Listening Tour

What opportunities will lead us to greater success, and how would you pursue them?

• Opportunities are not fully pursued. We need focus. What is the one thing for us to focus on/to be known for (e.g. micro learning, online learning)?
• **Quality of our curriculum is core, the rest is not; quality is the priority.
• **Quality programs lead to employment. We need to be more career-focused in our development of programs; students measure program quality by employment post-graduation.
• Our success is our talent (our graduates).
• ***We need to focus on:
  • Academic excellence (successful graduates, employment), and
  • Exceptional student supports (to retain students in our learning environment).
• **We need a common thread to make decisions. We need to understand our priorities to be able to cascade the prioritization to faculty and staff. Otherwise, we miss opportunities.
• Flexibility to be learner driven:
  • Learning needs to meet students where they are.
  • Learners are different and complex; we need to adapt our learning to their lifestyles.
  • Schedule, mix of course (in-person, online); we need to be available when they are.
  • As an access institution, we need to enable access when they are available to learn.
• Quality and employment are not mutually exclusive.
• Quality for the duration, with continual quality improvement.
• How? We need an academic plan, this can detail our vision.
• Is an academic plan the solution?
• Mental focus, adequate mind share. We have strong budgets as the 5^th largest College. We have the resources – the funds, the people; we manage in spite of funding. We need to encourage others, to help them direct their energy. There are multiple foci; we need to focus and help people make decisions.
• There has been a lot of change, this has brought challenges. We need to prioritize processes, to simplify day-to-day operations.
• It is our culture. Our strategic decisions are based on a mindset and behaviour that says “yes” to all. This is too cooperative. There is no “no”.
• We need to refine our ideas and work on operations, the implementation of initiatives.
• We need to define the College’s long-term business model. We need a clear vision of our business model for staff and others understand departmental contributions, revenues, constraints (e.g. domestic, international enrolments). Expectations would be clear to know what to do/what not to do. We can’t do all. With clarity, we could leverage efficiencies or change our systems to support our vision (e.g. systems support for 30% international enrolment).
• Once priorities are chosen, we need to mine the complexity.
• Partnerships with the community are essential for the quality of our programs.
• Centralize community connections to the College with 1 point of entry for all (physical, virtual).
• We know the why …it’s how. How do we prioritize quality? How do we prioritize the student experience? How do we align our resources?
• An academic plan can outline our vision. Conversely, is an academic plan the solution?
• Define our competitive difference. We need a signature focus. We need signature offers.
• Our signature focus can be the employment readiness of our graduates; this equates to great programs.
• **Permission to fail.

• Being relevant:
  • Employer competencies are needed; transcripts are not as important.
  • Different than university; our graduates have ‘boots-on’ ready for employment.
  • Review/review committees beyond AQR; reinvigorate the PAC system.
• Community engagement in Ottawa Tech community (Silicon Valley North).
• Student skills:
  • Students need to know the subject and tools first, then they need to become ‘citizens of industry’.
  • We need to be ‘allies together’ and ‘allies with industry’, to make connections among students, graduates, faculty, employers that will last a career and build the sector.
• Demonstrate group behaviour, model behaviour of our collaboration, our cross-disciplinary, cross-program work, group work to model/resemble work in the sector.
• **Semester workload and/or exam scheduling are opportunities to model the same values; faculty and staff are able to work together and balance the workload for our students’ success.
• Need time to collaborate; we are so big. We are islands of courses.
• Gig economy. Essential skills, not just communications 1, other skills are needed and could be more relevant to students, such as contract law, or entrepreneurial skills, for tech or trades people to operate their own business.
• Competencies upon graduation to help students in the world of work; there is opportunity for students across programs to achieve competencies before graduation. It’s an opportunity to change perspectives of general electives.
• Gold seal curriculum for apprenticeships could be leveraged for other (electives, essential skills) course/program work.
• Bring back sustainability committee. Follow a green model in all that we do.
• Real-world final projects for students across programs/disciplines; projects can be cross-disciplinary like the world of work. There are too many silos.
• More models in the online learning space. We should refine our current model, but explore other models to account for the wide variety of learners who are all potential students (e.g. hybrid models, education-as-a service?, credential only service?, training only service?)
• Some classes lead themselves to combined lab periods (Used successfully in Computer Essentials, we combined all of our lab periods and invited students to come to any lab for assistance or to demo their work. We probably could have reduced the scheduled lab hours by 30%. Students were also invited to attend either lecture each week; including mid-term exams.)
• Don’t be afraid to fail.
• I think it would be great for Algonquin to show it’s commitment to a sustainable future by planting a tree (or paying to plant a tree) for each student, faculty and staff now and in perpetuity. It could be led and coordinated by our Environmental Science Forestry programs in our Pembroke Campus.
• Let the successful programs “breathe” and allow those involved the appropriate
  time to keep them vibrant (e.g. AI; Machine Learning; e.g. ICT most courses should be changing 20-25% annually). Trust us to do this with the best of motivations in mind – hold us accountable too. If we don’t deliver on what we promise then we forfeit and teach an additional course instead of using time to evolve courses and programs.

• Opportunity for cross pollination across programs e.g. Natural Resources. Need time for/to develop special projects like this in-class.
• **Student feedback. We need quick response to comments.
• Timelines to align teaching schedule, deadlines (e.g. ordering textbooks/hiring), student work load (macro level). Create a consolidated timeline, to bring group schedules together. Make this an annual plan that is open and visual for all College employees.
• Student Academic Council (faculty, staff, students). Create synergy. Align schedules, speakers, field trips.
• Align local scheduling (micro level) with open houses, other campus activity. Share earlier (e.g. planned in February – share then, not 6 weeks before start of term). Assess timelines of past year. Plan bottom-up next year.
• Meaningful performance appraisals for ourselves and for management (there needs to be opportunity for feedback to your 1-up).
• Mentorship for all. Full-time retirees have wisdom. Need to train others in the role. Junior roles needed to avoid gap in coverage, to be prepared.
• Make ACR more meaningful, integrate with PQR. Improve timing to the spring.
• Improve internal program approval process.
• Proactive, strategic support for students (e.g. counsellors, mental health services have limited hours, limited availability). Need services to meet our student profile (that is heterogeneous) of high school, Indigenous, international, and adult learners etc.
• Academic research (e.g. we are leaders in adult education). Need time to conduct academic research. Benefit of marketing academic research. Academic institution needs research.

• Attracting international students from different cultures.
• We need ways to attract and develop prospective students in international markets (e.g. provide them a hub to transfer credits to Canada).
• Get ambassadors from across the College to speak about our strengths, our diversity, our culture and our success stories to draw more interest and increase intake from international markets.
• Develop more programs that will resonate with/ attract international students; Leverage hot topics: Our Sustainability, Data management, and Regulatory programs.
• Attend educational conferences worldwide.
• Build the brand worldwide. Increase the Algonquin College brand presence and recognition worldwide.
• Help prospective international students be aware of/understand/find their academic pathways to take advantage of our quality educational programs and all that Canada offers (e.g. employment, lifestyle).
• Promote online programs for international students.
• Help students understand indigenous culture and Indigenous knowledge in course work.
• We need opportunity to break the barriers between different departments (across the College, across disciplines).
• Looking well after international students, more degree programs, collaboration with industry (i.e. offer learning [leading to certificates] for cohorts of learners from a specific company)

• With the current provincial government focused on jobs, we are well-positioned to be a very valuable asset to Ontario and community (by focusing on): the employment of our graduates.
• **Sustainability is important. The environment is key for learners coming to campus. There is a big opportunity to focus on waste as an institution and sustainability programs for students.
• Sustainability is a social responsibility. Raise profile of/model our Corporate Social Responsibility. We do it in small ways (e.g. impact day); we could give back in a greater way.
• Thrilled Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a priority. We need more coordination across the College for accommodations (upholding legislation). Increase budget for height adjustable desks in all classrooms.
• Great knowledge comes in conversations across the College. We need a PARKING LOT for these ideas and a method to come back to them. Enable design thinking with a framework to embed knowledge and how to use it. Collect ideas, schedule the process to review and use the ideas. Opportunity is for students and staff. Need simple process to collect BIG IDEAS.
• **Re-engineer the way we work. We need to be able to actualize our vision, today and in the future. What does this look like going forward? We need to be future-ready and we aren’t organized for it – need behavioural, structural, cultural shifts.
• Need formal Manager Council. There is ACLT, Academic Council, Chairs Council, ASA, need formalize/create framework, time for this for operations, communications, partnerships etc. So much is happening that can’t be done off the side of someone’s desk, need framework.
• We can do more digitally if is integrated properly. Tech can increase visibility, collaboration (e.g. electronic Huddle boards). Tech supports these wishes. IT plays a role in sustainability.
• We need to know how to use technology (e.g. not leveraging the tech we have, Office 365); need education, training, time; awareness/understanding is lacking on tech implemented.
• Power of the Post-it note. The ability to free think in the absence of tech is important. Need to have human interactions for creativity.
• Start working differently together. Focus on the value streams, the experiences end-to-end of the employee, the learner, across departments – capture our inter-connection/ inter-connectivity. Experiences are connected, not in isolation; focus on the full experience.
• As a services group we don’t have enough time to collaborate and identify issues together. We are working together organically, reaching out on our own. We need to systemize, operationalize this collaboration, to remove silos. Think differently from a services perspective across all areas of the organization.
• Manager communications; we need to learn from another, share best practices, improve cascade of information to employees. Helps break down silos, brings all in the loop, more communications across departments.

• Badges as an opportunity to highlight the skills students achieve – making the skills visible to the employer. Leadership badges would help employer discern, differentiate, and distinguish the student for employment. Certificate is a major achievement. Badges are smaller than a micro-credential (cluster of achievements).
• We need a framework for badging, for AC to assess/validate the achievements, to report achievement. We could stack the badges. Need to break down skills to assess badge achievement.
• Focus on what we do well now instead of new opportunities: our core programming. We’re pretty much jammed, not much opportunity for more.
• Badges could be used instead of general electives. We could respond to community/employer needs. General interest courses are not helping the employers. Students could take a specific skills in the trades, could be a boutique offer, a badge [e.g. Welding specialty (‘Tig’); Tourism PAC members want specific courses (e.g. revenue management), Health community wants specific skills (e.g. IV puncture); Auto Cad proficiency badge (e.g. need for Architecture).
• How do we introduce these opportunities needed by industry? How do we offer new courses? Capacity issues: opportunity for success gets left behind because we do not have the capacity.
• Advantage of badges is breaking down the knowledge. Why aren’t we doing this today? Waiting for the framework for badges. We have CE – this doesn’t have the same value as something AC could put their stamp on, as AC validated. Break down the knowledge into badges, and then stack them. Makes transitions easier between programs
• Tourism industry and PAC members are asking for one-off courses or micro credentials (e.g. Revenue management, sales). Corporate requests for specialized one-off courses. Larger hotels have a budget to spend X amount to get pre-management training (e.g. Marriott). Let’s compete in GTA; George Brown, Seneca offer industry bit-sized courses.
• Complete or operationalize the initiatives that have already been started over the last five years, and do it well. That is, get Workday to work for us (the academic Area). I hope we will not repeat that mistake with the GeneSIS replacement project. Get Adaptive to work and reflect on how we do business. Clean-up your program offering. Know why we are in that business, stop treating programs the same as everybody else (e.g. apprenticeship programs). We need to define the parameters that will allow us to keep programs on the books. We need the space. Follow-through on: the coop movement (the admin burden, need to define the process, test, clean up, support and assigned the resources to make viable; the movement to spread out intake over three terms; the addition of the seven weeks of teaching to the annual workload of our full-time faculty; the handover from one professor to the next; the opportunities to redesign some of the programs to offer seven week courses.
• Red Tape. The process. The initial scoping. We are not training for several positions that are open. We are not meeting demand of industry. Board approved certificates: we need a faster lifecycle for curriculum from development for cycle of -> planning to launch. We could buy and sell curriculum for faster launch.
• We could leverage our existing industry curriculum for micro-credential/badge such as CAD AutoDesk.
• Process for developing new curriculum. Need efforts of professionals/part-time /full-time to be integrated. Need room for development (time/space) Need capacity.
• Refine our process for hiring experts to meet needs: process for development, internal or external professors. Qualified. Existing faculty might be boxed in, cannot box in, need to integrate capabilities. Capacity is an issue.
• Labour relations. Limits on categorizing labour hours. How do we find hours (for collaboration, development)? Need to build relations with our unions. Recent attendance at AC functions creates hope of new engagement.
• More HR support when hiring faculty (part –time or full-time). Need support to recruit a specific skill set. The speed of offer, the timing of help, HR response time needs to be faster (e.g. to fill for sick leave). Challenge to find talent with proper credentials.We/they don’t have the bandwidth.
• Break down the silos for the development and launch of programs. Industry is looking for multi-disciplinary, creative thinkers, but we operate in tight silos of our subject areas. Create joint collaborative programs -> AI has a foot in business, tech, media; it is multi- disciplinary. We deliver programs in our own area, but not successful in delivering across departments. Don’t have the process, management systems, or framework to support collaborative systems. Need multi-functional projects and applied research. We have to work around the barriers or system to support this.
• There are a lot of initiatives. It would be nice to finish them – to operationalize them. It’s not the tool, it’s the processes. Workday, Adaptive are great tools, but processes are changing (need to align operations: processes, tools).
• Need to clean up our program offerings. Haven’t seen any eliminated.
• Need more space.
• *Our processes are creating a lot of headaches for Coop implementation. Co-op has increased at least 50%. There is no central process to alleviate this (e.g. Coop, RO, student, Chair, employer). Validate and document the formal process (we work around with informal process).Difficult with turnover, new hires to know the process.
• Associate Chair role. Acting roles. Starting new role with knowledge of the role. AC is filling theses acting roles, this has made it a lot easier. Need mentoring, shadowing, success planning.

