#SenecaProud

Pat Perdue  00:00

Hey I'm Pat Perdue and I'd like to welcome you to season four of the Seneca Proud podcast. Okay, so COVID isn't quite a thing of the past but it's going to be. And that's great news. Because we've got our sights set on an amazing future. And I hope you do too. Students will be returning to classes, little by little. Classes will be offered in a more inclusive way using leading edge technologies. And we're getting set for an incredibly bright, inclusive, equitable future. And the future is what Seneca Proud season four is all about. Everything from the near-term future of life at Seneca College in a post-pandemic world, it's going to be pretty great, to what life after Seneca means. And hey, if you're a student, I get that life after Seneca is something that's on your mind. What are you going to do? Are you going to measure up to the competition? And what can you do today to really set yourself up to succeed? To help with those questions, this season includes graduated Seneca students who have been out there doing their thing for at least a few years. We'll hear their ups and their downs, and what you can do to help set yourself up for success. So if you haven't already, subscribe and download. And join me as we consider the future and meet the people who are transforming dreams into reality. Because the next episode of Seneca Proud starts now. 

And welcome to episode one season four of the Seneca Proud Podcast. I'm Pat Perdue and I'm absolutely thrilled that you're here. I'm thrilled we're all here together for another season. And as you heard from the introduction, we have a great season lined up and much of that is forward-looking for students. Including life beyond Seneca and for Seneca College itself. And speaking of forward-looking, we're kicking off our season with a conversation about the future of Seneca College. And I'm so excited by our first guest, Seneca College President David Agnew. Who was literally the best person to speak about Seneca College's future. So while Seneca College was closed during the worst part of COVID-19, a lot was going on. Everything from reconfiguring much of the administrative tasks that students need to do just to be students. To reconsidering how the actual teaching was done. Literally everything was slated to change. And all of this was through the lens of what's known as the Au Large Project. A huge project that touches on literally every aspect of Seneca College. For more on what that project was about, you can look at the Seneca College website or listen to some of the episodes from last season's Seneca Proud Podcast. Which was just about entirely dedicated to Au Large. Okay, so let's talk about our guest President David Agnew. He's the president of Seneca College. And he's held that role for 12 years. What's super cool about that, and you're going to hear this from the interview, is that even though he's been on the job for 12 years, because there's been so much change, it feels a lot like a brand new job. And what you'll also notice from our conversation, and you'll even hear me comment on it during the interview, is how positive things are. The last year the last 18 months have been so difficult. But now, fingers crossed that COVID-19 numbers stay under control, things are set up for a really exciting future at Seneca College. We join our conversation with President Agnew talking a little bit about what things were like a year ago when we last spoke and it was a lot different. And the conversation soon moves to the exciting changes that are just on the horizon. Plus, we talk about TikTok because, you know, it's President Agnew so now my conversation with Seneca College President David Agnew.

President David Agnew  04:00

So let's see now going back a year ago, that is so long it feels like, but that would have been our second term where we had students back on campus. Very limited numbers. We were pre the really severe sort of return to lockdown. Remember that happened right around Christmas last year. And so we might have actually been feeling, sadly, a little bit of optimism and new freedom. And maybe this thing is actually coming to an end like we thought. This thing's had sort of more closings than a bad melodrama, right? I mean you kind of get all excited in thinking…and of course, we think in terms. And the world doesn't think in terms or semesters. The world thinks differently, but we always keep…okay, so maybe January or maybe May…but lots of good stuff has happened too. I think we have a tendency to go to the bad. And let's also remind ourselves that lots of good things have happened. And certainly, now, it feels very different from a year ago. And despite, I think, appropriate warnings that we are not out of the woods yet. And we should take nothing for granted about predictions of when we can doff our masks and throw away our vaccine passports. I think we do know that the end is in sight. We just don't…we can't pick the date.

