These are just a few of the many collaborative successes that have been achieved as Dr. David Barnard completes his term as the 11th President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Manitoba (UM) and are outlined in the final report on the Taking Our Place: University of Manitoba Strategic Plan 2015 – 2020.

The report is now online and includes highlights from the five priority areas and progress made in achieving the goals and priorities set out in the plan. Other accomplishments highlighted within the report include:

• Increases in student enrolment, with a fall 2019 record high of 29,561
• Improved learning environments with upgrades to more than 165 classrooms, labs and seminar rooms
• Increases in experiential learning, including a 35% increase in co-ops since 2015. We now have 40 co-op options available for students across a range of programs
• An increase in undergraduate research awards to 170 awards valued at $1.18 million
• Sixteen new research chairs and five professorships reflecting UM’s research expertise
• Introduction of an Indigenous Initiatives Fund that supported 61 projects including a new Indigenous Languages Elders-in-Residence Program
• Creation of an Indigenous Advisory Committee to guide the Indigenous Planning and Design Principles for UM, now incorporated into ongoing work across campuses

“Since 2015, this strategic plan has guided our efforts as a university,” said David T. Barnard, President and Vice-Chancellor at UM. “As my time here draws to a close, I am humbled by the many ways in which UM as a whole has worked together to advance our collective priorities and grateful for the collegiality of our community.”

Within each of the strategic priorities, several key goals have been achieved and we have demonstrated noteworthy progress in other areas.

“We wish to take this opportunity to reflect on what has been accomplished and to celebrate the progress we have made together. While there is always more to be done, the coming year will bring an opportunity to review our progress, to build on our accomplishments as well as to adjust our priorities for the future,” said Dr. Janice Ristock, Provost and Vice-President (Academic).

The final report, mid-term report and strategic plan can be found on the strategic plan webpage.

Dear Colleagues: On behalf of the Strategic Planning Committee, I am pleased to provide a draft of Taking our Place: University of Manitoba Strategic Plan 2015-2020. While you will see that there are a couple of sections yet to be completed, this document contains the bulk of the proposed content for the University’s updated strategic plan.

As you know, President David Barnard launched the process to update the university’s current Strategic Planning Framework in late January of this year. It began with the establishment of a Strategic Planning Committee charged with the responsibility to develop — through a consultative process — an updated plan for consideration by the University’s Senate and Board of Governors.

The work of the Committee began with an extensive period of consultation during which members of our university and broader communities were asked to share their perspectives, by responding to a series of questions, on the future direction of our university. An online portal for individual feedback was established and more than 50 input sessions involving close to 1,200 faculty, staff, students and alumni took place over a three month period. This input has been very valuable to the Committee in the development of this draft plan, and I again thank those of you who shared your ideas and views with us.

In the same spirit, I invite all of you to provide your feedback on this latest draft. The Committee worked hard to create a draft that at once addresses the priorities expressed through the consultative process and inspires our staff, faculty, students and wider community as we embark together on this next chapter. Please take the time to review the draft. We welcome all your comments and suggestions.

This feedback is to be provided through our online feedback portal and submitted no later than Friday, October 3, 2014. At the same time, input from other committees and bodies on the draft plan will also be sought, including the Senate Planning and Priorities Committee, Senate and our Board of Governors. The Strategic Planning Committee will consider this feedback while developing a final strategic plan that will be presented to Senate and the Board of Governors for formal consideration.

We look forward to receiving your feedback. Thank you.

As we prepare for our next steps in this important project, we’ve gathered some highlights that capture the outstanding accomplishments from our previous Strategic Planning Framework.

For a full list of accomplishments and outcomes of the Strategic Planning Framework (2009-2014), click here.

Dear Colleagues:

I am writing to provide an update on the progress on the development of the University of Manitoba’s new Strategic Planning Framework. Since my February communique, we have been engaged in an extensive period of consultation from mid-February to early April. 53 input sessions have been held with faculty/school councils, administrative groups, special meetings of select Senate Committees, as well as forums for Indigenous scholars, staff and students, student groups, support staff, and alumni and donors. More than 1,188 members of our University community participated in these sessions. As well, feedback through our on-line portal provided an additional 50 responses.