• Bring back the Advanced Housing Program. We’ve gone over a number of changes – the program we’ve delivered for 15 years was suspended. It fit in this community, it fits for those seeking post-secondary (e.g. Adult education interest, interest in sustainable practices). Need to reintroduce programming that looks at progressive building construction.
• Increase mix of programs. This campus is getting livelier, with more programs. At Perth, we have the academic teams and the infrastructure for high-efficiency, sustainable construction/ housing programming. CE or full time programming, there is interest in this training.
• More sustainable, progressive programming. We need to lead the students. Be at forefront. Smaller Universities are doing this in their programming, from the student standpoint. We are working with different community organizations to bring forward new ideas (e.g. The Table). Why can’t we take these new/garden models to move forward?
• Unique product/ programming to help our community. We can’t attract from outside the community unless we have unique, destination programs. We offer the exact same as different locations (e.g. Ottawa, Pembroke, St. Lawrence), we need a competitive advantage in our community.
• Launch with the ministry takes too long. Programs without local needs aren’t sustainable; need cycle of programs suited to our graduates to continue (e.g. degree pathways, post-graduate programs, specialty market programming). Is it unique to draw from outside, locally? Have an end game.
• College seems risk adverse (e.g. Cannabis programs, we missed the boat). We have a unique location, Niagara took advantage. Increase our calculated risk. Be on the cutting edge, we need to be able to dip toes into something with an upward trend. Need to be on the forefront.
• Need more entry level programs to take (e.g. basic carpentry).
• Financial aid (OSAP) and funding for our students.
• Housing is a problem. Tweed took much of our supply
• Need post-graduate certificates/specialty programs. ECE indigenous-focused graduate certificate would appeal to our graduates. Need to be competitive. Offer at different times such as in the evenings to attract populations to come back (e.g. Advanced Timber carpentry). York has post-grad specialty offers that are 6-8 weeks long. If we have graduate certificates, people would come back. Need to appeal to our graduates with alternatives – graduates can come back.
• Professional continuing education is an opportunity, to maintain your professional status – your professional development. Additional Qualifications (AQ) from York, $600, 6 weeks in duration for professional certificate.
• Building Innovation Research Lab (BIRL), how much innovation and research is going on there? Applied Research is important for faculty and students. We could be at the forefront and lead.
• Masonry was under subscribed. Lowered morale. Is it a marketing or demand problem? Doesn’t make sense. Employment is sitting only an hour away – our data for retention is misrepresentative. Our students are employed. They are pulled out before graduation due to talent demand.
• The demand for heritage products is here, there is need in this community. We need to offer programs, build with the community: be symbiotic between campus, college, and in the town.
• Need to increase highly competitive programs in Perth – connect to the hospitals, to industry, watch St. Lawrence and be different. Ottawa/Pembroke highly competitive programs have wait lists – bring them here to Perth. Watch St. Lawrence trends.
• Create competitive post-grad offers, create opportunity for faculty/student year of research.
• We have to have plans in place for housing. We need to have a vision to support students and retain them on campus. Great to have plans to attract students. Need unique programs with ways to retain them in this community.
• Need new ideas for us to be a destination campus. The PSW program could have a pathway/ bridge to nursing. What is the unique idea for student past grads?
• Transportation or Housing: have to get the people here and somehow provide meaningful way to keep them here. Look at Perth campus as an extension of AC Ottawa. Establish a route (bus, train) that ran on regular basis that supports the tipping point of course success. Find the viable approach. Evaluate an environmentally responsible approach to increase group transport such as a school bus (or the train) instead of single cars.

• *Wealth of knowledge we have within the walls already. Faculty and Staff, rigorous support we have here. Success is through greater support within. Everybody has important pieces that hold up the structure. Take too much on and don’t focus on what is successful, we can’t grow. Not just the physical space, it’s the people in it. Institutionally we’ve had some ups and downs in regards to changes. Motivation is transparent in nurturing growth from within. Between all systems, a lot of change in short amount of time
• **Class sizes. Enrolment is a necessity, but class sizes increase to take them. Very hard to get better success with large class size. Cut it in half to make sure we can connect with them, and add to greater success rates. Pace, they get lost in big sizes.
• A lot of experts that come to teach, from community & various places, bring knowledge with them. Use these connections to build with community. Greater success comes from relationships. Supports our student’s growth and betterment. Relationships drive success.
• More engagements. Involve the content experts from outside with inside experts would get them to engage more into college. Investment of Loyalty
• ***Reputation. Community connections are heavy on placements. Over 100 agencies we work with, and the smaller the classroom size, the better we can prepare our students which, intern, create better relationships with community
• Reputation of success. Better students do post grad, the better our reputation, and better our enrolment, our funding and our metrics.
• **Participate in decolonization; we need to know how we are benefiting, and perpetuating it. Strategy from the knowledge. Increasingly seeing Indigenous knowledge affecting what we do, but haven’t heard how we are befitting it. Integration isn’t enough. Appropriating that knowledge -> need a deeper conversation about how we are benefiting and our systems can benefit.
• Increase the ‘blanket experience’. New information each time. Debunk myths. Increase understanding.
• Movement to understand more colonialism, we have electives but don’t have course on reconciliation. Courses are out there, developing something in-house is definitely an opportunity.
• **Revisiting international placement opportunities. *More opportunities for clinical experiences internationally. Currently it’s a little fragmented
• New strategic plan for international student placement structure. Our students leaving abroad. Lagging on outbound students. Supporting developing projects, sharing resources we have, things we’ve done. Collaboration to maintain great initiatives.
• Opportunity to engage more with ideas for universal design learning (UDL) – transform courses to align. Don’t have resources or time to implement ideas.
• Structures of college are interfering with UDL. Timelines make it difficult, structures of course outlines make it difficult. Course outlines aren’t really designed to facilitate multiple modes of assessment and outcomes. Scheduling and timetables impede this; we need more flexibility for course outlines.
• Time for any kind of research. We need to publish research. As we grow, need to recruit more people with credentials to teach our degrees. Very difficult time recruiting PhDs. Need to support and understand this wealth in-house.

• Branding communication and marketing to our internal communications. Need work there as we grow. Perhaps we forget about our own.
• Faculty mobility. In terms of what people can do over a span over 25 years at AC. Mobility to take on other projects, or work throughout college. There will be an increase as millennials like to move around, stay engaged. Need opportunities/postings for niche, temporary or shadowing assignments.
• Grow our volume of students. Provide more offerings. More than diplomas, certificates, other models as options. Give reasons to come back, more options for alumni to return. Not necessarily credentials, certificates, new ways to streamline skills.
• Industry professionals, who don’t have necessarily have the skills needed, can improve their skills. A mini-certificate. Piggyback off current courses -> offer preexisting pack of courses as valuable mini-certificate.
• Needs to be more structure for part-time employees -> performance reviews, sustainable goals for growth, career at the College. How do we keep good people and not have turnover when there is no time to assess them? Need ways to recognize them, incentives to keep them. Professional Development plan to keep part-timers, and guide them. As far as feedback and training, there will be stepping stones for them.
• Dedicated PD for part-timers will show their dedication to the College/ours to them. Investment provides returns (see Conestoga). Professional learning to meet their needs.
• Seems to take 5 years for new faculty to feel like they fit in. Formalize and identify the benchmarks.
• 70% of part-time faculty would like to have full-time role (or working towards it). Need career coaching, good avenues for PD. Sends a signal of AC intentions, shows joint commitment.
• Incorporate environmentally sustainable initiatives. Increase the presence of sustainable initiatives in operations.
• Be able to have more front-line, facing access to students to be exposed more to their needs and help more. Make more connections. More volunteer opportunities to see what is going on campus.

• What’s the definition of success? To be able to contribute to a legacy, generational, sustainable legacy of success. Environmental sense: give them tools to work in the world sustainability. Look at how our practices and decisions affect the environment and our sustainability. If we just teach industry standards and not alternatives, we aren’t reinforcing sustainability. We need to teach our students what to do once they are out in their professions. This is sustainability; the outcomes of practices overtime will be significant. Need to tackle this. Also dealing with a changing economy which will be driven by our environment.
• Success: define it better. Needs are different dependent on type of student. Foresee emergence of private schools offering similar training we offer. They have slick recruitment, marketing, with a quicker delivery; they are shiny and attractive to certain students. What is student success? How are we different from competitors? It’s the depth of education here.
• Grad certificates are one year; these are competitive offers. Students are getting the greatest depth, with the quickest route to employment.
• Need a dialogue to compete with private colleges. Recognize our strength, and have a competitive position. Strategically we need to start putting this on the table; competing with private colleges.
• Students come to us after private colleges, as industry doesn’t recognize their credentials. They can get in, don’t advance with employers -> with us, they can.
• In certain industries, they are less concerned with academic credentials: need soft skills, personal skills, need a class on networking. Market is shifting. We need to talk about how to operate in this new world. Skill sets are changing. Recruit organizations, go to companies and ask what they are looking for. Approach to education is changing. In the real world – how quickly can we adapt to change, and implement it (technology, etc.)? Working with the public and provide good customer service is main goals of most companies. Does AC offer courses that teach that?
• Success: College as a whole looks at this as retention. Faculty looks at student success, with graduate employment/maintaining their career as success.
• Pre-screen students before application to see if they have selected the right program choice to alleviate withdrawals and enroll others who may be lost on a wait list or go elsewhere before they are placed.
• Publicly-funded high school advising. We reach out to them and bring them in. We can do more to increase awareness. Give course trials such as camps, SWCI, dual credits, etc.
• College and university collaboration. We cannot access academic databases and journals for research. There is opportunity to partner with university libraries to give students access for research, for faculty development. Students in the BIT programs have access to Carleton library- let’s enlarge the umbrella.
• Great deal of disruption. Need to provide training on solutions. Students are worried about the environment. If you can offer solutions, and incorporate into courses for their career, we will have competitive advantage. Need sustainability in economics and social services also.
• Staff success, career pathways. Nice if there was a way to recognize employee on the job skills. PLAR for students, can it be for staff? Postings ask for 3 year diploma, and most staff have a 2 year diploma only. How do we recognize equivalencies, open postings to staff?
• PD to upgrade credentials as part-time faculty and staff.

• Building new buildings – we have developed some state of the arts buildings. We see that. But they age aging exponentially and can’t be maintained. Build at level 10, and maintain at 6. They get worn quickly. Courtyard is already deteriorating. If we are going to fund it, we should maintain it
• Prioritizing what we work on. Giving it the attention and focus it needs. The follow-through.
• Learner Driven Plan: all take the opportunity to really understand how it can align, where we are in it, shared common goal and interest. Empathetic working towards a common goal – touch on each of us and students, really important that this is shared and collaborated. Share that vision.
• Building a climate where unearthing a long-standing frustration is okay, it’s okay to identify it. Really look at things, uncover root causes instead of treating symptoms. There are pockets of fear to raise issues to 1-Up. It’s evolving, need to continue to build trust.
• Many vacant positions – if the positions are filled it would vastly improve workflow, morale and our success. We need people. We are very short of people in our department. Positions are there, every position takes a long time to fill.
• Technical skills can be taught, but personality can’t. It’s important to be motivated, to excel. Most of our department is services – we don’t make money, we spend money. We don’t have enough resources and staff to implement. There is a misalignment of our growth, and the services we offer. Space increased by at least 300 000 sq/feet but we have less staff. We have not grown with the growth.
• People who fill-in temporarily, are seen as not qualified to fill the position full-time. They are qualified to fill-in, but not qualified to be employed full-time. Experience needs to be valued. Can do the job, but don’t have the title to move up.
• Succession planning: when experience leaves, we need knowledge to replace those leaving.
• Rolling out new systems and teaching people new systems. We are an educational institute but failed drastically in our Workday roll-out. We have not made any efficiency improvements.
• System changes. Processes have changed. These weren’t communicated properly. There is no clear guide or printed guide on how to do things. Each department could work on processes to create the guides to help involve new people. Need Standard Operating Procedures SOPs.
• Need help undertaking, realizing our value streams instead of working in silos.
• New SIS coming (hoping that we learn from our other systems implementations).