Pat Perdue  05:35

It sounds very optimistic. And when we spoke last time, you were making it a point to come to Seneca College, the physical campus, every day that you could. And even though you were, oftentimes maybe, if not the lone then one of the few people roaming the halls. It's got to have a different feel now than it did a year ago for you?

President David Agnew  05:59

Oh it does. Absolutely it does. And the nice thing about being President is I'm the one who decides there are snow days. And there are no snow days. We didn't have snow days. So…but it is different. So if you come on campus today you have to be double vaccinated or fully vaccinated, depending on where you got your vaccines. And you have to have uploaded that to an app that we have called Seneca Safe. And we have to verify it. And then you have to do daily screenings. So every day you come in, every one of us who comes in has to do a daily screening. Answering the questions about your state of health, and so on, so forth. And then you go to a kiosk, which is a little machine on a post, and you tap if you have our virtual One Card. Or you scan if you need a scan. Or you can tap your physical One Card. And it's amazing. In a second or less than a second it says yep, double vaccinated. Yep, the screen’s all good. And yep, that's an employee. Or that’s a student. And so you need all of those three things. But even from the beginning of this semester, we've been able to relax a little bit. Because if you're a student coming in on that first day, it would also say you have a class today. And in the summer, we were saying is your class within 15 minutes? So I've used the analogy, Pat, with you before…of that gradual reopening of the tap. And so we're…with each one of those moves we're able to gradually reopen a little bit. We just announced that our gyms are reopened and we are opening more spaces. It does feel better. It feels better. It feels different. But it also feels better.

Pat Perdue  07:51

That's great. And when we look back to during COVID last year, it's not like nothing was going on, right? And a lot of what we spoke about was the Au Large Program. And I'd love to maybe connect with you. You know we're one year later and probably more than one year of the program. How's it going?

President David Agnew  08:13

Yeah, terrific question. And I had a great opportunity to update you and your listeners. So Au Large, of course, is our renewal project coming out of the pandemic. How are we going to emerge even stronger as an institution? And also take advantage of what we've learned. Both good and bad. In other words, let's leave behind the things that we really didn't enjoy and didn't work well. And let's embrace the ones that did. So we had three pillars to Au Large. An equitable Seneca, a sustainable Seneca and the more virtual Seneca. And I'm really delighted that yes, you're absolutely right, we've taken advantage of the time to make real progress. So on the biggest kind of signature accomplishment out of the equitable pillar, and this is very exciting, we…through the board, the board agreed, we dedicated $12 million to the Jane Fund. Which is a permanently endowed fund to support EDI-focused initiatives for students… financial aid but also other things. Supports for those students, research, community outreach, all sorts of things. And I mean, I can't prove this, but I will bet you that's the largest EDI-focused fund there is in postsecondary across the country. And it's permanent. And so it will produce income from that $12 million every year that it can then be put to support our students. And support our equity-seeking students and our students who come from communities that are marginalized. And that's very, very exciting. We're just actually in the process of launching a student census. We've done an employee census. For the first time to really understand, not just anecdotally, but through their own answers who studies here and who works here. Sustainability…we've adopted our first ever institution-wide sustainability plan. Pat, we've had lots of great stuff going on. We really have. But it's never been pulled together. And it's never really been…okay, let's…but now you’ve got to be accountable for this stuff. Not good enough just to do this great project over here. And way over here doing something else. Let's bring everything under. And let's make sure that we focus as much on our operations and our services as we do on our academics. Because of course, when you talk about reducing your greenhouse gas, it's really not what's happening in the classroom. It's really what kind of plant do we have? Or what kind of heating and cooling do we do? What kind of offsets do we have? And so on and so forth. We've also created an office for sustainability and just hired its first director. And so we're very excited about that. And then tons of stuff on the more virtual. And of course, we are more virtual now. But we've been planning the…okay, but let's pretend the pandemic’s over. What are we looking at now? And we've talked about our new service model. Where we really are flipping transactions. No, you're not going to line up at a counter. You're going to do that online because it's a lot more efficient. It's actually less prone to error. Why would you line up at a counter to do something and fill out a paper form that you can do online, anywhere in the world, through the internet? And reserve the face-to-face for the true advisory counseling type of things that people need. But even there, because of what we know we can accomplish…if you're living in the outer reaches of Oshawa, and all you have to do is come in to talk to a career counselor, or somebody about your mental health, or look for some academic advice, why would you commute all the way? Set up a zoom call and we'll do it that way. So to make this really real, we've actually…when you come back on campus you will see we don't have counters. We tore them down. So we were really serious about this. We're totally reconfiguring the hub of our service area for students into a completely different model, where you will be able to absolutely have a one-on-one, talk to people. But it's not going to be take a number and we'll get to you in half an hour, why don’t you go have a cup of coffee. This is going to be a much different model. On the academic side, we've announced our winter delivery. But we're also planning, again, our post-pandemic delivery model. And it's a much more flexible model. And I'm happy to talk about that. We're also rolling out for our employees…and this is particularly affecting those who work in our offices, and so on…a flexible work policy. And in fact, we're not even calling it a policy, we're calling it an approach. Because this is an area where I think the world is engaged in perhaps the biggest social experiment we ever have. We are turning office culture on its head. After decades and decades of thinking you have to be in the office nine to five, Monday to Friday. And now all of a sudden, we're saying not so much, you can actually do some of your work from home, maybe not all of it, maybe not every day. But there's a whole bunch of people who have proved themselves to be extremely productive and responsible working from home.

