By: Tyler Dubreuil
Algonquin’s Strategic Programs and Services Planning Project, a three-year initiative examining the colleges programs and services has wrapped up.
The three-year project ended with a conference March 7, outlining the highlights of the services analysis report.
The SPSP, initiated in 2009, was designed to help the college maintain and enhance services to students and to ensure the college continues down a path of innovation in the current fiscal environment.
Both Kent MacDonald and Claude Brulé, President and Vice-President, spoke to the audience.
MacDonald, talked about the college coming together as a community for this project.
“The fact that we were successful in many, many ways to bring our students and student leaders, to the table, our faculty leaders, support staff leaders, and administrators together to accomplish this, is something quite special” MacDonald said. “The only way that the college is able to function and the only way it will be able to continue to function more effectively in the future is by making sure people continue to connect.”
The conference, held in the T-building, was organized to update faculty on how the project has evolved from the last progress report in June. It also presented some of the details from the SPSP’s final report.
The report covers the SPSP’s purpose, their areas of focus, the method of obtaining department and service recommendations and how the implementation of these recommendations will effect the school. The project itself is one of the first among Canadian colleges.
To effectively find these recommendations, every activity that uses school resources was broken up into two divisions; programs and services. “With respect to the college services review itself, it was mentioned some 250 services were reviewed during the 2012 time period,” Jennifer Daly-Cyr, SPSP director and keynote speaker said, “that effort would see all the services from across the college take the time to look at, and to evaluate, their specific services and to come forward with recommendations on their specific services in terms of where there could be new opportunities, where their could be enhancements, where they could maintain efforts from the services, and for that matter, where they could phase out certain aspects of the services”.
The conference was also a chance to celebrate the efforts put into the SPSP project. Steering committee members of the three-year project were awarded certificates for their dedication.
The SPSP’s final report and footage of the conference can be found on Algonquin’s website.