Get back to the grassroots. In the business to educate, not in the educational business. Decisions are affecting the quality of education (e.g. last minute courses filled by part-time faculty are not necessarily subject matter experts. If we do things poorly, it’s a brush fire. Feedback from students isn’t strong. Reputation is at risk.
• Workday. Purchases. It’s an odd system of expenditures which is very time-consuming (to collect receipts, understand and match deliveries). There are zero communications, a breakdown. Need a budget officer.
• Postings to fill-in for someone who’s sick. A huge hassle to input into the system, it’s a prolonged process. Workday is cumbersome for most people.
• 400 peer tutors. Before Workday, could get a tutor on board in about 5 business day, now with Workday it’s 24 days. Not responding to student’s needs promptly. The process has 31 different steps that involved 5 different people and different departments which bounce around. HR support is hard to get before rush, we have a blackout period to ensure we are on the floor to help support students; we need HR to help us and support us. More time is needed to get people on board (currently only 1 day a week for hour and half).
• If we could do work at home (virtually), we could get more dibe. We could input in WorkDay, it would help.
• Need to get a better handle on what a Learner Driven Plan is. Put up cases, references or examples of what we mean by it. Students’ perception is it’s a system customized for each. We need to manage expectations.
• Structure of the Third semester. Inconsistency between schools. Had a 5 year rotating plan, some schools adopted it, others have not. Some instructors are getting full SWFs. Unfair to off-cycle people. They don’t have a choice. Arbitrarily deciding on certain areas, in staff engagement, is dangerous. Inconsistencies and favoritism are building up, stirring the pot. Need mental wellness, a good balance. The approach we were given is ‘this is the way it’s going to happen’. We want to try to work things out. Consider creative ways to meet the cycle, get more consistency across the board.
• One year for PD would provide major updates to courses. Creates better student experience. How do we go ahead and update courses if we are not given a true amount of time to do so? Can’t do it during semesters. We are not being presented that plan only 6-7 week window which will rotate in perpetuity. How do we manage transitions between course sections? Do I come back during my leave time to finalize the exam? Difficult 7-7 transitions. 7-1-7 the style of teaching. Does it really flow well? We have different teaching styles (even among full-timers). Sometimes you connect well with student and then a second half drop down from the course – is this a good student experience?

• Time is well spent with industry talking to partners to get projects. Challenging is the administration of projects; the contracts, NDAs, legal… It’s a time vampire. More industry work and reaching out, it’s up to us to make these relationships, but we need admin support to jump in and take over the contract process. Let me do what I do.
• Student support. Support employees are overwhelmed and jammed. Amount of staff to face workload, not enough people to meet demand. Not enough time in the day. This is tied to student success.
• Lack of resources and compensation for re-developing courses. We are paid teaching hours but not for this type of work. Lack of resources relies on people who will invest their time ad hoc. I went looking for resources to incorporate indigenous content – it’s just not there. How do we leverage our expertise? I’m a subject matter expert, but I’m not actually paid to develop courses. It takes a chunk of time to pull apart the material and see what needs to be updated. What about a development contingency fund? Or a contract system in place for applicants to redevelop programs?
• I find the role of coordinator a black hole. Nothing is defined. We are passionate. Let’s acknowledge that the role is oddly ignored, not defined. How do we look at it differently?
• Classroom challenge: new DARE centre is great addition but we can’t book it for student class time. We don’t need bolted desks, we need more collaborative spaces. Perhaps tables that move, and a locked closet with materials: white boards, etc.
• Space is always a challenge. As more programs become condensed, this will become a bigger issue. Monday students have 10.5 hours of classroom time – it’s too long a day for their learning.
• Parking is a challenge the College needs to improve on. Provide more space for parking. Build a parking structure. Build up to maximize space.
• More professional development for faculty, staff who might not come from an educational background to learn more about accommodations; learning about identifying and understanding students. Learn to benefit students: in the classroom, their learning styles, how to support them. Create a safe place, be inclusive.
• Course development. New 7-1-7 will have its challenges, academically how do we manage the courses? We are jumping into courses we are new at, hopefully there’s communication to capture the content from the program. Instructor’s course outline is a guide. How do we transition from one section to another and ensure sustainability? We need a system to review this process, to provide a standard, instructions for hand-off.
• The Course Section Information (CSI) document. Our 15th week is a final assessment week, but it’s a 14 week semester. Week 8 is a break week. It’s confusing to students.
• Let’s apply Lean, the AC Way. We need to value stream how to move offices. We have to log many, separate tickets. One ticket to move technology, one to move the phone, another for furniture. There are too many people and processes. Need to value stream. Must be a better way.