• Continue growing our different options of course delivery/teaching: online, part-time. Offer what the market wants, available “however the learner wants to learn” with more selection, offerings, and alternatives in future. Change how we develop our offers in the future.
• More engagement with students using social media. Reach out to prospective students via social channels to give opportunities to ask, engage, and see what’s happening on campus e.g. FB, IG.
• Two-way communication: Brightspace has room for more engagement. Open it up to prospective students. Use tech/tools with prospects for community building, course preview(s).
• Offer services in multiple languages. There’s a growing presence of newcomers and international students; we need more employees who speak multiple languages to translate (e.g. in Registrar’s Office, Language Institute).
• Offer quick, short, fast learning options, such as micro-credentials. Target tech audience.
• The world is our market; build on opportunities to recruit outside Eastern Ontario.
• Use technology and increase access to our data. Empower us all to make data-based decisions, provide benchmarks. Empower everyone in every job. Create a common language using data.
• Communication with prospects: with technologies, but with a real personal touch. Other universities, colleges are nurturing their leads (e.g. US schools). We need to improve the way we nurture leads to conversion: personal phone call, personalized letter, etc. What would win over students on the fence? What would we do differently if enrolment was down?
• Opportunity to attend events such as these, to be able to participate beyond our designated roles. Provides opportunities to share information, to have conversations across departments.
• We’ve made strides by physically centralizing some of our roles in one location (e.g. marketers across the College) — but we could do more. We need to put us physically together to allow for more communication, to increase understanding and share ideas big and small — needs to happen every day. Not everything is as systematic as it could be; we adhere to a system of scripts. We could do better with our messages.
• Need opportunity to see labs, see each other’s spaces: Open doors AC. Need more transparency between departments so they know what we offer. Increase our knowledge of the College and improve our students’ experience.
• Learner Driven Plan – made great strides, continue the momentum. We need curriculum delivery that is personal, that is flexible for the learner. Keep it up, make sure the LDP works.
• Develop our external partnerships, understand the needs, offer them the learning they want. High amount of Tech companies that require specialized skills (e.g. Shopify, Salesforce, Tableau learning); there is high growth of SAAS products that require training, and they/private partners are starting to compete with us. Let’s work with these companies, offer this training.

• Support the service areas more robustly, more broadly. ITS, HR facilities, Finance, non-academic service areas. These service areas are just as important. We need more resources (money and people.
• More grunts and less management. Employees doing the work – there is less and less; the amount of (Jr., Sr., Directors and) managers is more and more. There are too many layers. The jobs are going away when employees retire (not replaced) and the work is increasing. ****Look at the engagement with ITS over the last 30 years, it’s always the #1 problem: we’re dissatisfied with amount of employees (for the work); all (employee) service areas have same problem. We need more employees and less management.
• Legislative restrictions with funding. We’d do well with more corporate training. A lot of money out there for training and partnerships. Leverage the potential of corporate partnerships. We are getting less provincial government money to subsidize students. Less from the province, let’s find it somewhere else.
• Low awareness of the tools and technology we have. Let’s meet them where they are, instead of 3 weeks back and forth – spend 2-3 days/half days, we could be more efficient if tools are used to their full potential.
• We want to start learning while at work, learning new technology. Only our resources are stretched so thin, can’t take advantage of the great opportunities to learn
• Amount of contract employees we have. The time, money, the training we offer, and they are constantly looking for new jobs. There is no job security. We have great, valuable people that are leaving and moving on. Then we start over (posting, searching, training people). It stops us from moving forward. If you need someone there full-time, it’s a full-time position. It’s costing more by losing and retraining, than to have full time employees with benefits. Need to change the evaluation of time in position, have a process to go from I/O, short-term, part-time to full-time. Hiring, training – we’re left with delays (and positions not filled).
• Human Resources practices and policies dictate and create obstacles in providing sustainable positions. (The policies are) archaic. Rather than providing short-term contracts, there could be permanent part-time or full-time people in positions to address our needs.
• Mapping processes. It really comes down to ‘what are we doing’, ‘who’s doing it’ and ‘in what time frame’. Key thing is to keep systems current. You actually have responsibility to keep those processes up to date, to understand how they are transforming and then do more analysis. What is really adding value, and what is not? How do we get the processes current?
• Processes. People don’t really understand why they are doing things in certain way; it’s always the way we’ve done it. Need to move away from that and understand “Why are we doing it like this?”
• Workday. We need to be taking advantage of the technology, the systems that exist at the College. Workday has been able to cover a lot of gaps at the College that weren’t paid attention to. Its change management that is affecting our processes. We weren’t ready for Workday – we were used to a system that had changed with us, policies were in the old system, now workday is uncovering our policies. Policies we were unaware of – it’s a misconception that Workday wasn’t configured well; our past practices weren’t upgraded.
• College culture is not supportive of the online model. Need to be more integrated with the academic area. They see us as an isolated area. This is based on a past philosophy. Need to work with our counterparts. Learner Development Plan – need to work together to be successful. A culture shift is needed.
• *The waste. We could be living up to our sustainability goals: to repurpose, to reuse. We need a resource to spearhead that.
• Real hoarding culture…we have storage space filled with junk. We have lost classrooms that are unused. Room inventory is a challenge. What do we do with the junk?
• AC Online – we need micro-credentials and badges. They are for everyone at the College. We need to apply a design thinking approach to our departments, programs and College. We need to keep courses current, class sizes low.
• Shout out ‘Thank You’ for the signage in the college. We’re getting it right – it’s helping people.
• Invest in the front-line. It’s the first impression a student has. We need to be available when they are here. It could affect how they move forward – we want to convert the lead to applicant – not lose them or their parents from campus. It could affect how they move forward. We need to handle student support with more staff during peak times.
• Allowing students to do more online: Registrar’s Office, forms, etc. Need to have 24/7 access. Need tools like live chat, alleviate phone and email requests.
• Multiple layers of management: not saying that the diversity of layers isn’t necessary, but sometimes lines are blurred between where the support staff role stops and where management begins. We have management doing work that should be support staff tasks, and vice versa. Define the lines, the workflow. Get management out of the weeds.
• Motivational engagement of people. We have hours and experiences: “What is the College doing to keep me?” We need to motivate people to stay in the positions and be engaged. We need active engagement. We need recognition to earn their loyalty. Like the phone companies, we are the loyal employees – we need to be recognized.
• Online learning. We are tight for space. We need to embrace it. Need to consider alternative working arrangements. Employees could work from home, or on staggered hours or schedules (different start/end times).

• A lot of mature students, and one thing I hear time and time is only reason I came to college is co-op. It’s a gateway to employment opportunity can’t find anywhere else. Open the door to their future. Is this a good promotional opportunity? Start to a professional job (or access to a professional job)
• What Algonquin does for the community; better way to share our accomplishments with community. Contribute to our employers, client research help, alumni success stories, indigenous work among campus. Shout it out a little more. Utilize partners and their channels to showcase ourselves within community. Could increase partnerships.
• When Alumni return to campus, our communication with Alumni department isn’t great. Missed opportunity to collectively capture these relationships and give exposure.
• Astounding to see how many alumni I meet, or recognition we’ve received. The little relationships matter.
• Online reference to where alumni and employees could see all opportunities to get involved: coop, hiring, reach out to students. Better active participation
• Corporate training = our best kept secret. Few people in industry are aware of this arm of college. More collaboration to get our voice out there. Physical visibility will create enthusiasm.
• Presenting value of what we can do at college. Our applied research. Always a project or solution we can find for employers. This lead to coop, corporate training, learning opportunities, etc. The interest is there! How do we leverage it?
• Centralized area or approach towards helping employers who want to reach out for field placements, or co-op, or short term projects.
• Critical to have human interaction / personal touch. ‘Small town approach’. Huge competitive advantage.
• When a call goes to contact centre, they need to know who to direct people too. Education to leverage?
• Part Timers who have experience, but very high turnover. Is there way to leverage their expertise so we don’t lose them. What to do to keep good people here, and help them to be better. How do we keep them long term?
• Language institute; a lot of new Canadians in programs. Study to work here, have degrees from other countries. We could show them what the College offers and info available to these types of students. Would work well for recruitment. Traditionally, our academic advising is for the post high school model – we need to give more an intercultural lens to this, with simple language.
• As an alumni; every piece of mail from College is insurance or credit cards offers (ads). Maybe a one pager to outline what’s going on at college, etc.

• I feel that we need more companies to come to the college. I see a lot of companies go there, not come here. I see a lot of qualified people here. Maybe we can try to attract companies to come to employment fairs. What I see is more part time jobs from Costco’s, and Tim Horton’s but students are more qualified here for real employment.
• More part time companies that are field placements, not general jobs we could get without college credentials (Tim Horton’s)
• Bigger projects should be develop the business , integrate employers day-to-day. Great tech companies in community, AC needs more exposure to these postings. Gov, Shopify, etc are looking for placement jobs, why can’t they come here and talk to us about their needs.
• Integrate employers more on campus and in the schools. Career fairs, field placements.
• International students . Be globalized and international, from a marketing perspective.
• Like the activities, the social. Cultural exchange at college is working well in that. Campus Life. Keep it up
• More volunteering opportunities. NGOs. Actual workers/people from those companies, not from field placement agencies.
• BrightSpace: new teachers lack on knowledge of BrightSpace. Need more training on this tech. Calendar function: not used by teachers, hard to see overall study plans and exams. Grades: hard to see overall grade without going through each course. Needs centralization. Sometimes it doesn’t accept your timed submission, or wasn’t opened properly : creates frustrations. A lot of questions about it from Students.
• Part Time professors are experienced, but I see they have problems 1) taking over courses, you don’t change materials but in tech, some materials are two years old and now out of date. Even course links to online videos (Linda,etc) don’t exist anymore 2) assignments are built on each other . We don’t get the assignments back on time, or marks back at all. You have no idea how you did (or doing). We have time frame to submit, they should have some sort of accountability as well. We need to keep pace with the market (current tech and trends).
• Teacher checks. Random class checks, oversights of how professors are doing. We are missing foundational issues as professor isn’t engaging, or communicating course content properly. If it’s hard to understand with way he’s teaching, how are we to understand it?
• Class reps: they have meetings with program coordinators and dean of school. We bring up these points, and we don’t see any action or concern. Especially on unanimous feedback, we don’t see actions taken. Provide meeting notes, or action plan after these meetings take place.
• Class Rep: I didn’t know we had a class rep. Didn’t make it known. No voting system. Where did they come from. Doesn’t reach out to all of us, only a select few. Put aside time for students to decide, and be able to communicate.
• Opportunities to help students find part time work here relating to their programs.

• Providing students with best education. We need to look closely on how we are keeping up with emerging technologies. Find the different modes that define learning. Maker space, and applied research: learning by doing. To be able to continue to have that, but at a quicker pace, but also to capture how they are learning. Being able to capture exactly what they are learning is important. A competency base, level of achievement.
• Funding, backing, or endorsing student lead research initiatives. If funds aren’t there, maybe collaborate with student to support their projects
• The Kanata business park is big cutting edge spirit of innovation. Lucky to have it here, to have engagement or hooks into that community. Increase engagement with them.
• Business development partnerships opportunities. Need more relationships built. Students get value from it. Define these relationships
• More competent processes; professional development needs to be clarified. Process fix. Support the professor well with the processes will lead to better professors. Support or committee to look at professional development.
• Success of learner vs financial success of college. Mutually exclusive. Current approach is hurting the learner. We are bottom line focused. We have to be honest and ask ‘what are we focused on’. Not helping students when actions aren’t following the ‘learner focused’ ideal. We need to refocus what the college is. We have lost our way, ethically and competitively. Opportunity to see what happened in the last five years, assess, and move forward.
• Opportunity to focus. We have great ideas and opportunities. We chase too many opportunities; it dilutes the staff and we lose our way. Too far apart between financial and student. ‘This is what the college is about’. Fewer things in more focused manner, could let us accomplish more in long term.
• More focused could make us less innovative. Need a process to make sure we don’t lose that.
• Confusing with too many strategic initiates – loose focus
• Figure out what our definition of success is. Refocus on students. We have huge financial concerns, but we need an honesty about it. If we make promises, we need to keep them. If you hire the right people, you should recognize what their PD is, industry and PD. We are not fulfilling promises to our students.
• We spend too much time scrambling to find someone who’s available to teach class. Best we could do is keep them part-time?
• Internal partnerships: students are learning concepts in class, if we had internal applied research between schools. We don’t have the resources and process to support this.
• PD policies don’t line up. How do we figure out the policies that promote? People who are tasked with administering policies, are they aware or working on precedent.
• Time to prep for a class. Was given a week’s notice to prep a class.
• No punishment for employee for didn’t do the job as promised. What encourages great work, when poor employees get away with everything. Hard to keep wanting to do outside projects when these people are being rewarded. Affects motivation.
• Listening to community. These ideas have come up before, not a new issue of concern. Here we truly don’t hear what stakeholders are saying. It feeds into moral. Hearing is great, actions are better. Are you hearing, and what are you going to do to contribute to this conversation.
• Leadership award. Is there possibility to award to someone who has demonstrated leadership for employees. New form of recognition.
• We should avoid (RE05) – student work: IP ownership if student uses college property. Policy is impeding students from wanting to pursue innovation under our roof. How do I come up with an agreement between me and student before they come up with something. They see this policy as a threat to their ideas.

