Sarah Gauen, AC’s Diversity and Inclusion Specialist, Honoured with CICan Award

Posted on Tuesday, April 27th, 2021

Sarah Gauen, Algonquin College’s Diversity and Inclusion Specialist, has received a prestigious award from Colleges and Institutes Canada.

CICan announced Monday that Gauen had been selected as the Silver recipient of the Leadership Excellence Award for Non-Managerial Staff.

Along with other award recipients, Gauen was honoured at CICan’s 2021 annual conference running from April 26 to 28. The conference is being staged virtually because of the COVID-19 pandemic. CICan is the national and international voice of Canada’s publicly supported colleges, institutes of technology, cégeps, polytechnics and universities with a college mandate. Its Awards of Excellence honour best practices and leadership in these institutions.

Gauen thanked colleagues – and the College – for the support that made winning the award possible.

“I want to share this award with my colleagues; I couldn’t do this job without all their hard work and the experiences they have shared with me,” she said. “It’s so wonderful to win an award like this as it is validation that other people think working hard towards diversity and inclusion is as important as I think it is.

“My hope is that this award continues to encourage the College’s investment in equity, diversity, and inclusion programming as it has such an impact.”

As Algonquin’s Diversity and Inclusion Specialist, Gauen spearheads the College’s 2019-2022 Inclusive & Diversity Blueprint, a component of a five-year People Plan with its focus on instilling the values of equity and diversity across the College.

Gauen’s delivery on this Blueprint has had considerable impact since its launch in December 2019 – despite the restrictions of COVID-19. In fact, the pandemic forced her, as she put it, “to be more creative and purposeful” in delivering on the College’s commitments.

Over the last year, Gauen helped organize the Inclusion and Diversity Circle, hosted monthly Inclusion Infusion events and weekly blogs, oversaw the creation of online learning opportunities that enabled employees to gain a greater understanding on issues around equity, diversity and inclusion, organized prominent influencers to virtually share their experiences on all aspects of identity, and arranged for College managers to come together to discuss issues of intercultural competence. All this was, of course, handled remotely.

Add to these efforts her long-standing work on the We Saved You a Seat campaign, which aimed at attracting female students to popular technology programs; her participation in the Psychological Health and Safety Taskforce; the creation of the College’s Safe Washroom campaign; and the promotion of the Not Myself Today mental health campaign, which is being featured by the Canadian Mental Health Association as a case study for its creativity.

The We Saved You a Seat project is perhaps Gauen’s most impactful work to date. This three-year pilot program, launched in late 2018, aims to create a critical mass of female technology students by reserving 30 percent of classroom seats for qualified female applicants in four popular programs: electrical engineering technician, mechanical engineering technology, electro-mechanical engineering technician, and computer systems technician. More than 100 female applicants have been admitted to it and the program has gone from pilot project status to being a fixture in the College curriculum.

Gauen’s work has won the respect of colleagues. As one College leader said in recommending Gauen for the CICan award: “Sarah’s ability as an inspiring team player is well recognized by colleagues. Sarah has a knack for getting the right people with the right skills together in a functioning team to get the job done.”


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