• Departmental budgeting. Departments are encouraged not to spend, instead of investing in value-added activities.
• Government funding. Depending on federal elections. Depending on provincial metrics.
• Learn each other’s jobs. Cross-training. One person dedicated and they go, or promoted, but don’t leave the expertise. Career amnesia. Need sustainability in our resources, in leveraging our knowledge.
• There is a lot PD for faculty, but not for support staff. Budgets are very limited in the departments.
• Need a succession planning strategy. Don’t feel that every department has a laid out a strategy. What does long-term look like?
• Time. Timelines to completion instead of rushing completion through the school year.
• Spending structure. If we don’t spend to refresh old buildings, they will become unusable. We have large deferred maintenance. We are not putting quality equipment; we are purchasing at the cheapest piece which has an expensive maintenance life cycle. Equipment and the building have expensive maintenance. We are not looking at life cycle costing.
• Aesthetically attractive buildings but we are not focused on maintenance and usability.
• The B basement elevator is not a freight elevator. It was not meant to be a working basement. Often heavy skids and equipment breaks the elevator and we are stuck. This can’t happen with a working basement. It’s the original elevator from the original build.
• Classroom wear and tear. ACCE building and its classrooms are getting all banged up. Washrooms are really sad and embarrassing.
• Colleges used to have staff for maintenance. Retirements occurred and people weren’t replaced. We are down to three repair people. Used to have 10 -15. With growth, we need support. It’s frustrating when somebody leaves, what is the next step we need to do to replace them? College doesn’t see the value of what we do in the day. As a result there is burn out from the work load. Could there be job rotations? Job shadowing.
• We are letting people go, and we need to see who’s going to be affected. There’s no closure when someone leaves. It affects morale and workload. They give and then they are let go, or they are removed from a project and forced to leave. We’ve lost good people we shouldn’t have lost.
• Employee burnout – workloads are a challenge. Need employee engagement to sustain our future. Don’t see what the college is doing to promote this – we need the whole college to promote this.
• Leadership. It’s important to feel heard. Not having a job and a half. So bogged down without proper resources. Need to take care of your people to be able to run an organization – to sustain operations.
• Overload task force. Need to hear and talk to staff about burnout. Need to unburden the overload constructively. Who’s hearing me! Who do I talk to? People are afraid that they are not capable or that they appear weak. Management is overloaded themselves, how do I talk to them?
• Budget spending. There are lots of available projects but how do we measure and estimate which are of value? As Finance we guard the budget – what can we do to show our value? Endless amounts for consultants to evaluate (assessments) but no money left for projects. We run out of money for the work.
• Management overload. Leaders need to feel it safe to raise issues with employees. How are we feeling? Need safe spaces for conversations.
• Cheapest is not always best. Pembroke is seven years old but we have done expensive repair work. We don’t have the resources people to oversee and make sure it’s quality work. No resources to take contractors, builders to task. When we were included on specifications, we were ignored. Expertise should have more input and influence. Shouldn’t have to spend millions repairing a 7 year old building.