All input from these sessions has been consolidated and provided to the Strategic Planning Committee who will now begin their work to review, analyze and develop our University’s new Strategic Planning Framework for 2014-2019. Our goal is to prepare a draft Strategic Planning Framework over the next six weeks; following which, the University community will have an opportunity to provide input on the draft plan through an on-line process. Concurrently, the draft plan will be tabled for consideration by both the Senate and the Board of Governors. Over the summer, feedback on the draft plan will be reviewed and a final Strategic Planning Framework will be prepared for consideration by the Senate Planning and Priorities Committee, Senate Executive, Senate and the Board of Governors.

The Strategic Planning Committee would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your engagement during these consultation processes – your views will serve to guide our collective direction for the University of Manitoba over the next five years and position us as among the very best universities in Canada, and in the world.

Click here to view highlights from the previous Strategic Planning Framework (2009-2014)

Woloschuk may work at being an invisible hand in guiding a facilitation process, but her touch is deft and sure. On her (very neat) desk sit “thank you” cards from university staff who’ve participated in her sessions — “Thank you for your gentle guidance,” says one entry. Her manner does seem gentle — calm, quiet, introspective. She has a serenity about her; perhaps it’s why people respond to her.

The Input Gathering Sessions for the updated Strategic Planning Framework (SPF) were one such facilitation guided by Woloschuk, whose official title is Learning & Change Consultant (Learning & Development Services).

Almost 1,200 people participated, and she was responsible for facilitating the majority of the stakeholder input gathering sessions (38 out of 53 sessions were facilitated by her).

“And they went incredibly well!” she says. “Lots of attendance, great data — everything the committee needed to move forward. Everything we could hope for.

“I did a session with the alumni; I’m not sure how many people were there in total. It was a cross-section of alumni and they were so engaged in the process and in answering the questions — they really wanted to give feedback — that at one point I had to stop them in order to move on to the next question.”

Woloschuk started at the university 17 years ago, in 1997. Her first position was in the department of civil engineering, working with the co-op program. Right before ‘the flood of the century,’ and surrounded by engineers who were predicting it, engineering was a busy and exciting place, she says.

Her work at the university has always been in a capacity in which she was able to follow her interest of “learning for work, and the relationship between work and learning.”

Woloschuk: ‘It really is a helping profession, and I find that very personally rewarding.’

Woloschuk’s graduate studies were in “learning for work and credentialism (she has a master’s degree in adult education). Woloschuk also worked in Continuing Education for a number of years and there was a stint during which she was manager of Alumni Relations. It was a time that also provided one of her more memorable work moments: recognizing her father during Homecoming; as alumus, at the time he was organizing the 50th year reunion for the Faculty of Education reunion.

One thing that you may not know is that she is also the voice of the call direction system for Purchasing Services. She laughs, “Yes, you can call Purchasing Services and hear my voice, directing you which button to push to get to the department you want.”

In addition to incidental voice work, she’s also tried an acting class — she “wanted to try something new.” Pretty brave for someone who considers herself to be a bit of an introvert. She says, “I feel comfortable in front of a group of people, so I thought I’d might like it [acting].” Probably not something she’ll do again, she laughs. She finished the course, but “the instructor suggested that I might want to try directing instead,” she says.

What does she enjoy most about her work? The opportunity to engage with every constituency across the campuses and the opportunity to be of help to others, she says — whether through facilitation or through strategic planning, her instructional design work or delivering training.

“It really is a helping profession, and I find that very personally rewarding,” she says. “It does recharge my batteries to know that there’s value in the contribution to what is done. You may not see it immediately, but you know it’s going to be there.”

In fact, Woloschuk has always viewed the university as “a land of opportunity,” she says. “You see it first from the pure education side — going to university and getting an education (Woloschuk is also a U of M alumna). But as an employee, I’ve had so many opportunities to do interesting work, to learn and advance my own learning and experiences.

“So it still is for me a place of opportunity.”

— Mariianne Mays Wiebe

Q + A with Sandra Woloschuk

Coffee or tea? A coffee each morning, with milk and sugar.

One thing not too many people may know about you: I can tap dance. I started taking lessons when I was six and kept it as an activity/ hobby on and off for 30 years. I like that while you can practice it as an individual activity, performing it is better when you are in a group. If it wasn’t so hard on my knees, I would probably keep doing it. My favourite style is Broadway, made famous by the big movie musicals of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly.

Woloschuk: ‘My favourite style [of tap dancing] is Broadway, made famous by the big movie musicals of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly.’

