Academic Plan

This is the first of what I intend to be my weekly updates on the development of the Academic Plan.  We launched the planning development on March 2, with a lunchtime Zoom meeting attended by 59 members of the CNC community.  Prime Strategic Planning Consultants, Lynn Hoover and Joanne O’Shea, who are facilitating the development, were in attendance. Remember these names – they will be conducting a variety of sessions with students and staff over the upcoming weeks, and I hope you will be able to take part.

Lynn and Joanne have begun the consultation process by meeting with the CNC Program, Community, and Aboriginal Advisories.  These advisory committees are a key component of CNC’s links to our communities and employers, and all provided a great deal of food for thought.  Lynn and Joanne also made a presentation to Education Council on March 8, and we will continue to give progress updates at the monthly EdCo meetings, as well as seeking input.

We're running a survey - we really hope you can provide your input on what CNC education and training should look like in five years’ time. We are focusing on four key areas - accessibility, quality, flexibility, and recognition - and we will be asking you about your thoughts on each of these. What do they mean for what we teach? What do they mean for how we deliver programs? The survey link will be posted here on the website and we'll send out an email to let everyone know when it is up and running.

I hope you had a chance to answer our first question, “What makes you proud of CNC students?”, and you’ll see our second question is now up on the website. Please take a few moments to answer, and should you have any questions, send them to academicplan@cnc.bc.ca

- Chad

Welcome back to the update on our Academic Plan development!

We opened the survey for responses a week ago, and in well under a week we had several dozen responses.  Thank you to all who responded so quickly, and I’d encourage everyone else to respond before the survey closes at the end of the month.

The meetings with our Advisory Committees have concluded, and the results of these meetings, together with the survey results and the answers to the online questions, will help us develop the academic priorities and goals for CNC.

If you have not already done so, please be sure to respond to the current online question: How does CNC help students create their futures?  A new question will be coming next week.

In the meantime, work continues analyzing trends in the regional economy and future regional workforce needs, as well as demographics, cultural considerations, and shifts in educational and training.

Check back here over the next two weeks, as we share what we have learned from the survey and the regional analysis.

Chad

Greetings, and welcome to the third instalment of my weekly blog on the development of the Academic Plan.  I’m feeling quite pleased with myself, since so far I have actually managed to get a weekly update done! One of the most basic questions: why do we need an academic plan? 

CNC faculty and staff are dedicated to student success: we know we offer a great student experience and education. CNC students and alumni make a difference and we should be proud of their accomplishments and contributions to our region

An academic plan will help us remember who we are as an institution, how we want to develop and deliver our programs, and most importantly, how to ensure we continue to offer a quality education that prepares our students for the changing social and economic environment in which we live. The world is changing more quickly than ever, and CNC must continue to evolve to prepare students for the future and the changing world of work.

An academic plan will make sure we are all on the same page, driving towards the same goals, and that we know what our priorities are. It will help us to work together to make those goals happen. The plan will help us to plan and deliver our education and training opportunities in a mindful way, so that we continue to support the success of current and future students.

A second question is how is the Academic Plan different than the Strategic Plan? The academic plan is more of an internal plan than the strategic plan - lhulh whuts’odutel’eh (we will learn together). It will focus on what we are here to do – how we will take concrete steps towards making the CNC vision and mission a reality. It will help us to do an even better job for students.

This is our academic plan. It should reflect the energy, ideas, and hopes of the whole CNC community. This where we need your help. Without your input, it won’t be the best plan for us and our unique context. You have the insight and the knowledge to move us forward in the best possible way.

This isn’t just an exercise. It will provide clarity, which will empower us all to fulfill our roles. The plan will drive what we do in every academic area for the next five years. This is an opportunity to describe and reflect the CNC academic ethos, so we can all be confident that we are living our promises to students every day in everything we do.

So please – watch for the schedule for the engagement sessions around May Days, and keep sending in your questions and comments to academicplan@cnc.bc.ca. Next week, we’ll be able to share some of our findings so far. 

A big thank you to everyone who participated in the academic plan survey. Finding time is difficult, but it is appreciated. We had 116 responses, with a good distribution across students, faculty, and staff. We are currently theming the results, giving us an understanding of perspectives and aspirations as to what CNC education and training should look like in five years’ time. Our focus is around key provincial mandates: accessibility; quality; flexibility; and recognition/relevance. Results from this survey and insights gathered from external stakeholder groups (Program Advisories, Aboriginal Advisories, and Community Advisories) in March, will be used in initial planning sessions that began this week with the Student Affairs and Academic Leadership Team.  