• ****We are growing. Our office space is a challenge – for marketing to recruitment… everyone. We are increasing staff and there is no space to put them.
• How do we increase space and improve departmental functions as we grow? We need to break down silos and increase collaboration across departmental functions. We need to apply modern design principles to our office spaces and move ahead (of other organizations).
• Workday: ‘It is most time-consuming part of my job’. There are too many steps for simple tasks. For example, travel expenses: each breakfast, each day (I don’t have multiple breakfasts each day; why can’t I do this at the same time?). Each parking receipt (I may have 30) requires its own form for me to fill out, for every single one: why can’t we have one form for all parking receipts? It took 3 hours away from doing my job (for one trip).
• ****Our sustainability: we need a recycling program. We don’t have one. It’s dangerous to our reputation. We call ourselves sustainable, but we don’t do basic recycling. It hurts our brand.
• Our sustainability: we need to gearing up for the ban of single use plastic. No more plastic utensils. Rip the Band-Aid off; let’s implement and get used to it.
• Our sustainability: we need to be composting. Everywhere on campus.
• Our sustainability: take advantage of our student population. At an Ontario college, students shred and recycle plastic bottles to turn into wool. Carleton has a great recycling system – simplifies recycling. Enable key student or graduate project ideas for our sustainability. Challenge students and invest their knowledge into our sustainability.
• Challenge our employees for an approach, for what they can do within their own power.
• *Technology is challenging. Our systems are dated. We understand work arounds as our processes. We need prepare our process for new systems – be proactive. We’re making headway but we’re implementing tools. With legacy technology, it’s a challenge.
• Need to define what our processes are, figure out how to improve them, streamline them, and cut the time to completion. Our processes are living within our technology. Employees are grasping creative workarounds. A more modern system could mitigate it. Bottom line: the processes we are used to need to be addressed.
• Perth Campus marketing: how to market it? Don’t think we are there yet, but still tasked with putting resources in to see what works, etc.; we need a resource to address it.
• Technology: need general documentation regarding our business processes. There’s no standardization, not even naming conventions for shared documents. Tech platform: we have an agreement with Office 365 – no one has come forward to show how tools could solve our issues, or needs. This is tech for team collaboration: need to learn in groups, can’t test it alone. Need to be standardized across the College for use.
• SharePoint: students can access our SharePoint if it is not locked. Lock Your Stuff!
• I want to use the technology. I know there’s better tools… at the moment I’m getting lost in it. It takes so much time. So many different tools that do the same things. I’m lost in the lack of information (on which tools to choose, on how to use the tools/features of the technology).
• Microsoft 365 is a waste land. It’s not being promoted, no teams to collaborate with in the tech. When no one is using it, the tool is lost. Everyone needs to be using it.
• The learning time impedes forward growth. Need time to buy in, to use the tools and share knowledge on how to use it. Take away the old ones. Shut down the old technology and be ready for new technology, new tools.
• It would be good to have more training for instructors for the tools in the classroom and online. For a hybrid program I’m taking, the teachers are great but we’ve had a lot of issues with the camera. If I paid student fees, I’d be mad about the tech problems and the instructor not being 100% ready. It would be nice if we had more training for instructors.
• ****Create transactions and appointment bookings online to alleviate student line ups for passes or for Registrar’s Office. Use tech for better student experience.
• There is lots of tech. We don’t take seriously the risks that come with new service providers. We need to vet new tools: what are the risks and the responsibilities for each of us when we want to use new tools? How do we know the tools vetted/preferred by the College? We don’t know.