What puts a smile on your face? Stepping onto a cruise ship that is about to spend at least seven days touring the Caribbean islands. Cruising is my favourite way to vacation. Every day is different and can be as busy or as relaxing as you want. Hanging in my office is a poster-sized enlargement of a photo I took of my view from a lounge chair on a beach in the Bahamas looking towards the beautiful blue ocean water, and every time I look at it, my mind goes right back to the peace and beauty of that view and how I felt that day. Whenever I move to a new office, I make sure that I can see that photo from my desk chair.

Dinner with friends: Out or cooking at home? Definitely cooking at home. I like spending time in the kitchen and my favourite dinner to serve is slow roasted chicken with traditional sides and warm, homemade cheese biscuits. A friend from Extended Education gave me her no-fail cheese biscuit recipe and it is a new favourite. Dessert would be my New York style baked cheesecake.

You are always thrilled to spend any free time doing: I rarely say “no” to an invitation to see a movie. I am a huge movie fan and am resisting the temptation to subscribe to a movie channel or internet streaming service for fear that I may never leave the house once I can access 24-hour movies at home.

Place to visit: Hawaii has been on my ‘must visit’ list for a while now along with New York. I’d like to spend a couple of weeks in Hawaii to really see the islands and spend time both in, and away from, the tourist areas. I’d like to travel to New York to see in-person all of the iconic places I have read about or seen in movies or on television.

Something essential or enjoyable every day: Breakfast! It is my favourite meal of the day. I’m on my third waffle iron because I keep wearing them out.

A goal: I’m still on the search for a new hobby. Acting clearly wasn’t in the cards, so I am looking for something else that I can try.

A favourite childhood memory: I got my first summer job when I was 13 years old in an ice cream parlour and I loved it. My co-workers warned me that by the end of the summer, I would be sick of eating ice cream since we could have all we wanted. Never happened. I tried every flavour of sundae topping and never found one I didn’t like.

Where did you grow up? I grew up in Winnipeg. My dad was a teacher so we had long family summer vacations and camped our way across Canada visiting every province, except for PEI (there was threat of a ferry strike the year we tried). Every few summers we would travel to southern Ontario, where my mother was raised, and stay at the family farm. To us kids, it was picturesque and idyllic: chickens, cows, corn fields, a huge barn complete with a rope swing hanging from a rafter, and the seemingly endless stacks of hay bales.

Favourite Blog: I am following Winnipeg Free Press columnist Lindor Reynold’s blog http://gooddaysandgreatdays.tumblr.com/ where she is chronicling her journey while she battles brain cancer. She is an excellent writer and I find her perspective inspiring.

What is your guiding principle or motto? Turn a disadvantage into an advantage: whenever possible, if faced with a problem or challenge, I try to see if I can turn it around — to find if there is a positive that can come from whatever has happened or the problem we have been asked to solve. This approach forces me to look at problems from a lot of different angles and I apply it in both my work and personal life.

The Alumni Forum, to be held every three years, provides a valuable opportunity for the university to listen to graduates, giving alumni the opportunity to contribute to the university’s Strategic Planning Framework, a document that is updated every five years and guides all major decisions the university makes, from research to student life.

The Alumni Forum is one of over 50 input sessions held over the past two months as part of a broad consultative process with our entire university community about the strategic direction for the U of M.

The feedback shared by alumni at the forum will be consolidated with the feedback from other stakeholders, and will form the basis of the first draft of our next Strategic Planning Framework.

The draft plan is posted online for people to provide comments and suggestions. Alumni, as well as the entire university community, are invited to add their feedback before the plan is further refined for presentation to the university Senate and Board of Governors this coming fall.

This message was sent to staff on Feb. 28 on behalf of Dr. Joanne Keselman, Vice-President (Academic) and Provost and Chair, Strategic Planning Framework Committee. We re-post it here.

Dear Colleagues:

I am writing to provide a status report on the process to update the University of Manitoba’s Strategic Planning Framework.  Last month, you received President David Barnard’s message, which served to launch this process, beginning with the establishment of a Strategic Planning Committee charged with the task of overseeing the development of an updated plan for consideration by our governing bodies.