For those of you who want to contribute but missed the survey, please look above on this page and share your perspective on this question - 'What makes a CNC education special?'. Answers to these questions will also be used in the planning process. This question is the third in a series that began when academic planning launched, and will close on April 10th. 

This month we are looking forward to holding a planning session with the Faculty Working Group.

Looking ahead, on May 12th and 13^th, a series of hybrid sessions (in person and Zoom) will be held where you will have an opportunity to see some of the initial thinking around the academic plan and you will be able to provide feedback. Registration details will be available on this site later this month. 

As always, any questions about what we are up to can be asked via email: academicplan@cnc.bc.ca 

We knew it would happen sooner or later – I missed getting last week’s update in on time. Mea culpa.  But it does mean I have more to say this week!

Over the last two weeks we've been reviewing all the input we've received (the survey, web questions, and the input from Program, Aboriginal and Community Advisories). Key themes are emerging and we’re thinking about what CNC’s 'ideal future' might look like.

The Student Affairs and Academic leadership have been refining these themes and we will be using these in our May sessions.  That’s when everyone at CNC is asked to share their thoughts on what we have so far. There are some gaps (and things that we haven't got quite right) and we hope that you will help us identify and improve on those.

Registration for the May sessions opens on April 25 and I encourage you to come out and have your say.

There are things we've heard loud and clear so far:

• Student success is top of mind for everyone. One of the key questions is how to define success, and to be mindful that success won't look the same for everyone
• We need to advance truth and reconciliation, and decolonizing our systems, practices, programming, and approaches
• People want the Academic Division to focus on quality, relevance and responsiveness to the communities we serve
• People also want a CNC education to be accessible to every learner no matter where they are on their learning journey. This is not only about 'getting in' to CNC; it is also about supporting students in the right ways so they can stay at CNC
• Students want flexibility: the option to have at least some classes online on hyflex, to better suit their other commitments
• Pathways were mentioned frequently - pathways to come to CNC, pathways to move on to further education or to a career, and pathways to come back to CNC

There is a lot happening, very quickly, and this is an exciting time.  I am looking forward to hearing more from all of you as the process unfolds.

Over the last week, the Student Affairs and Academic leaders worked on developing statements on CNC’s desired future state - who we want to be in the future and on identifying what we need to do to get there.

We generated a lot of actions and ideas, and Lynn and Joanne are now working on distilling these into a format that can be shared, because our focus for the next month will be on getting feedback from you - the CNC community – and incorporating it into the draft Academic Plan.

Which brings me to an important question...have you registered for a session yet?  If not, you can register here on this page.

Sessions will be held on May 12 and 13 where we will show you where we are at so far and to ask for your input to clarify our desired future.

Once we have your feedback, we will spend time synthesizing and incorporating, to develop a draft framework. This will be the basis of our Academic Plan.

Hope to see you at one of the sessions and look forward to hearing all your feedback.

It was a busy week last week for academic planning. Lynn and Joanne were on campus to talk with students, faculty, and staff about the plan and they had some fascinating discussions about our academic future.

Over the course of 10 small group sessions we heard from 65 people about the meaning of our draft themes - ‘reconciliation’, ‘relevance’, ‘quality’, ‘access and flexibility’, ‘culture’, and ‘EDI’.

I didn’t take part in any of the sessions as I wanted everyone to feel comfortable speaking openly about what we need to do, so like you I am eagerly waiting for the report back from Lynn and Joanne which is due by the end of May.

In the meantime, the slides that Lynn and Joanne used in the sessions to provide an overview of where we are at to date with the development of an academic direction and goals are on this web page for viewing under ‘Consultation Sessions’. Please remember that these represent a DRAFT straw dog framework and that what you see on the slides is likely to change quite a bit as consultations continue.

We are getting close to the finish line and I’m excited to see the framework taking shape. You can let us know if you have any thoughts or comments on the draft at: academicplan@cnc.bc.ca

-Chad

It has been a while since we provided an update – we’ve been busy though!

The Academic Plan themes and goals have been revised by the steering committee based on feedback from the May sessions. Four themes emerged:

• Access and Flexibility
• Quality
• Relevance
• Academic Culture

There are also several goals under each theme to help clarify what we want to do over the next five years.

We have also developed four lenses which will permeate all the themes and goals and will direct how we do things over the next five years:

• Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Calls to Action (TRC) and the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act Action Plan (DRIPA)
• Climate Action
• Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
• Strategic Enrolment Management (SEM)

Executive leadership and the Board have reviewed the themes and goals and have provided feedback. Next, it will go to Education Council (EdCo) in August. Following EdCo’s input, we will finalize and draft the formal plan.

Keep your eyes peeled for announcements about the big unveiling!

Until then have a great summer everyone!

-Chad