• Return to work and accommodations. We are at 40% claimants on mental health. “Not myself today” campaign is good. Health and Safety Committee. More practice of what we preach. Need more action and less talk. It’s affecting a lot of people. There are stress issues. We need to help.
• Resourcing is a challenge at the grunt level, in the weeds level. It’s a challenge for most, especially ITS. The pay scale can be an issue in this market; resourcing to find specific skills is an issue.
• The commute. The bottlenecks. Need to encourage carpooling or have a shuttle bus. Focus more energy on this – too many one passenger cars coming to the College. Add spaces, discount parking for carpoolers.
• Communication and prioritization. What projects is the College focusing on? There is inconsistent team coordination. What projects are priorities? Are we contributing to success, are we relevant? It’s not clear what we should be working towards. We want to collectively work toward common goals.
• **Technologies and systems. Will they be robust and adaptable to move with us, to be our technology for the future (e.g. SIS)? We need to keep pace. We need promotion and increased adoption of the tech we have.
• Reaching out to colleagues, especially in different department it takes too long. It could take up to a week or two with reminder emails on something that could have taken 3 sec. It holds me back from proceeding with my projects. It’s an unacceptable amount of time. Service goals are to respond within 48 business hours; we strive for this with students/partners but not for within (employees).
• “Departments don’t play well with others”. We’re on the same team to help the student experience. We need more transparency. We’re all AC. There’s a lot of secrecy. Why can’t I find a single source of student info? A lot is hidden. We should honour and trust we are all treating this information with the respect it deserves. What are the rules? Let’s make them open and transparent. We could be more open, we are holding back.
• Salesforce. Will help track the student, track their experiences but it’s not used by all – we need the full picture to help (we all need to use it)
• LDP requires a single view of the student. There are roadblocks. We need rules for privacy and transparency. Need to be open now (to be learner driven now).
• Online learning. We are supporting our students – it needs to be seamless across modes of learning from online to face-to-face. Idea should be able to take a course with us, through business, through trades, or online. Across departments students should be #1 – students should be able to make a package of courses, decide their path of learning. Should be seamless from program to program, and come out with the same credit as those in the program. Student should be able to take the course on campus, or online – course should be a course, program a program.
• Programs. We have multiple programs in certain schools that have common core courses (e.g. communications). Each faculty has their own version or there are multiple versions of the same (core courses). They are redundant. Why do students have to re-take them?
• Public transport is packed during peak times. How do we alleviate this?
• Co-operation, collaboration ITS and Academic teams. We request faculty members (through the Chair) to give us what we need, like software in April. We didn’t receive responses. Need them to be more proactive when it comes to planning. Let’s be proactive (requests on Christmas, or 1-day notice).
• Prep time has been compressed. We used to have 4-months to prep a lab, now it’s down to 2 weeks.
• We have a lot of tech, a lot of outdated technology. We need to leverage the current tech and standardize it across the board.
• ****There is need for change management around the technology. We have the good tools (e.g. Workday), but need to be communicating that to clients. Change management: we need to prepare employees for employees for the changes coming (e.g. new SIS coming).
• It’s hard to be letting go of past practices. Simple processes in Workday have become convoluted due to past practices (using old processes in new systems). It’s challenging. No information on processes for new hires.
• Look into software licenses versus purchasing. It’s a cost saving opportunity for the College (and it’s easier to track/manage purchases/users).

• Alumni is only two of us. Resources. Portfolio is very large, we’ll need more resources.
• Communication between, within, and across departments. Left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.
• How does information trickle down? How do we share our opportunities, share our college information?
• Many processes and changes take a long time to implement.
• Do we know our processes?
• Slow down: we make decisions too quickly and don’t think of the departmental impact. It causes issues, we don’t know what the cross departmental impacts are.
• College working in silos. How do we collaborate
• Sitting in different departments for a little time would help. Sharing what you do each day. Decentralized physical approach. Participating in events with different areas create communications – a social type of change.
• Collaboration should lead to change. Formal or informal doesn’t matter. Lead to change.
• Resources. A lot of support staff are contractors. Support staff are operational staff which is part time. As our sales start to grow, resources haven’t changed. Things fall through the cracks when resources are taxed.
• As a contract employer to a full time staff, I’ve seen both sides. Job security is a huge things. Best way to say you believe in your employees is to not make them jump around.
• Benefit to jumping around is having knowledge from working in multiple departments.
• Trial to jump to different departments, but not lose current placement. Could be a form of job shadowing.
• Systems that don’t talk to each other. A way to bridge together the information from multiple systems. Current systems don’t, or are really clunky. More opportunities with having access to all data. How do we use the data to create relationships?

• Phone policy: phone is a requirement for caregivers, or other imperative needs. Currently some treat no phone access as golden rule. How do we share with faculty as a standard approach. We have responsibilities, phone use should be at our discretion. We have our laptops open, but no phones?
• Coaching week on student interactions: how to interact when it comes to tech, class interactions
• Scheduling. Opportunities clash with our timetables. 5 days classes – two days I come for 2 hours for one class. Big gaps on other days. Some early and very late classes on same day. Program schedules overall. One class was able to rectify 5 days into 3 days.
• Field projects related to our course.
• More guest speakers in our industry. It’s very helpful to see what and how our transition into employment will be. A snapshot.