• International students; their tuition fees have skyrocketed. yearly increases. How do we help these students to better afford it. They are suffering because of it. First part is to determine where the problems are and how we could help. Scholarships, not have multiple price jumps within the year. Look at how we help them
• Mission statement of proving long life success. It means having the tools to graduate and go to workforce. Increase the opportunity to have more access to workplace experience. More Work integrated experiences.
• Micro credentials and multiple educational ins and outs. Better way to build something an employer wants. We haven’t rolled out a smooth way to give student more options. Designed for the learner.
• Micro-credentials: college admin has been following the trends and what is that? Discouraging of not having masters but you also don’t have the real world experience. What you offer them for the learner, acknowledge them in the AC employee.
• Listening could go a long way when it comes to students. What we offer to employees here, training, etc – if that was also offered to students would go a long way to help them. Listening to students, needs assessments – being able to understand where the student is coming from. Offer Mental health first aid.
• Mental health strategy: allow for greater success by being more clear on what that strategy is. At the moment we support the student with mental health issues, but it’s a challenge to meet the long term and complex issues.
• Looking at partnerships more. Employees and staff that support the students are given the opportunity to give their best with support available. Support for the staff: counselling side numbers are up, but can barely meet demand. Capacity of employees and their mental health as well
• Capacity issue to offer services. Whole piece of greater success is hearing ‘this is so helpful.’ They want and need more. We really have become so crisis focused, putting out fires, but there’s so much more we could be doing as preventative work. We have not increased our complement for services in a long time. Don’t want to be firefighters, want to be proactive with our students.
• What does wellness look like; build it into the curriculum. If it matters, build it in.
• Upper executive folks my not have understood serious student issues, and the numbers that we have to care for , advocate for, etc – two sides: is the student getting enough support? No. we need the full time hires. For Staff: a manageable day, don’t want the concern that I missed something at end of day. Ensure the student is covered = more people.
• Specialized services – more of that pushed out to entire student body. Students can’t get on my calendar unless I’m invited to see them. Rolling out services available to everyone. Standardizing services to everyone. shouldn’t require specific need to access that
• We need to provide a universal set of services. Some students are young, don’t know how to be students yet. I’m spending time teaching them how to learn. Services: How to BE a Student.
• We haven’t provided the proper services to struggling students to justify the costs of school. Nature of student has changed. They struggle more than they used to . They don’t know how to come to us – help them learn how to problem solve. Where to go, who to talk to.
• Positions are not being filled. Left vacant. Causes more of higher stress. When people aren’t there to support and do work you need, it increases workload and mental health issues
• Don’t loose courses (Pre-trades, etc) that could help students become better learner. It’s a tool to allow them transition to college. Pre-trades, Pre-Technologies- they are great.
• Full time program reviews or created. We miss what the industry need – research needs of industry/ reevaluate the offerings.
• Update policies and references available on website. They are very outdated.
• Align services with students and staff.
• We have a lot of talent here , and we should be looking to fit them here.

• Innovations in the way we communicate. Live chat or system to communicate information. Information sharing. A way to ask a question. Would be great way to do for students and staff – most immediate way of communication. A People don’t know were to go, so big, we pass the buck – just find the information.
• CCOL has it currently – a live chat feature.
• Possibility to leverage chat bot or AI, instead of person. For repeated questions, with very straight forward or easy answer: a chat bot that could be programmed. Could alleviate real person to spend time on more high priority problem / solution
• I find that each department has it’s own website. new users using main search bar it doesn’t direct you properly. Time is wasted digging trying to find answers I’m told is there from an employee standpoint. How does it support the employees? I was a growing pain for me
• An announcement goes via email or posting to our own website – doesn’t reach everyone. Less that 10 percent reads the AC news (morning email) . Almost as though everybody who tries to get in as an employee should have a standard opening page that’s updated and non-cluttered with outdated info; how do we stay current?
• Time sensitive messages on AC gets buried. What is the answer? Have dedicated to just the people it impacts, somehow segmenting?
• Ask the employees what methods they want to use: email we have a lot of faculty that we are trying to reach who say they don’t use the AC email. We don’t know how else to get it to them; maybe they could have a choice to how to receive it. Forcing the AC email / How do you force that? People want to receive their info different ways / a personalize choice. One standard way to send it out, but multiple medium output.
• Our systems still don’t seem to work together. Part-timers: I found out that others didn’t know what was going on since they don’t even open their AC email.
• Beyond that, heard ‘how did you get in full-time’. I’ve been applying for multiple years. There’s a conspiracy/ perception that college don’ts want part-timers to move to full-time. Give a clear pathway from part-time to full-time.
• If we expect students to use secure AC email, then it should be our staff practice as well. What’s the pursuit? We need to make it clear on new hires.
• Make it a condition of employment: you must check your AC email.
• Standardization of system use. Too many systems being used, files are in 6 different places. Standardization of what our processes are.
• Provide training with systems change. Change management. Systems and process training.
• With the new system we have: Workday – We are not always aware of what it can do. If we knew more about it, we could adapt it more. We don’t know what the system can do for us, that it’s not currently doing. Information for future buy in. Opportunities with Workday that we are not aware of.
• Workday roll out. It didn’t feel prepared. To not do same thing as when we launch SIS. A lot of lessons learned and we need to utilize that knowledge. Roll out for Bright Space was good too.
• COL: related to living our values. We were involved in a pilot related to social responsibility. Three volunteer initiatives we participated in. After that, nothing materialized. We are a big org, social corporate responsibility is important. Volunteer into the community should be important.
• Environmental sustainability: grow it’s green opportunities. Actually be more green, not just be seen as green. Recycling on campus is a start.
• School of Hospitality and Tourism are working on green initiative. Piggy back on this. Add to this approach
• Process mapping : map out our processes and be transparent would alleviate a 5 person chain of info flow. Information should be available on website.
• Retirement knowledge leaves, and then we start from bottom. Build it back up.
• Sustainability: we had a real sustainability presence for a while. Would be nice to have that collaborative presence again. It was a lot of effort for a very few of people. There was passion. Physical resources .
• Retiring knowledge . Iv’e seen opportunity for knowledge network. Shoot an email if we have a question specific, or a social gathering.
• Process mapping: sometimes there are different processes for different things in different departments. Knowledge gets lost when moved around. Standardizing processes .
• Succession planning. It’s often folks left behind are taking more that workload. And it becomes the expected norm. Extra capacity can get lost. Allows you define core competencies and define what leadership is as an organization. Succession planning is a program.
• Lean approach. Push that a little further were were have the opportunity to improve the processes.

• I think it would be awesome to see the College reach out to community and sponsors to help (Indigenous people) attain education and move forward in life. Need more sponsorship, (promotion, and) letting these opportunities happen more often. seems like a lottery to some communities. Finding the best way to fund it, maybe it’s through sponsorships.
• Utilizing the Indigenous spaces for us. We are stuck learning in a non-traditional way, not a positive learning environment for us. Let us use the Lodge. The harvest room. Open up those spaces for us. Healing and sharing circles – we can’t do that in the classroom. It’s not fair to us. You preach you are understanding, but not allowing us to learn our way. Pathway for Indigenous learning – we can’t sit in a circle to follow protocol. We are doing stuff in classrooms that are not right.
• 7 generations, you are looking three years behind. You have your history, and look at all the issues and what has been done to solve those issues. Present year, we look at current problems to solve in the next 3 years. A lot of issues to look at: Academia is a product of colonialism. Trying to Indigenize, it is pretty complicated. We need more off field things, can’t just stick us in the corner. Not all environments have four corners. My sister was on the board: Did not receive any support for the board, was made to go home, wasn’t supportive and upset that she wasn’t able to attend management meetings: she missed out on a lot of traditional and culture time because of the board meetings. She was the only Indigenous person on the Board; they could have been more understanding about her life needs. It was very unprofessional to me. How do be able to talk about it. it shouldn’t have to be from me. shouldn’t have to always come from us. it gets exhausting. always having to educate everyone. it’s the bulk of others ignorance. It’s emotional and frustrating. It’s not talked about because it makes you uncomfortable. You should be uncomfortable as the privileged one. We need more spaces, safe spaces. Having the presence of someone in power that you can’t ever hold, we are not humanized in this system. You call it out when you see it. Talk about it with other white peers, institutional power should be talking about it. You are the one who can influence. We shouldn’t be seen as a minority, but a priority.
• Have a compulsory class to have to learn Indigenous practices and ways. It would do a lot to have a way of understanding what we’ve been through. Help with the division of it. Could be part of orientation.
• Algonquin could use spaces on reserves for partnerships.
• If I’m to feel included I don’t want to feel what I went through: I was directed to go have a cigarette. I was approached by a lady – came directly to me, singled me out (of a group of people and I was) to ask (me) to move. I said it was a common land. I was frustrated and angry; it feels like I was profiled. She took a picture of me (said she would report me). She went into the College. I detailed it all with security. To have it here in a place where I started to feel engaged and sense of propriety, it was a kick in the gut. Still dealing with racism on a daily basis. (People need) to change, start anew, more forward.
• Start with acknowledging us, especially in academia. Sociology: Karl Marx thought solution was to ban private property. We’ve been living with this ideal since dawn. It’s only acknowledged when a racist man says it. Their concepts, way of life, is celebrated because of the institution. Makes people ignorant. Needs to be mandatory to be exposed to it, it becomes dangerous to be in this world with hate and ignorance. They are afraid of us because people don’t know us, who we are. It need to be discussed first!
• How I came to learn (about each other) was through socials. Singers, dancing, totally free, potlucks. It would be cool to do that as a regular basis. Winter is long and dragging. Overcome difficulty to engage non-natives to participate (with celebrations – share traditions, food, dancing, and singing).
• Make use of the Mamidosewin Centre. Invite the whole College to come and spend time with us. An Indigenous culture we use space as a way of getting together and connecting. Colonized thinking is having meetings – let’s deconstruct the colonial ways we do have. Need a social celebration. With education to culture was singing and dancing. It’s just a small action but it really resonated as a First Nation boy – great impact on me. People that who weren’t First Nation and came, they got community members involved with the native community as well. Make a melting pot. People were hired, volunteers, meet similar studies. Mixing together – through art, music, and culture … and food! Open house – get other people that are non-Indigenous to check it out. Would also let all other Indigenous students aware of us. Helps with home sickness. Helps with students that have moved here from away – a sense of community. Should be included in the orientation for employees, for students: racism is not tolerated here.

• Indigenization and Reconciliation is important. Currently we have a lot of Indigenous students but don’t have a lot of front end support for them. We do 30-40 activities with different Indigenous groups a year, but can do more for them before they come here by providing more information and they know what is available to them and what they are getting into. We could do a lot better in that area.
• Changing workforce is a great place for us to take a lead in and adapt for. Be adaptable and adjust. Have the agility to embrace new challenges. Having the credentials is one things, but what you do with it is also important. What will the workforce will look like in the future? IT has evolved. Working as a project team, collaborative way of doing things. We are in a good environment here to support that. Work Life experience is a big factor.
• Career gear tool where academic credentials are just a piece of the pie: people skills, workplace skills, are other pieces as an employee or entrepreneur. It’s a new world where you can work in many different ways. We have an opportunity to collaborate and promote Ottawa as a whole. Think more broadly about being a community in a city.
• From a facility perspective, we see a lot of trends. Used to be 8-4 Mon-Fri but we see some organizations moving away from that. Now it’s objective focused. As long as you meet the objective, you work when you can. In terms of objectives, or learner driven environment – this is something new.
• Global Sustainability: can’t find any info about AC leading the way. We scored low only since there was not any info readily available. Create section on website for what we are doing for community, environments, etc. Updatable annual sustainability report.
• Employees: great opportunity to focus on tracking employees through the college. Just have to pick some amazing opportunities. Pick less, they are all phenomenal – I’m just listening to colleagues struggling with workload. We need to streamline the opportunities and priorities.
• We offer a lot of services for students. We need track touch points students are doing in while interacting with the services. It’ll give us better understanding on how they are doing, and how to give them the best road to success. Holistic view of the students to make it better. It allows us to be proactive in the outreach. Enables proactivity, eliminates redundancy.
• With our people. Hard working and dedication here. We are filled with these types of people throughout the ranks. Competing priorities prevent from making decisions with priorities. Formalize the off-side desk work – is there a way to attach that to strategic deliverable. Sustainability is a strategic goal; our team doesn’t spend time on that. What is everyone doing every day to help that? We know people want to help – they need permission to take time on it.
• Youth are highlighting college as a green ethical choice.
• Create research project where students track their use of services at the College. Possibly enlist students and reward them for tracking.
• After retirements – there are so many new people and we are so segmented more than ever. How to get new employees and young together to know each other and us – to be better orientated here.
• Standard process piece and your social allies. It’s not always the process in the way, it’s who’s on the other end. Who’s your ally. You know the process, but don’t know the people supporting the process.
• Profound opportunity for our institution to do academic publishing. We have faculty who are hungry to publish, we have staff who have lifetime experience to publish. Incredible place to celebrate our excellence. Faculty written material does make up some of our revenue.
• Storytelling culture. Foundational processes need to be in place. I found it somewhat lacking. Telephone tag, figure out non-documented processes.
• Reducing barriers on HR, Financial, and academic – staff and faculty – to participate in international placements.

*asterisks note agreement among attendees.

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.