Pat Perdue  13:44

That's super, super exciting. If we can circle back to the academic changes that you're looking at. You mentioned the word flex and that's flex classes. And what are some of the changes that students can look forward to? For some of their classes, I'm guessing in January, or in the coming semesters? With regards to in the before time…I guess we'll just call it the before time…you always had to go to your class at a certain time, sit in the chair, and the professor would be at the front of the class doing their thing for a couple of hours, and then everybody would leave. How is it different?

President David Agnew  14:23

Yeah, so it's gonna be different. And this is very program slash course dependent, of course, right? If you were a nurse and needed to practice IVs insertion then you're going to come into a practice lab with your colleagues and work on the mannequins. So we've got four delivery modes now. And we're actually…we've got it right now but we'll be rolling out even more in January and May. And May, we're really hoping Pat, is kind of the new post-pandemic Seneca academic delivery model. And look things change but that's what we're aiming for. So the four are, of course, good old fashioned in-person, we all know what that means. And then good old fashioned…because online wasn't invented by the pandemic, we had lots of online before…but things will remain online. And again, that can be a whole program, or it can be a course. And as you know, to get into the weeds a little bit, that can be synchronous or asynchronous. In other words, it can be something that you need to do at nine o'clock on a Monday morning or it's something that you can access anytime. And that's the asynchronous as opposed to synchronous. So we've got in-person; online; we've got hybrid, and that's really a mix of those first two…some online, some in-person. And again, some of that might be asynchronous. Some may be synchronous. And then the new one for us is what we're calling flexible delivery. And that's taking advantage of technology in a different way than just having the faculty, the professor's face on the Zoom screen. So now the faculty member is back in the lab or the classroom. And we've equipped that lab or classroom with two cameras. One focused on the faculty. And one focused on the students in the lab or the classroom. And then we've got a sound system. So we can pick up ambient noise in the classroom, like questions or discussions. But the cameras are what they call follow me cameras. So if you're a teacher…so I'm sure you don't stand rigidly still at the front of the class…you move around. You might use the whiteboard. You might go to your laptop to put something up on display. This camera follows you. It's very cool. I've used it. And so it actually…for the faculty member, particularly those who have been getting a little itchy doing it from their dining room table, you can get up and you can move around. And because there are students in the class you're interacting with people face-to-face again. But here's where the flexible part comes in: the cameras and the mics allow a student to be at home or somewhere else, maybe at work, depending on the program and the course. And engaging in the class fully. Because they're on screen for the professor on their laptop. They’re hearing, they can engage. It's real time. We're doing courses with that right now. And it's really interesting. Because I’ve talked to the faculty in the halls. And students are kind of voting with their feet here. And the ones I've talked to…a pretty good number are studying online or remotely as opposed to coming in. And I asked the faculty, “Why?” And it's, I don't think you'd be surprised by this, “I've got a long commute and in fact, my commute’s longer than the class.” “I've got young children, and I really can't afford for them to have daycare. And so I'm staying at home with them. But I'm still teaching, I can do that.” Or, “I need the money. So I'm pulling extra shifts at wherever I'm working. And that's half an hour after the class. If I was at campus, there's no way I'd make it in on time.” But the great news is they are tuning in. So they're not tuning out, they're tuning in. So we will have more opportunities for students to do that. Because one of the things that we've really learned out of this is there's a big premium on convenience for students. And my phrase is, we need to meet students where they are rather than keep insisting they come to where we are. And I mean that both in a physical sense in terms of place but also time. We have to figure out how to make it easier for students to learn on their time as opposed to insisting they have to fit into our little schedule inbox.