As indicated in the President’s message, this undertaking was to begin with a period of extensive consultation. This consultation began in early February and will continue until the end of March, 2014.  To date, more than 50 input sessions are planned involving faculty/school councils, administrative groups, special meetings of select Senate Committees as well as forums for students, support staff, alumni and donors.  Each of these facilitated input sessions will be hosted by a member of the Strategic Planning Committee.  Participants will be invited to share their views on the following questions:

1. To what economic, social, political, demographic trends do we need to pay particular attention as we plan for the future of our University?

2. As a university community, we aspire to provide an outstanding experience to all those who engage with us. What does an outstanding experience look like for:

• students?
• faculty?
• staff?
• alumni/donors?
• community partners?

3. In light of questions 1. and 2., what should we focus on and/or do differently as we look to the future?

The Committee is eager to hear your views through these input sessions and very much hopes that you will be able to participate. Should this not be the case, however, we are also providing the opportunity for you to submit your feedback on these questions through the website.

I would like to acknowledge the work ahead for the Strategic Planning Committee and thank you in advance for your input into the development of our 2014-2019 Strategic Planning Framework.

Please note that all future communiqués will be received through the UM Today newsfeed or directly on the Strategic Planning Committee website

The document identified not only our mission, vision and values, but also laid out four institutional priorities – academic enhancement, outstanding student experience, Indigenous achievement, and being an outstanding employer – which has allowed the university to collectively focus its efforts and achieve its larger goals.

But as university president Dr. David Barnard points out, the time has come to build on those accomplishments.

“It is time to develop an updated plan to take us through the next five years; one that will accurately reflect how far we’ve come, and where we’re headed,” says Dr. Barnard. “This updated framework will not abandon what has worked in the recent past, but should build on our accomplishments and be innovative in guiding our future efforts.”

A broad consultation with the internal community is crucial to the process of renewing the framework. Dr. Joanne Keselman, Vice-President (Academic) and Provost, will lead this process, which has begun with the formation of the Strategic Planning Committee (SPC). This committee will be responsible for developing, through a consultative process, an updated plan for consideration by the University of Manitoba’s Senate and Board of Governors.

“This consultative process will establish a framework upon which we will continue to build on our university’s success,” said Dr. Barnard. “It will guide our collective direction and inform our individual actions. It will aim to position us front and centre among the very best universities in Canada, and in our world.”

The opportunities for the university community to contribute to the process will be announced in the coming weeks. Updates on the progress of the committee will be provided on our website as well as here at UM Today, as we establish a new Strategic Planning Framework for 2014-2019.

Strategic Planning Committee

• Chair – Joanne Keselman, Vice-President (Academic) and Provost
• Vice-Chair – Digvir Jayas, Vice-President (Research and International)

        From the Board of Governors (BOG)

• Patricia Bovey, BOG Chair
• Michael Robertson, BOG Vice-Chair
• Monika Wetzel, GSA President

        From Senate

• John Anderson, Professor and Head, Computer Science, Faculty of Science
• Jonathan Beddoes, Professor, Mechanical Engineering and Dean, Faculty of Engineering
• Joanne Embree, Professor, Medical Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine
• Jeffery Taylor, Professor, History and Dean, Faculty of Arts
• Al Turnbull, UMSU President

        From Faculty at Large

• Annemieke Farenhorst, Professor of Soil Science, Faculty Agricultural and Food Sciences
• Gordon Fitzell, Associate Professor, Desautels Faculty of Music
• Sandy Hershcovis, Associate Professor and Head, Business Administration, I.H. Asper School of Business
• Feiyue Wang, Professor, Environment and Geography, Clayton H. Riddell Faculty of Environment, Earth and Resources
• David Watt, Associate Professor, English, Film and Theatre, Faculty of Arts
• Roberta Woodgate, Professor, Faculty of Nursing

        From Support Staff

• Brendan Hughes, Executive Director, Student Engagement
• Deborah Young, Executive Lead, Indigenous Achievement
• Sam Vagianos, Business Manager, Dentistry

        Ex Officio (non-voting)

• John Kearsey, Vice-President (External)
• Paul Kochan, Vice-President (Administration)

        Resource (non-voting)

• Erik Athavale, Associate Director (Client Relations), Marketing Communications Office
• Kerry McQuarrie Smith, Director, Office of the President
• Thelma Lussier, Executive Director, Office of Institutional Analysis

        Assistant to the Committee

• Kathleen Legris, Academic Analyst, Provost’s Office