As we build our future, what do we need to keep doing well?

• Our mission (To transform hopes and dreams into lifelong success).
• Our values (Caring, Learning, Integrity, Respect).
• Our view of students. We take a holistic view of services and success of students.
• Professional Development (PD). We encourage learning, conferences, and training.
• PD varies by department. Some consistently offer PD. Others are poor at offering PD.
• We favour new initiatives.
• Our talent is motivated, how do they catch up?
• We do a lot well but do these activities help our long-term sustainability?
• What defines value? Is this decision the right thing to do? What is critical (essential)?
• Best programs. We really do this well: *academic excellence, *exceptional student experience.
• Are we the top? An external review of our KPIs refused our eligibility for student scholarship.
• Our reputation in Ontario strong – known for our digital strategy, as the digital college.
• Learner Development Plan (LDP)
• **Gains in TRC. Now we need to ensure success of our Indigenous students in the Canadian community.
• We empower our people, our leaders.
• Not all have permission to fail. Need to feel safe. Depends on reporting structure and the attitude of your 1-up.
• Need resources for follow-through, for implementation, for consistent quality/implementation/operations.
• Training (when available).

• Connection with industry. We need to keep it fresh. We need more collaboration.
• Co-op. Don’t change co-op. Keep it going the way it is. Doing well.
• “The cool factor”
  • There is interest in the cool stuff going on such as the flashy maker space.
  • Highly visible, impactful (even small) projects spark enthusiasm, and ideas (e.g. dismantled computer).
• Showcase to community VR/game development at the museum
• ACCE living lab. Need to keep it up as a showcase. Need to repaint. Need website updates.
• College branding, keep it up!
• Merits of the applied degree here versus a degree at university. Need to promote this more.
• Need more conversations regarding differences of college and university education.
• Connect what we do well through the stories of others.
• Internships in government labs.
• Work in/with Silicon Valley North (SVN). We need to keep this going. Create a communications piece to bridge past success with new tech industry.
• Kaleidoscope is needed but needs to be reinvigorated. Meetings are scheduled that conflict with participating. If leaders don’t go, the staff won’t go. Need to share and learn from one another, from guest speakers. Needs to build and grow.
• AC Vision, the leadership events each semester (the breakfast, the picnic each term).
• Our experts, our expert resources. Their contributions, knowledge need to be highlighted in bios online, to create a social side, as a marketing tool.
• I like working with the people at this institution. I am very lucky to have a great job working with a wonderful team. I know not all of my colleagues feel the same way.
• Welcoming all people, learners, faculty and staff is done well.

• 100% invested hard-working employees; its a lean organization.
• Learner focus; intent on fixing challenges and doing better.
• New innovative programs (except timelines) of the past; keep more coming in the future (e.g. online, green, ACCE, outdoor programs).
• Great partnerships to develop material for programs, to innovate with our community.
• Collaboration with the Student Association, Academic area, support services as well as collaborations with students. There is a good synergy of efforts. We’re in a “good groove”.
• Positioned to be leaders across programming.
• Strong extracurricular activity (e.g. Amazing Race, hockey and more).
• Supporting one another. It’s a warm environment. People are helping one another.
• Open door culture at our regional campus. We spend our time here each day, 5 days a week. We recognize this is unique.
• Majority of coordinators are Academic Advisors; although challenging, it helps during tours with students/parents to review programs and to provide needed academic advising support (at the time when many questions are posed).
• Safe, direct, honest, open dialogue is common. Respectful.
• Strong connection to students, know their name, where they are from, form a connection (at our regional campus).
• Consult students well. They have a strong voice on Program Council. Great listening, not necessarily making changes year to year.
• *Learner Development Plan. Accessible, flexible plan.
• Legacy of learner population at the waterfront campus (grandparent, parent, child go here).
• Leadership is accessible, responsive locally. There is an open door culture that is inviting (particularly for students, also employees).
• Town and Gown. Local community connection at convocation is excellent.

• Branding. The direction of the College brand is good but need to do more.
• Our leader could be used for our branding; he has a long career at AC in the academic area and now he’s a leader here.
• Our part-timers. Our part-timers have great experience. We need more channels to cultivate their experiences. We could have shadow advisors to guide part-timers who join the College. Invest part-time skills into the department. Use all resources (such as the experience, the skills of part-time faculty, employees) at College to improve programs. The College would benefit from more interaction across teams.
• (Let’s take our) Words to Action!
• (Let’s) Think locally and act globally!
• Our international presence (AC educational institutions abroad); less now, need to have more of this.
• We have International (part-time and full-time) faculty who could share their experiences and be ambassadors for the College – locally with newcomers and internationally (in their networks).
• Collaboration between staff, keep some of the flexibility. Entrepreneurship.
• Perhaps more focus on scholarship of teaching and learning – perhaps offer some internal funding for promising proposals?

• *Focus on our learners as our overall strategy. Not only the Learner Driven Plan. We need foundational planning of day-to-day operations that’s is well documented and communicated before we launch our next plan. There lots of concurrent planning (e.g. LDP, strategic planning, business planning, budget planning, tech planning, committees). Need time to reflect (to plan).
• There is an organizational mismatch for our planning, to operationalize our plans
• What we are doing on a day-to-day basis is lost. Our day-to-day focus needs to be on the learner. Need to recognize learners don’t want to be served accordingly to our organizational chart. There needs to be more synergy in our day-to-day operations.
• Need to do a better job communicating how we integrate plans into everyone’s day-to-day, the day-to-day learner experiences. There is a disconnect between our plans and our understanding of how these new initiatives will impact everybody. We do plan well, with great ideas. We need to know what it means for employees, for our learners: what does it mean to me?
• We are getting a lot done because we are doing so much. Need to be better at foundational pieces, such as standard operating procedures (SOPs) or successfully upgrading systems. Need to improve understanding of our processes with documentation. This takes time. , clients need to understand there’s a give and take
• Employees/staff as learners. Employees need skills and confidence to fulfill our vision, to provide for our students, to transform hopes and dreams into lifelong success. We are all learners.

• We do keep our values front and centre. This is important to continue. We talk, consider and decisions are aligned with our values. There is concerted effort to carry on, living our values (high awareness, understanding of our values).
• Keeping that small college feel.
• Integrity of programs. Industry respect. Feedback of industry: we are providing the skill sets needed for industry.
• Entrepreneurial spirit. Despite problems, we make it work, and we do it well.
• Not sitting on our laurels. Not assuming students will always come. Get ahead and meet their needs. Facing challenges (e.g. Strategic Enrolment Management committee). Executives are looking at big picture, the outlook.
• Lots of change. Resilient through change. Resilient spirit will keep us focus.
• Break down of silo’ing between departments. Open communication, Community of Pratice/Chairs.
• Supportive leadership. Above and below.
• Lean practices, involving people in the front lines to get their input, get the perspective of front line, perspective of the student.
• Working together with lots on our plate; these are OUR goals. Involving OUR goals to move forward.
• Efforts are made to engage all, increases the feeling of ownership. Involved in decisions.
• The group for the SIS, the SIS team, is fantastic. Group is working together to make it happen, to ease of process.Hope they continue.
• People are here for the right reasons. Vast majority are here for the right reasons: our values, community improvement, etc. Good intentions here.
• Very good reputation with industry, with employers. Let’s leverage it. Employers are with us. Let’s maintain these relationships to move forward.
• Professional development within the college, for faculty, staff. Helps with AC pride. We are learners too.
• We need to get the Chair back to doing Academic Leadership. With administrative expectations by the new systems, we now have our Academic leader doing more administrative tasks than ever. They are becoming overpaid Academic clerk.
• Currently, the acquisition of the proposed GeneSIS replacement is a model of large system acquisition. I think if it keeps going that way, with the same philosophy of acquisition and implementation, it will be a success. Only time will tell.

• *****We are not big, we are small. We embrace it.
• Our story. Our messages are valuable; attracts the student who is looking for right fit.
• ***Build relationships well. Relationships between staff, students, ourselves, and the community (too well!). Have this unique ability.
• Keep delivering a quality student experience. Support ourselves (each other) and students.
• Work together. We’re a hub. High volunteering time, love what we do, we stay late.
• Collaboration. Nice here that we have freedom to work together (collaboration). Don’t have the divisions. Ability to combine efforts, come up with creative, collaborative ideas, events, programs. Creates engagement on campus.
• Partnership we have with the community. We do that well. We get requests from community to join associations, to present at events, to be active in the community (e.g. Chamber, ECE students help out at Maple Fest, Rib Fest)
• Don’t have the impenetrable bureaucracy. We are flat, have a lot of access.
• Partnership with the Students Association (SA). Use of SA fees. Food drives. Kids Christmas. Community gets involved, across programming, across campus community. We work very closely together.
• We put in our own time to make things successful. We love what we do. Real commitment that comes from within.
• Community Employment Services (CES) is gold star; CES is there for students or anybody needing employment. We deliver workshops for police foundations, for specific sectors. Need to be known well throughout Perth. Need greater awareness as we are in another location (not at 55 Craig).
• Increase Perth voice↑ Support students well. Care about safety. We are straightforward, honest and true. We care what we do. Students appreciate it.

• Support for CE, PD, sabbatical, employee supports (e.g. pension). Want to see it consistently across areas of the College.
• Student supports are great. They feel like a person. Feel resources and support to go to. Good job connecting to students and have time to support.
• ***Compare. Culture here is different, it doesn’t exist in university. Students fell like a person; they are well taken care of, know their names. Faculty is connected.
• Approach of working to bring all students up to a passing level. Facilitate achievement. Need to focus on our student success orientation.
• The way we liaise with the community. True community partner. All levels, not just within our programs. Students upwards. We need time to do so.
• Moving towards reconciliation. Doing well, taken good steps. Need to continue so it’s not tokenism.
• Great work on inclusion (transgender, LGBTQ, refusing racism) Keep up understanding and acceptance.
• We move quickly. Nice flat organization. Have access to other team players. Innovative ideas can be actioned quickly. A lot of resources here.
• Supports for students are stretched, but the ability to take students to CAL, counselling and set them up, the people are responsive. There’s always someone there. Having these supports are integral.
• Counselling is great, but closing hours need to be stretched, more services need to be open later. Treated with equity based on terms (summer hours can’t meet the summer student demand).
• Faculty learning program –it’s great! Helped integration of newly hired faculty. It’s a good Community of Practice. It’s a huge investment by the College, but to have that grounding is essential.
• Professional Development (PD), the Leadership development courses brought together people across the College for collaboration. Need to rotate the days it is available, the days to take integration courses.
• We have weekend, evening courses; match services to our programs.

• In-house services: ITS, Health Services…don’t outsource them. They work well.
• Community profile. AC holds a very important place in Ottawa. Positive reputation.
• Listening to our students. Meeting with them, meeting with student representatives. Deliver the changes, improve our delivery.
• Truth and reconciliation, it’s a good start. There’s a huge gap in the classroom. Need to modify curriculum to build on our efforts and continue.
• Mulit-cultural existence at the college. Harmonious. Living our values.
• We do employ international students on campus. We give them opportunity to make their way.
• Challenge one another, challenge ourselves to make sure action and words support our values as we go forward.
• We keep improving our campus.
• Our mental health focus. Removing the stigma associated with it.
• Resources available for students are 10x what we had before. Brings a sense of pride. We are benchmarking, leading the way in the sector.
• Inter-departmental service investments. It’s definitely paid off. Need to know how to leverage it more.

• Time to talk to students. We do it well, but need more time. Website is a good resource, but they still want that 1 on 1. Human contact keeps your students coming back.
• The passion we have here (staff wide) really speaks to students. We can’t put a time limit on being approachable.
• A lot of pride in our work. Faculty has passion for student success
• Industry is impressed with the level of professionalism of our students, and enthusiasm of our students!
• Attempting to make the school environment welcoming. Physical, emotional, indigenous, LGBTQ, international. There is ongoing work to do, but doing it well.
• We should be helping struggling students with the basics (e.g. English, math). Mature students who can’t make it during day time, have this help in the evening too.
• Great strides in applied research. Good job laying the foundation. The Re/Action applied research showcase is impressive.
• Staff appreciation is good here. Feel appreciated.
• Communication is good, departmental communication is good. Huddles are a great addition, way of action.
• How we start drawing in part- time staff. They are highly valuable but how can we connect with them further. We don’t want to lose the expertise.
• Practical: keep costs low for students – the coffee, the food on campus. They need to feed themselves. Keep the food cupboard going. Students don’t have money. Day to day costs add up.
• Listening, being available, Togetherness. Family feeling. No hierarchy.
• Semester breaks are good for everybody (time to catch up on marking, work, etc.).

• Annual retreats. Live Laugh Learn. These were the moments I became engaged. Met people, people in other departments. Creates awareness and strength through connection.
• Post-implementation evaluation. Things get forgotten over time. Take advantage of our investments. If it’s working, how do we keep it going? We need ongoing support to continue initiatives. We have great ideas; how do we motivate collaboration and momentum? We need room for continuous improvement and follow-though.
• President BBQ and breakfast. Casual atmosphere. Good for spirit, for conversations.
• United Way activities. Air bands, Fun competitions. Fundraisers to give back. The flash mob. These create connections. Bring back the social events, the giving back. We need to integrate new people.
• AC does have tremendous reputation in the community.
• Our efforts to promote equality and inclusion.
• Social responsibility, either student-led or volunteer events. Helps community get to know us. Wonderful to continue and expand upon these events.
• Listening tours. Listening to us!
• Year-end video. Allows us to recall, to celebrate our successes together. Builds our pride.
• New systems are great. But the training needs to be consistent. There are guidelines, need to take them on.