• Idea of basic dignity. They come here for a second chance but we treat them if they just came from high school. During exams, we are watching them for cheating, instead of demonstration of learning. Treat them for where they are in life.
• No daycare for students. Don’t acknowledge them as single parents and treat them with the dignity they deserve. Bad teachers aren’t coach or go to PD that is available to them. Great teachers are beaten down by this. Downward pressure builds up. Make changes to improve our environment
• Deeply silo environment. Emulate the real world. Get communication within the school. Departmental reach outs or collaborate. Improve relationships, simplify process to reach across different sectors of school.
• Pooling resources that are held within. Make it a community.
• Integration between full and part time. Could learn a lot through our experiences and creativity. We could build off each other to help the students. Find it too segregated between the two. Leverage each other’s expertise
• How do we support student business; inward and outward have similar goals but don’t meet.
• workday and 14 week semester: getting general memo from senior leadership and getting inconsistent responses from them leads to negative moral. As an institution: get better at change management. Basic principle is employee buy in. College doesn’t do a good job of getting buy in from key stake holders to stick with the change
• Flexibility for that intense work week needed with students and employees.
• Changing demographics are a big thing. Don’t think we are handling it the way we need to. Skills students are coming here with are different than what we are anticipating. Disconnect is causing us to experience frustration in classroom. Schedules are very difficult for them to manage jobs and classes.
• Minimum skill qualifications for being here. Culturally acclimatizing. A lot of our students wouldn’t pass basic test. We are the first red line they encounter.
• Prerequisites not sufficient for courses. Student expectations don’t align with reality. Time of application, academic advisors, – program not being sold properly, and student actually not being ready for program
• Idea of navigating BrightSpace for some is daunting – we have a giant portion of kids not computer ready or literate. Big variances.
• Learn more about student cultures. Culture training. A training program to help us respect where they come from.
• Transition to continuing education to full time isn’t the same experience. Students struggling to keep up.
• Organization structure. advising seems to be challenging. Coordinators no job description and not consistent between work load. Chair role inundated by ‘death by meetings’. Hard to get time for PD or assess how I’m doing. Don’t have time to visit classrooms, part-time never see a chair.
• Blurring of roles,
• Assigning courses. course loading is rushed. Longer system plan needed.

• Cooperation.
• Being open to approaches – day to day. to be open to opportunities.
• Capacity. the amount of workloads, and tasks. How do you do that?
• How to support the student. Universal design learning: having professors trained on that (mental health).
• Retroactive accommodations is a really big topic and difficult to know where to start. If the admissions criteria for the whole programs was quite clear of what the student was expected to meet. Student was very clear about what it has to meet, CAL could asses and have time to follow up with student. If we could nip that in bud a little faster than what we do no. Admission criteria is very minimal and domino effect , a retroactive request takes a long drawn out process. Brings it back to student experience. If we could have a policy that align with the memo – it doesn’t reference retroactive.
• Student services – increase awareness to the services. Everything seems to go to coop, but how do we increase awareness of other services
• Delegating work so managers aren’t given too much. Separating rolls of people in charge. Span of control: so many people and things that can supervise. Here it’s a lot. In government it’s 20 or so people, here it’s got to be like 50.
• TERT: tragic event response team. Can we look at why it was put aside.
• Clockwork. Fixation on keeping a wreck on the road . challenges with tech. a lot of online learners, we don’t have the technology to help them appropriately. Learn with the market
• Online learning and facilitators. here it’s like I’m teaching myself, where other schools could logon and be in a virtual classroom. Being taught the same way as if on campus would be great.
• Online learners ; when they do come on campus they do say the online vs in class is different. supports are better for in class. Student is a student, how can they leverage the support in same way. consistent understanding for faculty.
• Missing boat on eBooks. All we have are scanned in books. eBooks could be a better experience
• Face to face online is an opportunity. a video connect.
• Training for staff: Orient new staff on all services available. What collaborations we could do, maybe a workshop we could do to orientate.
• I don’t have capacity to deal with case load, which limits my collaboration time with other staff. How do I find the time to foster partnerships and talent here, more effectively?
• Very hierarchical system here at college, don’t feel comfortable to go up and express concerns. Look at way we are making decisions, etc.
• Risk of student: we are band aid to solve a law suit, not help student.
• We don’t communicate well with each other. Across programs, across structure, . We are afraid to tell people the truth. WE massage it to make it more palatable. Honesty is important part of organization, we don’t do it often enough. collaboration, we are afraid to say things – we mis-serve students by tip toeing. How do we work together when we can’t find the open lines of communication on services.