Pat Perdue  18:39

And as a teacher listening to you describe that I cannot wait to try that flex approach. And have some people right in front because I've, personally, I really enjoy the online experience of teaching. And I find there's a lot of unique ways to make that connection. At the same time, we all want to hang out. The students want to hang out together. And they really do crave, in my experience anyway, that face-to-face interaction with somebody who's mentoring them and guiding them through this learning process.

President David Agnew  19:13

I hear you. And what's interesting is we've been really restricting the online–sorry, the in-person classes to the labs. The practical hands-on. The things that you really cannot do online. But when we've been piloting some of these flex courses, we've been doing that with things that honestly could be online. But we're trying it anyway. So what's neat is this opens up…so for those faculty and frankly students and programs… the thought oh my god, personally, I don't want to be online 100% of the time. This basically says yeah, you don't have to be. You've got a choice. You can come in and not come in and that might be…look, a huge portion of our students work. We have to accept that. And we penalize them if we keep saying, “Well, you’ve got to get in here, we're taking attendance in-person.” And so this just gives people a lot more flexibility, including faculty, which I'm very excited about.

Pat Perdue  20:12

Likewise. It sounds super exciting. And looking back at the pandemic time, I'm super curious about what are the things that you're leaving behind? We're talking about how it was really a great process. We were able to learn and really bring some things, that we learned during the pandemic, into the post-pandemic time. What are the things you're like, I'm really glad we're not doing that anymore?

President David Agnew  20:41

Well, honestly, my list would include things where we're not there yet. You know, we've still got a ways to go. But part of this is just having no choice was really hard about parts of that pandemic. Not being able to go out–and I'm not talking about going out carousing–you couldn't go to a Tim Hortons to sit inside. There was nothing one could do other than go to the grocery store, the drugstore, and stay at home. Because remember, we weren't even supposed to see other people. So that kind of forced isolation that I think was the hardest part. Even if I worked…fine. Or it was okay. Or I had a nice family setup. Or my house is big enough. If you were in the luxurious position of ticking all those boxes it was tough but it was okay. We just have to remember how many people aren't ticking all those boxes. And so for them, I'm really happy that you can get out now. The museums are reopening and the art galleries, and music things, and all those kinds of things. And people can just feel a little bit human again. Even after we still have all these restrictions.

Pat Perdue  21:55

And listening to you describe Seneca College going forward, it's such a positive message. It's unequivocally positive versus a year ago. It was still a positive message because there was so much going on. And Seneca College was doing such a great job of taking advantage of that sort of cocoon time to figure out what could change. And I'm really excited hearing the energy in your voice about what's just on the horizon.