• We are working hard to create our selling points. In terms of enrollment and research partnerships, we are #1 in Canada. These are great selling points. We spent time promoting this – I hope we maintain the position.
• Two-way engagement. The information we provide to applicants and students. I was a student at Dalhousie, a major institution. We are well ahead of curve in terms of communications.
• Recognition within Ottawa. Our College reputation. When I mention I work at AC, 99.9% time AC is well liked.
• Employee recognition is good.
• Developing partnerships (e.g. Tech companies, Royal Ottawa Hospital-ROH, Rideau Perley. Its great for students and for PR.
• *Listening to ideas. New employees are listened to – we’re open to get new technologies to help job performance.
• ******We help each other allot. We pick up after each other. Never scared to ask for help. Employees have good intentions, good passion.
• Professional development opportunities, PD opportunities.
• **Strategic direction. Learner Driven Plan is fantastic document. It makes sense. With the new SIS analysis, how do we support the process to put the pieces all together?
• Being innovative. We have innovative thinking. We have an overarching way of thinking. Our mindset in departments, in open houses with the LDP, with micro-credentials.
• We need to differentiate ourselves as a polytechnic (1/11 in Canada). Awareness is increasing.
• **Brand imagery is night and day. Wayfinding reflects better our ethos. The brand strategy implementation is good. We are showcasing the College well in our marketing.
• Truth and reconciliation. Proud. We are doing well. We are looked as leaders. Doing well relative to the sector.
• We hire immigrants. Our College is inclusive and representative.
• Mamidosewin Centre is hidden at the corner/edge of the College. It’s great, and a great open space. I love it, it’s so nice. Its meditative. I wish it was more assessable, to have a more visible presence.
• Relationship with the Student Association (SA); it’s positive.
• Great job of connecting with alumni and involving them in our marketing and communications. We need to do more, to strengthen the relationships with graduates (as employers) for future growth.
• **Increase alumni and students in our marketing and communications.

• Call the President.
• Conduct a Listening Tour.
• ****Move recruitment to the front entrance. Make it a fun- make a branded lobby. This could be a hangout for current students too (with the prospective students and families that enter). Set up a café to bring people over.
• Continual, consistent employee engagement. Ask, hear wants, do it on a regular basis.
• Communicate to students, be student-facing. Give us time/permission to be student-facing.
• Find quicker ways to communicate. Random employee polls/short surveys. Create different/multiple ways and venues for reaching out.
• Post the listening tour, what happens next. Communicate to employees what will be the focus. Follow-up. What happens next from these listening tours?
• Whole online campus. It’s astounding the lengths and effort we’ll go for a student success story. It’s not always in the most positive way. Some students consistently fail, and we allow it to happen and then we re-enroll them; it’s a great disservice. Early alerts would help student success. Better, help match the right student, with the right fit, to the right program.
• Onboarding of students needs to be more creative – to help students with the information they need from the start. Week 1 we need to help students know if they are in the right program of study or if there is a better fit.
• How do we help students on site? We need to make help more available. Appointments are set two weeks out; the response is too slow. We will likely lose the student. Make career counselling and academic advising more available when students are on site.
• **Claude was welcoming students at the door this fall; let’s do more of that.
• Filling courses that won’t fill up. Evaluate what is sustainable to keep from a program perspective. What do we keep, suspend or cancel. We spend a lot of resources to fill a course that may not be on demand. We have programs year over year that are not doing well.
• Do we have a higher responsibility? If we continue to increase sections for high enrollment programs/highly competitive programs. Will there be jobs for all these graduates? What is best to graduate students into employment?
• Our default rates (if OSAP is not being paid back). If default rates are high, then the program may be cancelled. If not OSAP funded, why would we offer it to students?
• Partnerships with the outside community – employers or educational partners. We need to have them on campus. Having them on campus would benefit students with their career trajectory, especially with data requirements from the province.
• Focus on “focusing”. We try to do so much that it dilutes our efforts across the board. Executives recognize this – it impacts our efforts for implementation.

• Interactions across departments, with leadership (e.g. Leadership training ALEI).
• Corporate Training -good at making it happen, we’re ready for students without making it seem like it was a challenge.
• Customer service – we have great service to students, partners.
• Engagement in the community – reputation, present at community events – asked about it, proud of being an employee. Respected in community.
• Very proud to say I work here.
• Great intentions with employee engagement. The more engaged the employees are, the better the college experience (for all – students, employees). It’s the right focus, continue that.
• *Rapid Improvement Events. AC Way initiative.
• The Lean journey and process mapping, huddles, white belt, yellow belt, keep up the momentum. It’s the right direction, keep it up. We are making improvements
• MyAC is a good vehicle in getting news, College wide events and happenings. Let’s improve it.
• Social events for getting to know people in departments. Met a lot of people I wouldn’t have. Social events are important.
• Continue the great support for our students.
• Focus on our potential. We focus more on what we are doing well, instead of past failures: our potential.
• Over the past 5 years, labour relations have really improved. Hope it continues.
• This building, this space (The Lodge). It’s a beautiful College.
• Lunchtime activities available to students and employees such as Yoga, Volleyball, AC Hub.
• Savoir Faire.
• Horticulture centre, the gardens.
• Employees are student-focused, on the best experience for students.
• Fun at the College such as Food trucks in the summer.
• Dining for employees. We need to improve our dining area to be more a staff lounge, to allow for staff time for work, for interactions with employees. Should not just be a lunch space, more of a staff lounge.
• Honouring Indigenous community, our Indigenous heritage.
• Increase efforts of inclusion and diversity. Be meaningful.

• Hiring the right people.
• Continue producing great students and grads. Our learners are top notch. Impressive.
• Continue building relationship and partnerships with employers. Flexibility is great, we can implement things they didn’t think was possible. They say ‘We love the skills you are teaching, and the initiatives they come up with.’
• Personal touch is appreciated by employers. Builds relationship because it’s personal.
• Trying to connect with donors, reminding them we are here and fostering these relationships. Fostering environment where people want to connect with us, we need to continue to build on.
• Better student response time. International students need help, more ways to get them employed or employers to access funding or external programs to help our international students.
• We assure the learning is Applied Learning. We are in a position to try our very best to get industry experience so they are sharing their experience instead of info from a book.
• Learner Drive Plan; students want the personal touch. They’ll recognize the flexibility. How can we make this easier? How will it look in five years? It’s more open, accessible, and learner driven.
• Being inclusive. I’m very proud to work here. Passionate.
• Alumni. You become a champion of AC when you step into the classroom. We have lifers: employees and students.
• Promoting respect for diversity. Safe Space. Intercultural workshops. Women in sciences. College to continue focus on this. Creates a positive environment for student and staff.
• Bleed Green. Community connection.
• Quality of staff. Willingness to help. Hiring is great. Living our values, not just words
• Reputation in the workplace is high. The fees going into college is for good. Employers have to pay for training anyways, they chose to give it to a reputable source.
• International reputation.
• Sharing alumni stories. Distinction awards.
• Sharing successes of students.

• Communications: primarily emails from faculty to students..
• Faculty informal office hour availability/ies.
• Brightspace has an announcement feature. Captures everyone.
• Layout of school. The open work spaces. Don’t need to rely on library.
• We have a great range of activities compared to the other schools around. More events here. There’s something going on everyday. Good job advertising it. Strong Student Association. Helps to integrate different people from college.
• Health insurance. Standard Industry offers. But increase the dental.
• We don’t get doctors. It’s a delay to see a doctor, and the wait is not helpful. Better to use a family doctor if Canadian.

• Wonderful inspiring spaces for students. This space, study spaces, about collaborating, opens communication. Employee spaces are not as good – ours should be as inspiring to help us collaborate.
• DARE is fantastic. It’s a good thing – bringing a lot of different groups together. See it everyday. People within and outside see it as a great engaging space. People are using it.
• Do great job offering work integrated learning opportunities .
• Having this conversation. Motivating us, and making us feel free to reach out within each other and help us understand and find resources. More outreach and helping each other. Strengthen that community.
• Events for alumni: helps students to see next steps and gives hope to enter the workforce.
• Current state of hiring. transitioning dedicated people that helped us get this far to full time opportunities
• Classroom creativity. Ability to find solutions to reach more students. Brings students together. Openness to be creative to teach.
• Flaming passion for doing great stuff. Really passionate to see student success. To feel project empowerment helps push us forward.
• Mental heath for staff, and students supports are positives. BrightSpace for change management – well staffed, hours were great, good participation in decisions.
• Students commons area. Be able to be easily orientated . Seeing services available
• New full time . New PD for full time staff. Was a doubter, but welcomed it.
• PD for the part time. Helped me tremendously.

• Market research and what is in high demand for employability.
• Having conversations with students to help students with career pathway. to enhance your skills. give clarity to what programs are about.
• Student life. Collaboration with Student Association. Building events.
• Conscience including indigenous culture into our spaces.
• Learning disabilities: seen the changes and college has been very supportive of program. Maybe that whole piece needs to go up the ladder to government to support/ funding the learning (Alt learning) . Should be looked upon as a leader in this area.
• Transition support centre. are the leaders, how to continue that. there’s a lot of requests.
• continue working on the loop – accessibility. Not just physical space but for mental health. Lessen the need for accommodations if we continue focus on this.
• despite challenges, everybody here is doing their best jobs. People are really helpful. Focused, dedicated. Great place to work because of this.
• indigenous support, learner support, also adaptable to cultural change. Hundreds of cultures here, mixing, interacting. We are a very welcoming institute. Leadership.
• Support union: labour relations and HR are very open in communicating and solving problems without grievances . Solve problems through collaborations.
• Supporting in-house talent. Grads or employees, turn colleagues into friends. Help each other, communication together.
• hire a lot of our alumni. Valuing our grads.
• creating more services for students. New library. collaborative spaces for student.

• Resources that are available here are really good.
• Advertising of programs and events going on – on campus, on reserve.
• All of this here, it’s pretty cool. To see these incremental changes is amazing. I am witnessing it. It’s a lot more about us, than it is about the outsiders. For us to stay united, more people will learn about us.
• We should be celebrating our differences as a people, cultures. Important to be able to distinguish between cultures. Here it’s clouded to one culture (First Nation – many nations, Inuit, Métis). Different areas equal different traditions. You can’t say you care if you don’t take time to differentiate. It’s such a big umbrella. Others here don’t know the cultural services we can get. Would help have pamphlets and information about services for First Nations, or even international students. Just someplace we could get information. Sharing organizations that are available.
• They need to have more programs for people making the change to come here. It’s two very different things learning here, and on reserves. People here aren’t very educated on where to go – it’s overwhelming. One centre to find everything would help.

• A lot of staff with passion for student success.
• Brain trust leaving and we don’t do as many things together as we used to. Maybe the family is too big now, but there is no such thing as Mr. and Mrs. Algonquin. We are Algonquin. The people is what make Algonquin. Keep that motivation up. Don’t lose that.
• It’s a really good place to work. Keep valuing people – let them know they are valued. Recognition.
• Campus services: that’s a huge part of what makes us special. Binds us together: food services, campus store, parking services. Passion for the college. One of only post-secondary who have their own chefs. Makes us special is the community here. Students come here and feel the caring. No reason to come here and not be successful, we care about their success.
• Facility management and construction. Really cool coop program so strong, get jobs in companies that do work for us. We treat the suppliers well, open and transparent. AC pride is extending to all.
• The services delivery group in campus services: employee ownership is far more passionate, deep vested interest goes into their work. We understand the student’s values and needs, and go out of our way to suit them.
• Partner piece: business partners ‘how are you going to help us in sustainability’. Continue having this community building reputation, we need to protect that.
• We need to support the community because the community supports us! Do what’s good for the community.
• Sense of caring. Being a student I felt it first. Sense of caring. It’s why I came and worked here. Let’s not lose that, not forget it.
• Sustainability, we use it wisely. Partnership, community, it all needs to be factored in (e.g. supplier contracts, the way we build). Can’t just look at it financially, look at their sustainability (of the approach). Be a leader. It’s not much when we look at it and work at it. It’s a tough decision. Students coming they want it. Look beyond financial
• Giving young people a chance at careers here. Opportunity to put something valuable on their resumes.
• Branding – we have a good reputation in Canada. Keep building it!
• Be a community college! Important still focus on community. too much focus on revenue generation for sake of revenue generation. Right program for right student.

*asterisks note agreement among attendees.

If you were the President, what is the one thing you would focus on first?

• Focus on quality and our people/ capacity.
• **Focus. **Our priorities.
• The business model for sustainability; the investments to support this model, this sustainability.
• Transparency in decision-making.
• Order of operations.
• Lens of the Learning Development Plan.
• Strategic planning from a business acumen perspective.
• This should motivate our decisions: ‘How does this support the learning of our students?’