• See last question! Turn it around and it could be challenges.
• Accessing data on specific groups of students. EX: non direct students. Who they are within the pool of student, just shy of impossible.
• Core values as an org: key challenge: accountability isn’t a core value, it should be. As employees and leaders we would all like to feel we are all being held accountable and so are our leaders. First place I’ve worked where it isn’t a core value. It’s a cultural piece. Accountability to work produced, related with each other, caring, it runs through everything. touches on integrity.
• Dealing with a situation that involves conflict. They tend to remove themselves from the accountability piece. There are actions that one may not be accountable for, but where we are not …. people will say i’m not adhere to core values but what they are being questioned is that we are not being accountable to our core actions . Everybody has to be accountable. Can’t be say I’m accountable if you’re actions are not being accountable
• At what point is that check and balance of accountability being done; saying you have been working on this, checking your processes. It’s a big umbrella.
• Shared understanding of our objectives and what our mandate is. We need to be growing in same direction. Understanding of shared goals are.
• Communication between people. Difficult conversations, people will tend to say ;Algonquin College isn’t…’ but won’t say ‘I haven’t asked the right questions to get the answer..’ I’m not owning it.
• Passion. We are a team. What happens to the people that are left behind, to those that don’t want to be on team. Is there anything we could do to ask ‘Do you want to be a part of our team’ , Can we help to get them. It has a lot to do with moral. Some actively disengage people.
• Procedures: clear performance managers processes. When you have clear procedures, it removes some of the gray to deal with those difficult situations. If you have no direction to follow it makes it difficult.
• Labour relations, we see a lot of problems come through the door. How did we get here? People weren’t being accountable early on, in their offices, before coming to us.
• Amount of turnover in this college and unfortunately you bring people in on contract, and they are gone to a better job. We have no subject matter experts. There isn’t the desired longevity. On admin level. It’s because of funding / budgeting – work is there the position isn’t (or the person isn’t). Work gets passed, becomes unrealistic workload: capacity issue. What comes with that: They’ve been on a fixed term in same role, disengagement piece comes in.
• Turnover, increasing workload. it existed prior to tech. We now have a new system that’s produced more work onto of that. Unsustainable. Also things we’ve learned that no opportunity will solve. Some things can’t be automated that we hoped would be. Once the opportunities have been put in place, reviews have to be done. We are working with more manual processes that we have before. Solutions being provided is a manual solution. to take on that body of work is not possible.
• If people are over capacity and in service giving position. Service level is not were it should be. Expectations are org running at a certain level, it’s disappointing.
• Increased people going off work. The strain on health and wellness. Knowledge leaving. The pace we are going at is not sustainable.
• Provide managers more time to manage the staff. A lot of meetings and huddles that impede their time to manage. If we could take a look at the schedules.
• Turning off. Utilizing their work email when off, they don’t disconnect. Viewing work email at night. In order to sustain we need to establish service expectation vs personal time. Expectations on service. 24/7
• Learn how to better hold meetings. We should ask ‘ how do we run effective meetings. ‘ have courage to say we don’t require a meeting from time to time. Teams are great for efficiency. Organize activities to learn from others / outside : how do they effectively use their time
• Tool adoption: most successful are top down in terms of adoption.
• Number of registrants are always higher that people that come and show up. Availability and resourcing.

