Introduction

With a tip of the hat to Hollywood, this year’s title — Challenge Accepted: The Sequel — may sound tongue-in-cheek, but the plan is all business.

Like other crises, the pandemic — horrific in its human, economic and social costs — gave Seneca an unprecedented opportunity to ask ourselves what’s important and necessary to execute our core mission, and by implication what is not. This was not a reductive exercise, but an honest exploration of what we needed to do to remain relevant and effective in a post-pandemic world.

It wasn’t just what we should stop doing, but equally what we needed to do differently, and start doing.

Moreover, amidst all the gloom and pain in our communities, we realized this truly was the time when we could reach an inflection point in our history if we seized the moment. It was a time when we needed to make palpable and meaningful change, beyond incrementalism.

The response of the Seneca community to the call for ideas and suggestions in the Au Large consultations was as magnificent as its response to the pandemic. Thoughtful, innovative, passionate: the commitment to helping design a new future of student success and academic excellence was outstanding.

This is the Seneca Au Large business plan. This is the year where we start the changes that will propel Seneca to emerge from the pandemic — whenever the end comes — as the equitable Seneca, the sustainable Seneca, the more virtual Seneca — renewed and infused with innovation and ambition.

Through it all, we remain true to our promise to deliver a great polytechnic education, focused on preparing our students for great careers and a life of engaged citizenry.

We began the fiscal year 2020-21 reaching deep into the well of commitment, creativity and resilience of our amazing faculty, support staff and administrators. When others paused, hesitated or stopped, we leaned in and accepted the challenge of taking on a completely upended world.

We identified maintaining our enrolment as our most important operational imperative, and executed — and more — on that imperative. It’s the most basic of arithmetic: without students, the greatest plans in the world turn to dust.

Chronic underfunding by successive governments have created a culture of self-sufficiency and entrepreneurship at Seneca, traits that were heavily called upon in the past year. And thanks to extraordinary work from every part of the organization, every term saw strong enrolment, culminating in the Winter 2021 term attracting a record high number of students — greater than any other college in Ontario.

In March 2020, we hunkered down. Hiring was frozen. Spending was curtailed. Most new initiatives were stopped. Important progress in areas such as Indigenous education and sustainability were protected, but expectations about progress were reset.

We also put the safety of our community first. Early on, we took the view that the best way we could contribute to the fight against COVID-19 was to keep our campus populations to a minimum, restricting access to only those programs required to do in-person teaching, with all other students and employees learning, teaching and working remotely.

We have not varied that stance one iota. And it’s working.

At the same time, we launched what would turn out to be the most important initiative of the year: Seneca Au Large. It evolved into a huge conversation with the Seneca community about our future, all aimed towards how we could be, on the other side of the pandemic, a renewed, thriving institution at the forefront of polytechnic education.

Au Large: To the Horizon. Challenge Accepted.