• Fix Workday. It’s a great tool. We need an alignment of process to technology to use it.
• Student Information System. Insight. We need to prepare, to use new systems effectively.
• ****Wealth of experience. We need to revisit credentials for full-time professors (e.g. PhD not necessary for applied teaching).
• Integrate and value Part-Time Instructors to ensure longevity. Need better benefits.
• Co-op for instructors. Delineate student co-op opportunities from those for instructors. Embed instructors in industry placements.
• Diversity. Very good focus.
• Drive innovation with collaborative spaces for instructors. Create ‘cool factor’ for instructors.
• AC strategic lead for AI, new areas learning, research.
• Keep engaging faculty and staff.
• Emphasize entrepreneurial skills as a character mindset (is it kindness?). Emphasize these skills to help student success at work, not only for them to achieve the grade/high grades.
• Leverage part-time faculty entrepreneurial mindset.
• Keep up employee engagement.
• Support external project engagements. Help set expectations to support better outcomes, data, learning environment (e.g. Siemens project).
• Budget for faculty research with ARI. Need easy way to create projects for faculty, staff or employees with industry. Not paid to develop projects or to prepare grant applications. We need to log these hours (e.g. SWF). Need to standardize, support project development.
• AC subject matter experts need to be interviewed by media (not only university professors).
• Great at start-up, incubation of new initiatives; poor at follow-through.
• Offer full support, encouragement for the mental health of employees. Invest in the mental health of employees; don’t do this halfway.
• Employee survey.
• Learner Driven Plan.
• Need to be best in Canada. Create cross-disciplinary projects.
• Hire people based on subject-matter expertise and skills first and then on credentials where it is not required by government regulation.
• Continue the “cleaning up” activities (e.g. painting, small repairs, washrooms, signage, etc.)

• Continue our contribution to the climate crisis.
• *Scheduling alignment; create the opportunity to review current state and align across academic areas, across all areas College.
• *Differentiate. Invest in unique differentiation. Pick one.
• ***We need 3X the student supports than we currently have here.
• *Take risks in management – push the boundaries. Increase capacity.
• Have Student Success Committee meeting with the President’s Coffee Break visit here (at regional campus).
• ***I would be the President I would want to follow:
  • Stay connected, local, visible,
  • Be the most recognized, each of us has chance to get to know the President,
  • Fair, ethical, no after-thought for our campus, no distance.
• I would move the President’s office to Pembroke.
• I would take risks. I would be willing to let employees fail.
• Create project with programming across disciplines (with time and resources).
• Support staff and students’ cultural sensitivity training. We have a growing number of international students. We need to prepare first.
• Ensure role clarity for communications across the organization.
• Have all staff and faculty tour Pembroke.
• Be open, Pembroke and the local community have equal voice. Our involvement not delayed.
• Military connection, perhaps there is new opportunity for an open house in Petawawa?

• Improve the academic structure of the College (e.g. introduce new programming of interest tot he market, enable collaboration across disciplines to improve programming) .
• Improve Human Resources systems, due diligence of the administration department, create/clarify policies for decision- making; help employees of different departments overcome trans-boundary issues and clarify priorities (what to exclude).
• Important meet with employees, the different people on different levels and collect feedback to create an action plan on table; I would focus on how we reach our goals (day-to-day operations) and branding.
• Our product is the student: there are different types of services for our different students and different program deliveries; our priority is to make our students ready (with our programs and services), to then dispatch them to the community (for their/the community’s prosperity).
• We need to remove barriers to decision-making. We need to help with processes for decision-making.
• Teaching Excellence (including Universal Design for Learning-UDL)

• More parking. Remove the cost of parking for staff.
• Bring back the air-bands. Increase employee engagement. Taking a look at how support employees in positive ways to relieve burnout.Increase engagement, energy of employees.
• **Priority planning as a corporate strategy project. What comes on and what comes off our list of activities, prioritized by the whole College (college-wide). Corporate strategy for project prioritization. Before we dedicate funds, look at corporate planning (College-wide) perspective. Too much is done on the fly without prioritizing ideas across the College, not just by an area.
• What is the priority and focus? No tie back to corporate goals. How do we grow staff to prepare for the future? It is difficult to position staff to be ready (for implementation of new plans). What is the priority? There is pressure. Each priority comes for the money.
• Human Resources, how grow staff to deliver on our plans.
• Project management (PM).
• Implementation management (implementation science). Plan how operations will succeed with implementation. Full implementation, evaluation, post-implementation plan. Understand how operations will succeed and how to move these big great ideas through the organization.
• Planning and implementation of new ideas (in the business, on the business) without burn out!
• Speed up the redraft of our strategic plan! Refine it. It’s about the employment of graduates.
• **Business transformation. Move to business transformation teams, business process integration teams. Scan the environment for business transformation success, competitive intelligence for business transformation. Look for references inside and outside the college system. Consider success in the private sector. Define the organizational structure for success.
• Universal Design for Learning (UDL). Ensure UDL is fully delivered across faculty, across campus. Keep UDL rolling; get fully accessible. What’s good for one is good for all. Be forward-thinking.
• Mentoring/Shadowing/Time with the academic area.
• Service/Administrative employees need to be more involved in the academic side of things. Look at ways to encourage, be enthusiastic about opportunities for services people to be with academic people. Need integration. Need to break down the silos for all learners.
• We are reinforcing silos with our decisions. Chairs and managers are seen as different, yet work is similar. Our work is interdependent. Session should have had chairs and managers together. Change listening session design to integrate employees, be more collaborative.
• The language we use reinforces our silos. Change this. Start saying we are all partners across departments.
• Pay-for-Performance (PFP) system for managers. Understand what is needed and change it. We are reinforcing certain work. How can we use PFP collaborative work?
• Responsible Centre Management (RCM) provides autonomy, encourages competition. How can we encourage collaborative work instead of competition? Let’s invest in collaboration.
• ******Force active students to use their AC email. We don’t have the College wide policy for it. Need policy. Multiple email accounts create confusion, delays in/loss of communications.
• New ways to recognize contributions of our employees in more of a day-to-day. For example, the ‘Golden Apple’ idea (purchase to give to an employee, donate to charity on their behalf). Create random acts of kindness.
• Increase employee engagement. Avoid work burnout. Increase energy employees.
• Increase visibility of the entire leadership team; interactions should include all executives (e.g. Coffee Breaks, First Day).
• Engagement with quarterly coffee breaks should be Inclusive, for all employees.
• Do we need all of our meetings? Decrease the number of meetings.

• Call the President.
• Clean up the “garage”. Finish what we start. We are full of initiatives; need a way to start cleaning up. Can’t move forward. A lot are fed up. Get the clear picture. Then we can start moving.
• Reassess priorities. Align with the next generation needs. How do we be proactive? Evaluate our initiatives!! Move what needs to move, assess what hasn’t worked, and move on. Everything is priority and full speed ahead. Reactive instead of proactive. Prioritizing – can’t be everything all the time. Does it make sense? Are we moving in the right direction? Evaluate: pause and breathe.
• Focus on quality. What is the most important thing we do? Must be one thing that sits above the most important things. Quality flows from having really solid and relevant programs. Has to start somewhere from top.
• What is the priority? Our quality. Our programs. Quality speaks to that. Programs speak to that.
• *Ask every department, strategy for the student experience. What have you done to better a student’s experience? First day, collect from every staff member.We are all here for the learner and the learner experience.
• Listen to employers.
• Do a listening tour. Listen.
• People First. People are the priority. What is the pulse? Lots of change. Morale down. Seen more grumbling and negativity in the last while. With all of the changes and events in the last while – tap into the people at two levels: what’s said, and not said Sense of something of getting lost in the shuffle. Make time for conversations.
• ***Need for clarity.
• Employees need some reassurance about change. This is a change management approach. Acknowledgement of the issues. Answer questions. With all the change, we need certainty. Need guidance. “Hate to find out by way of engagement survey. Its concerning. We are waiting for a tool to understand.” Not the systems, there is a lot unknown. We do not communicate the work (e.g. scheduling mismatch across College activities).
• We were listened to but weren’t heard. Make people feel heard.
• President 20 years of experience at the College alleviate stress in immediate years. Expect/need more transparency.
• ***Need acknowledge lots of change. The stress. Be heard.
• Unknowns from the strike. Ensure from the unknowns. There are challenges to acknowledge.
• Pause strategic plan to complete operational plan. Operations 80% . There are gaps between strategic plan to the operational plan. Strategy falls from executives, flows to tactical (mangers/Chairs) for operations. Tactical level is wafer thin (management). There are gaps between strategy and operations in past 15 years.
• **Improve alignment. Creative realignment. Realignment of operations to alleviate issues.
• Fear of the unknown, uncertainty. Full-time faculty have anxiety: anxiety of jobs, hours etc. Less hours and people. Need broader approach to communicate, alleviate fear. Academic Vision for decision-making, not just framework.
• Explain decision making, not all based on financial.
• Fill-in all positions. Fill-in acting roles.
• Consolidating the operation of the college to make sure we can support all the initiatives that has been started and will start within five years. Replacement of HRIS and BUS, has thrown the organization in a “process chaos.”
• Make sure that as a college, we focus on the main purpose of an academic institution: Academic learning. Learning time for the term: we now have 14 weeks instead of 15; we lose two Mondays of learning during the fall, a Friday in winter and two Mondays in spring. We lose a full day of academic learning for AC Day 1, a few hours in winter and spring. All this is not counting the unpredictable missed days that a student or a professor might have to take because of illness. The learning time for a term can be very short, we are limited in hours in the program.
• More coffee?
• Resign, too much stress.
• Creative thinking with the town.
• Housing e.g. computer programmers, need space/buildings to house 25 people. Housing for corporate training.
• Remind everyone (less so here) who we are working for: the students are the boss!!
• ***Conduct a cost/benefit analysis on housing, on transportation. What is best?
• Communicate the vision for the future. What is AC 2050, AC 2100? What is our plan to get there? How will we engage employees, students, alumni, industry, and employers?
• Think! Reflect! Watch what we do. Observe first before putting out fires.
• Focus on employment and job training. Industry employers are groups to watch. Focus on inclusion for job training and employment in our vision.
• Higher enrolment.
• Increase care of our international students: deliver what we promise for them. Maintain or improve our quality. They have big expectations, recognize it.
• Housing in Perth a challenge. Desperate state – students want to be here. Find space, build on it! Utilize it – could be a revenue maker. Find a residence corporation and private developer partnership (like Pembroke).
• Perth vision. Projections for a strong future. Our future. What is needed?
• Fact-based decision-making. Evidence-based decision-making. We evaluate with anecdotal evidence. It’s an echo chamber. Let’s look at the facts.
• Creative thinking for our structures. Evaluate cost benefits for transport vs housing. Partner with private developers. Find the right partner.

• **Listening.
• Injecting yourself (the President) into programs or classes. Especially those that may have issues. Become part of atmosphere.
• Make PD integral (mandatory) to rejuvenate and refresh to new ideas. Encourage a sabbatical every X years to improve engagement. Both really helps engagement and innovation – bring new ideas.
• More PD for support staff. Around Kaleidoscope, should be a balance for support staff, part-timers.
• Emphasis to take time away (or ‘turn off’). Encouraging work-life balance. Work life balance is important. We are great at going fast, we need (permission) to take care of ourselves.
• Technology, online importance. Need to advertise our focus on hands-on learning, our human connections/ interactions (in our space, and class size).
• Increase meeting spaces – hard to find. Huge issue for booking spaces.

• We’ve lost a bit of our community. For employees, we’re not as tight a community. Hear people saying ‘I don’t know people anymore’. Employee engagement. Bring back humanity and family.
• Departments not to have anonymous emails! (Pet peeve).
• Need cross Campus type of events such as air bands. Don’t know why we don’t.
• Brand for internal employees is not as strong as before. Need to build reputation internally.
• Form a committee to work on support for international students. One simple start. Clear cut objectives, formulate a report, meet with students, support staff – come up with concrete recommendations to best support international students.
• Support Staff, Faculty model. The same idea. Empower them to figure it out (e.g. timelines, scheduling).
• Throw a big party! Build engagement.
• College support people with young families. Flexibility in how we come back to work. Makes difference in how College feels about us. A lot of our faculty and support staff are affected by that.
• Design a plan for multi-level parking lot between soccer pitch and triple gym and then an access tunnel or walk way to classrooms. There is a hot black-market on parking passes! Let’s prepare for growth!
• Coffee Break. Would be nice to open doors for all faculty, all employees, executives. Casual conversations, important for the President to be approachable. It shouldn’t be a public relations stunt, needs to be a genuine opportunity to converse.
• Open President’s Office to students. Could be Student President and College President in a shared space.
• Follow-up with each area and go in to see what the culture is like. There have been periods of change from work stoppage, with the new 14 week cycle, 7:1:7, Workday, summer teachings; check-in how it’s being communicated to us and how everything is going. Get a pulse on what is going on in each individual school.