• Opening it up, but important to keep our culture close. Some things in our culture are personal, that I choose not to share. It’s too vulnerable. It’s ok to not share, we need to have that safe space and haven were we won’t feel…where we feel safe.
• Finding balance of showing who we are with those who wouldn’t understand. Our stories are part of the narrative, but still have safe space for ourselves.
• Fine line of what I’m going to share and make available. In past we’ve learned not to do that. We’ve given too much, offered up our values. – they were trampled on. My son is adapting to what he knows as a Canadian, I have to let him know he’s First Nation (pass on our history to the next generation).There’s a time and place to share with strangers. Especially when it comes to ceremony. Odd to see everyone doing out in the open. To share broadly, I don’t feel right about it. ‘How do we share and embrace beauty that is you, but not take it.’
• Small movements will lead down the road to understanding. Incremental change is important.

• Process mapping, getting invisible visible. Standardize it and document it
• Process side – talk a lot about the black hole (e.g. Financial HR, not knowing what happens to submitted docs). Comes across as favoritism when processes aren’t visible, are documented and followed.
• Not having any resources to keep people in positions or on teams. I can’t give permanent positions to international students to keep them in country. Full-time pathway is not always clear. And looking at the person and their skills vs the position, or how the person is a team complement. Being able to keep good people on projects.
• Non-funded areas of college. Budget model our college uses is terrifying support staff. I’m trending behind on textbook sales. We are scared as we aren’t delivering on revenue before knowing what the revenue was. We’ve promised revenue before we know if we can generate it. We live in single sourcing (only so many classes, books are one sale). Lift morale, remove the fear – let us focus on bringing in revenue without fear of lagging. It’s affecting day-to-day.
• Streamlining, simplifying. Number of task projects done of the side of desk is a drain on really good employees. They want to be able to provide more for college and students but there’s a feeling that what they are doing isn’t enough but they are taking on projects ALONG with regular job tasks. It doesn’t allow them to do the day job well, and the side tasks is not well – both become suspect.
• We are focusing on volume of projects, and not the quality of it. Reduce the volume to achieve the quality. Sustainability: we need to advocate and put light on it. We need time to think about it and implement it properly. We see the opportunity and growth and we can do a lot here, but the other side is you can drain yourself very quickly. We have a five year plan; we’re planning on a yearly basis. Can’t change things within a year. Give us the time to do and be agile on the planning. Think it through for the long term.
• so many projects come at a cost. Loyalty commitment is coming at a cost. What cost are we willing to pay. It’s affecting people very seriously. Help people
• Two jobs in one work day: 1.5 million square feet / 14 thousand empty space (small proportion of fee space) No space. Great building but staff have no place to sit. In terms of classroom space: we are limited in enrolments due to classroom space.
• We all have multiple priorities. Trying to parse out how to find the institutional ONE thing: ok. Everybody for 2 years we are going to drive towards a single goal. Pick one centralized anchor point, anchoring piece. The priority has to be the organizational core.
• Perception from the outside – processes work better from outside, but the inside is tough. Fixing the core of our day-to-day operations is not sexy to outsiders. We have to find that balance. Too much the sexy story (the new priorities) and not the right route.
• Part time union. There are a lot of rules that are challenging. A lot of it hurts the employee. How do we come back to review these new points? It affects our business.
• Streamlining and unifying: do we all know what success looks like? Opportunity to make that known to all people.
• Budget: I’ve seen that in some services, to meet target requires services to be cut. On books it looks good, but has great impact on managers ‘how to deal with this’ then trickles down. What do we do with the piece that was cut? How do you respond to those requests (that continue to come in)?
• Our success is students’ success. Their suitability to the program. ECE used to have qualifications and portfolio (to get into the program), now there isn’t. We often see students who aren’t suited and it reflects badly to our community partners (when the students work in the field on placement or post graduation). We find ourselves needing to nurture our community partners about this. Program fit is huge across the whole college. Not unique to one program. Better inform potential students to understand day-to-day of program. How do we overcome that challenge?

*asterisks note agreement among attendees.

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