February 2019 Newsletter (6:3)

A year ago, ONCAT set out to redevelop our oncat.ca website to better serve our stakeholders. As part of this, we sought to:

• Enhance the online experience by providing a more dynamic, functional, and responsive interface;
• Better communicate the differences between ONCAT.ca and ONTransfer.ca, and smoothly transition between the two;
• Promote and make available searchable contents (including project reports) in a variety of formats; and
• Improve administrative efficiency in the maintenance of the content of the website.

We’re thrilled to bring this vision into reality with the official launch of this new site. We encourage you to click here to learn more about the changes, explore the site, and share your feedback.

Student Transfer Expert Panel

• Maxine Peters (Sheridan College)
• Roya Matsui (University of Waterloo)
• Anthony Marcelino (Sheridan College)
• Lauren Mulligan (Fanshawe College)
• Jocelyne Mitchell (York University)

Message from the Executive Director

This is our first newsletter of 2019, and also my first chance to welcome all of you back. We hope you had a great winter break, and are feeling energized for this next term. Here at ONCAT, 2019 promises to be another exciting year, with many initiatives either in progress, or on the horizon.
 
Let me first welcome our new co-chair, Deborah MacLatchy, President and Vice-Chancellor of Wilfrid Laurier University. I had the chance to meet Deborah in the fall, and am really looking forward to her vision and experience. But it’s a bittersweet moment, however, to welcome Deborah, as it means we must also say farewell to our longtime champion, Rhonda Lenton, President and Vice-Chancellor of York University. Prior to my taking on this role, I had the pleasure of working for Rhonda for many years at the university, and have always known her to be committed to college/university transfer.
 
Before the holidays, not only did I visit Laurier, I also had a chance to visit a number of colleges and universities eastern and western Ontario, and a few in the north. I met with many senior administrators, and transfer advisors at those institutions, and have some very open and candid discussions about the importance of transfer, and how we can continue to improve the system in order to make things easier and more efficient for students. The visits have provided me and, our organization, with real insights about how transfer operates at each institution and how ONCAT can continue to support this work. I’m looking forward to visiting the next round of institutions over the coming few months and am sure that those conversations will be as informative.
 
In addition to the institutional visits, we have also been doing a lot of outreach and engagement, including presenting to registrars, college vice-presidents, guidance counsellors, and those responsible for prior learning. We do our best to talk about ONCAT, and the work with our institutional partners at every opportunity, so if you would like for us to come to an event, please feel free to contact our office at communications@oncat.ca.
 
We recently closed our request for proposals for projects and research, as well as the call for the Faculty Fellows, both important initiatives for our organization. Now that the calls are closed, we are moving forward with the next steps. For the projects and research, we are in the process of putting together a series of peer review panels to review all those submissions. I was really pleased with how many submissions we received this year, and I’m now looking forward to hearing the input from the panelists. With respect to the Faculty Fellows, which is in its second year, we have already selected the fellows, and are eager to pilot their ideas. We’re putting together an event in the coming months, so that the fellows can share their ideas with other faculty and advisors across Ontario. Please stay tuned for more information.
 
Many of you will know that we decided not to proceed with our annual conference in April. While we recognize this is an important event to network and share best practices, we are exploring new ways of delivering professional development throughout the year. We’re looking at doing some lunch n’ learns, webinars, and an industry day. That said, another one of our big events is fast approaching, and that is our ONTransfer.ca Day. This is shaping to be a really great event, with some fantastic panelists and presentations. During the lunch, we will also be hosting our inaugural ONCAT Awards. We had some really great submissions, making the selection process extremely difficult. Thank you to everyone who applied. It was clear that we work with some fantastic individuals, who are passionate and dedicated about helping students through transfer. I can’t wait to celebrate all those who were recognized by their peers.
 
Lastly, and perhaps our biggest news to share is the launch of our new ONCAT website. This has been a long time under development, and I know how hard the team has worked to make this new site more efficient and user-friendly. I think the biggest change is the projects and research page. As the list of projects grew, the need for the work to be searchable became more and more apparent. We will continue to upload projects and I hope you will agree that both the overall layout and functionality of the website have improved. Can’t wait for all of you to have a chance to navigate the new site, and see for yourself how easy it is to use.
 
On a final note, we continue to have discussions with government about next steps for our organization. Along with our board, we are working to finalize what the next three years for the organization might look like, and are looking forward to continuing to build a mature transfer system in Ontario.
 
Thank you again to all of you for your support, and I am looking forward to seeing you either at our ONTranfer.ca Day in a few weeks, or one of my next institutional visits.
 

Sincerely,

Yvette Munro
Executive Director