• Free parking.
• Change coffee.
• Student Success Specialists. At least two per school. Always a lineup out of office. When she’s not here, it’s felt. She’s overwhelmed. It would help with student retention and success. The need is increasing. Students are changing.
• Learner Driven plan, and Design for learning; students need more guidance. Assistant or new job created to assist with these needs. Help the students that are here. When we get tapped out, there is only so much we can do; only so much SSS can do.
• Sustainability, at a high-level focus on 10 years from now. More foresight. What will learner needs be? Awareness of change, let’s be ready for it! What is our model? Lifelong learner: how do we help them? What does it look like in future, heighten awareness of change. Need nimble and flexible strategies.
• Industry is bringing in information. Do we know how to teach it? What are reoccurring themes from secondary schools to anticipate. There is a massive disconnect from secondary to post-secondary.
• Focus on this summer and the transitions. Be laser beam focused on how this goes.
• Think bigger. Imagine and share what your industry would look like in a carbon neutral sustainable future. If you can’t, it won’t happen (you can only impact 1/4, 3/4 is up to industry). There is potential for sustainable change in the careers of our learners. Teach our learners to get there. What skills will get them from here to there. How to train them. Every industry will need these experts. United Nations has Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), how we relate to them?
• Walk around the campus. Look at infrastructure. Take note of usage. Water bottle filling stations? Increase water bottle stations and add electric car charging stations. Small Big Idea. Clean up infrastructure, messy. Fancy equipment behind our dirty walls.
• Light Rail Transit (LRT): Make sure it happens on time for access to campus.

• Give raises.
• Concentrate on a couple things at a time, instead of a lot. If workflow goes beyond 9-5, then it is too much. One project at a time. Focus. Not enough time to connect. Can’t stop what they are doing, there is no backup. People had to cancel attendance here.
• Focus on workforce planning. Where do you put all people? Who do we need? Re-grouping of people for different projects. Staff, faculty mobility.
• Student listening tour, after this tour. Gauge what matters to them. We are here for the learners. Could help lead budget and expenditures
• How do we get better KPI scores? If our department gets a better KPI, we don’t know. Share them! Lends to better overall experiences.
• Simplify the hiring process, and fill vacancies everywhere.
• Review credentials for positions. Consider credentials or equivalency. Evaluate education and experience – experience has been removed. Add the equivalencies.
• Education for children of employees is free.
• We graduate students and they don’t qualify to work here. Creates embarrassment. AC grads are not qualified for an AC job!?!
• Focus on employee engagement. Clients don’t come first, employees come first. Foster employee engagement and we will all do a better job at helping our learners. Need to feel valued. Need recognition. Say Thank Yous. We know you exist. Need random acts of kindness.
• Workday. Need to consider processes, how long it takes to complete processes.
• Orientation for new employees. New employees don’t know the benefits – didn’t get any packages. Need more information such as how to transfer pensions? Orientation was better before Workday. Need better training.
• Concentrate on our technology. We invest so much, and currently struggling with it. Increase efficiency. Not just tech, but actual tools. Making sure we have the tools, and know how to use them.
• Connect more with each other through the day. Build relationships. Appreciate the Not Myself campaign.
• Be more progressive in allowing employees that can work from home (work virtually). Research shows it provides increased efficiency. Fosters sustainability. If properly scheduled, it could solve the parking crisis.
• Multi-level parking.
• Initiatives for incentives, for wellness. Encourages people to take care of themselves.
• Make sure the gym rates don’t skyrocket.
• Add more charging stations for electric cars; electric cars are increasing.
• Get Green Bin program. Compost. Create in house composting – on site, indoors.

• Make the gardens, grounds outside look better. We look like a wasteland. Attract people by making it look better. Don’t just patch stuff, make it right. Respect our spaces.
• College vision. Communicate overall vision to employees. Present the college-wide priority list. It helps us put things in perspective, and will give us a reference, how to direct our efforts, make decisions. Help us see ‘what are the tactics for next year’. Identify these yearly tactics for us. Provide a nudge on the strategic plan, give us a condensed version, what to do.
• Talk to people. Understand their pain points, and see how we could move barriers (e.g. listening tour). Happy employees, happy students.
• Contract people. Look at how many contract workers we have, how many years/long have they been here. How do they stay? What is the path? Do we want them, or not? Too many resources to find, train talent.
• Write letter to the province.
• Ask management to not just manage, but lead. Leadership is lacking. Inspire people to do job well. You can see the difference between those who lead, and those who manage. More time investment needs to be spent with managers to educate them, to coach them how to engage their employees.
• Let us do our jobs. Need more trust in employees – trust them do their job well.
• Release a President’s report periodically. Let us know what you are up to. Give us a brief recap – don’t wait.
• Work on the College culture. Our culture – we spend a lot of time talking vs doing (there’s too much talk and meetings, and not much action). Meetings are time wasters.
• Human Resources (HR) College-wide. Help relationship problems within the College. Councillors (Mediators) could alleviate communication problems. Wanda is well liked across the College. The approach could be incorporated into manager training, coaching managers.
• Ted Talks or Professional Development (PD), these type of groups and seminars that provide motivation and inspire are great.
• Put y/our face out there: internationally, locally in our community.
• Thank the students for being here, for choosing us.

• Strengthen employee engagement. Keep them happy, and keep them here. We need to be successful and happy, and it’ll emanate.
• Parking
• Go to industry and strut partnerships in Canada and US. There’s value to bring collaboration, more talent. Create bigger market share, revenue stream.
• Extend our reach to employers
• On-boarding of new employees.
• Going around and talking to students. Listening, talking, getting conversation going.
• Information systems. SIS. Data is king. Can’t make any decisions without. Evidence based decision system. How do we use that information?
• Alumni database is different than the other databases. Who has access, what are the rules of engagement?
• Our website – improve. Information is outdated. Presentation is not great. Navigation. Best practices.
• Visit, say hello. increase interaction.
• Listening to everyone. But there has to be some action, we need outcomes from engagement sessions.

• Brightspace: education on use/ refreshment course for professors. Calendar: we have a quiz and two or three will pop up. Creates panic. Leveraging the system
• Bigger picture. Students are here, developing our community. Business development: bring in people from different fields to come in and talk about what you are going see, how it works. Events to get us introduces, see student success stories. Encourage them to come, invite them to job fairs. It’s very motivational. Developing the college: success is seeing your students working. A great reputation brings in bodies. This is how we measure if it’s working
• Collaborate with other universities. Get guest teacher for a week, a teacher exchange, to talk about their research. Talk to us how they manage their labs – what skills they may need for current projects.
• More table space in library. Hard to find space within library.
• Listen in on Directors or VPs monthly meetings to find out what they are up to. WE can never make everyone happy, but great opportunity to see then talk out our problems, and see how ideas are being implemented. ‘See how difficult their job is’ to understand implementation.

• I would develop entrepreneurship and development committee / innovation committee. Hire more full time people. Hire the long term contractors
• Review portfolio of initiatives and find focus – put some on hold
• President giving service to college – it’s an inverted pyramid style
• Revamp hiring process on part time and impartial loads
• Fix Workday. Infrastructure of college, it has to be top priority. Processes start, then forever changing. Doesn’t work if you have multiple contracts within college. Can’t submit hours when off campus. Visibility of process. Clarity and accuracy of the information coming out. Documentation. Leverage the superusers as champions.
• Park everything that doesn’t impact employees. If I treated them well, they would take care of the students. Priorities employees – trust the professionals that I’ve hired to do the right things.
• Relationships: improve and develop relationships. College and unions, different schools collaboration. If that was a priority, everything else would follow.
• Look at resources that are currently required by our priorities; a capacity evaluation.
• Applied research under academic area. Business development formal processes across all areas.
• Looking at the most hot topics and fixing those processes and then work forward; follow-through.
• Find top priority and fix it. DONE! Get a visible win.
• Diversity and inclusivity – utilizing resources within the college and equip faultily and staff to deal with these set of learners. they come with a unique set of needs; how do we address these new needs. adapting with them and not putting up barriers.
• Integrate international and domestic students. Foster relationships. Can be mutually beneficial.
• Create a sense of accountability on higher levels. To enforce follow-through. WE should all be accountable though, not just the higher levels.

• Looking at what has been funded in the past but has been cut short, great initiatives how do we make it work
• Electric height adjusted desk in each class + ergonomic chairs for students
• Workload capacity. How we can alleviate and accommodate with more hires
• Tuition for students. Where can we make it less expensive. Opt Outs. Justifying why it’s expensive for students.
• Grass grows greener at the farmers feet: meet with staff and or student for a chat time to time. find out what we do and who we are. build those relationships
• When you cut the fees, you cut services. Build relationships with community donors or external funders to give back to students and scholarships.
• A lot of middle positions that come and go, and change throughout the years. Work from ground up, thing about student first. money has to go to those who offer services and support to the students first.
• Go the area and have further conversation to really understand the capacity issue, etc
• Qualitative data and statistical data : how are we looking at it and capturing both to make decisions. Qualitative vs Quantitative.
• Build more employer partnerships . Publicly introduce more programs to meet demands.
• Growth: be able to take imperial data to make sure we are better aligned for next term . align resources to the growth, based on that data
• Information at our fingertips. Policies are out of date – information we have needs to be up to date, makes sense, and worded for all (students included). retroactive policy would be great.
• Keep the discussion going.
• Negative stuff: procedural changes become negative when people don’t have the proper information. Make sure those affected are better informed .
• Clearing up grievances that have built up.
• Undercover boss type day. Blend in and see what’s going on.
• Workday!

• People! Focus on people. Inside out philosophy – were if were are happy, students will be happy.
• Looking at resourcing.
• Understand what we do now (current state) and how we could improve based on that. Our processes , our systems, what are we doing now and how we could make improvements on that.
• What is the outcome we are looking to achieve. In service levels, or employee engagements. Strive for a goal, or get a real time knowledge of objectives and goals, and access how we are doing.
• What seems to be a challenge: academic and other side of house do not understand each other, they are not collaboration, see each other points of view. They have a similar struggle. Get them coming together. Compassion, empathy.
• More collaborative structures, instead of silos. Overall. Structure it differently to allow collaboration more naturally.
• Own the problem. Admin vs Student vs Faculty. Remember what’s important: the team. It’s not serving our overall business goals
• Physical structures to allow that natural social collaboration.
• Comfortable working space for people to chat . Enjoy the environment we work in. Create the space, bring the support. Currently we don’t have the space to grow
• Alignment of services that are offered to all across campus. One stop shop for employees.
• Environmental efforts.
• A way to focus on front line leaders. Celebrate managers and chairs doing good job with their employees. They are the pressure point, manage down and not up.
• Bring relations with the academic union to be similar with the support staff union.

• Reaching out to students who are having trouble coming to school. People not wanting to go, having a hard time. Encourage them to come.
• Integrating colonial way and Indigenous way of doing things. Teaching both sides.
• I would make this space bigger for more of us to come. Add to it. A whole building. Indigenous is a huge term. A whole floor for counselling. This small room is not going to be able t support all of us.
• Open more to us.
• This room location feels like we are pushed to back (of the College).
• Make the centre hours longer. I’d like access to come here after a long study day. Having it close at 4:30 doesn’t fit in our regular schedules.
• Put out more advertising for this Centre. After 2 years I only knew this was here recently. Putting something in place to let students know this space. Should be more people here.
• Having a discussion with us about the future plan.
• Ongoing conversations. Need to be continuously listening. Problems are ongoing. You need to have both going. To plan for future, you need to see how past was involved – what about students who are coming up and haven’t been given the opportunity to have representation.

• The people inside. Building the community. Getting to know those people across the college. Out of silos, cross departmental events- get together.
• Flexibility. Work from home may be feasible, look at options. Could it work, who could do it, what is the policy? There’s a lot more flexibility in the work force, look at it here. We do that for students, what can’t we do that for staff as well?
• Give transparency to all people who work here. There is no insight to how all processes work. More understanding gives more appreciation. See the experience of others and the processes. Helps with understanding. Open doors for Algonquin employees. Release the front line staff so they can attend and not close the doors on them.
• Open house day. Round tables among employees/areas – get to know the College.
• Focus on education: how to make it affordable. Sometimes the fees are too high for students to achieve. Find better ways to reach out to those individuals, need to support that. Education can change the world. How do we bring the ones in need in? Accessibility. Access institution.
• Should be a centre on teaching portion of curriculum on ‘learning how to learn’ as an essential skills. Gives employees/students/graduates thirst to upgrade skills and know how to adapt. We have the opportunity to look at education differently here – prepare for the job, and how jobs will morph throughout a career.
• Be clear. Clarity is kind. Too many things that are unclear: are we making that decision or not? Removes a lot of the side desk work. We are waiting for others to make that decision. We don’t get the definitive decision, cycles are too quick – can’t get 100% consensus. There is opportunity to align, say ‘this is the thing!’ and ‘unequivocally GO!’.
• Balance of goals and costs. Define what that balance might look like. Focused initiatives: drive business or people? What value are we placing on our business and our people? It can be equal.
• Think creatively. Focus on people is the caring piece. Working from home could be our sustainability.
• Tracking students – where have they been, resource accessed, in their student life towards career: to try to track earlier to avoid students at risks. Proactively identify the behaviours that are trending downwards (e.g. wellness, attendance and more) to support these students.
• Focus on our employers the same way we focus on students.

*asterisks note agreement among attendees.