President David Agnew  22:25

I just think it's amazing how people have embraced change. Because we know that it's not easy. We're sometimes asked to give up. But I think part of what the pandemic did was demonstrate enormous resilience and adaptability. But I think was also oh, okay, so we can change and the world hasn't fallen apart. I can see that if we take this lesson, take that example, and take that technology or take that new way of doing things with that technique…this actually can be better. And of course that's what it's all about. Continuous improvement.

Pat Perdue  23:06

That's so, so exciting. Speaking of continuous improvement…when we last spoke, you recommended to me a series or we talked about a dog series on YouTube. Olive and Mabel. And you may have heard the term the Colbert Bump. You know, Stephen Colbert? If he talked about something it would absolutely blow up. After we had that conversation, of course, Olive and Mabel became global sensations. So I don't know if that had anything to do with maybe the President David Agnew Bump. But are you still watching them?

President David Agnew  23:40

No, it was the Podcast Bump. [Laughter] Well, actually it's funny, I just caught their latest episode the other day. But I have to ask you, is it a Bones Day?

Pat Perdue  23:52

Is it a Bones Day?

President David Agnew  23:54

Oh, you don't know. All right. Here's the latest sensation. Okay, people of my vintage–I won't say yours, you look so much younger–are not usually users of TikTok. But there's this amazing phenomenon on TikTok, where a guy who took a dog that was from a fostering situation called Noodles. And it's a 13 year-old pug. And you know pugs? And 13 years old. So every morning he gets down on his hands and knees and picks up Noodles. And if Noodles stays up it's a Bones Day. And if Noodles, as Noodles will do because it's a 13 year-old pug, lies back down again in this little sweet bed…it's a No Bones Day. And a Bones Day…it's not good news, bad news…but a Bones Day is a day you're going to go out there and try something new. Or take a risk. Or whatever. But a No Bones Day is maybe you should just stay in. And take care of yourself. You know, keep the sweats on. And it’s got millions of viewers. Millions of viewers who are…I mean, a football team explained its loss in saying it was a No Bones Day. A governor said, “You know what? It's a Bones Day. Go get your vaccination.” So that's the new thing there, Pat. Now, you see, you're one of the groovy in-the-know people.

Pat Perdue  25:24

And TikTok sometimes finds its way to Instagram. That's where I…whenever I see something that's on TikTok it's typically going to be on Instagram. After this conversation, you know what I'm going to do?

President David Agnew  25:39

Well, I know what you're going to do every morning now.  You're going to say, “Is it a Bones Day or a No Bones Day?”

Pat Perdue  25:42

And so I'm going to ask you, is it a Bones Day?

President David Agnew  25:45

It's always a Bones Day. For me. It's funny. Since we last talked, I celebrated my 12th anniversary in the job. But in some ways what we've been going through and the kind of excitement of the Au Large renewal initiatives. To me, it's like having a new job. And now as we continue to reopen the campus and have more people come on. It's almost like even if I've known them for 12 years. It's like they're new again. And so it's really very exciting. It's an exciting time where I say this in our all-employee meetings. And I mean it absolutely. Because they're kind of State of the Unions or State of Seneca. Seneca is strong. And it's going to get even stronger. And it's because of the amazing people who work here. It's the amazing people who come here. And I just think it's a very exciting time for us.

Pat Perdue  26:46

That's great. Well, what a great spot to leave our conversation on. President David Agnew, thank you so much for setting aside some time in your very busy schedule to hang out with us on the Seneca Proud Podcast.

President David Agnew  27:00

Always a pleasure, Pat. Thanks so much.

Pat Perdue  27:02

Thank you. Bye. And how positive was that? It's always a great time having President Agnew on the Pod. Especially this year, when so much work has been done behind the scenes. And we're so close. Starting to open things up again. I for one cannot wait. And I hope you're as excited as I am because it's going to be so good. Feels like a lot of Bones Days are in our collective future. And I'm so grateful for President Agnew for joining the show, as always, and especially I'm grateful to you for listening. This podcast is produced every two weeks. So subscribe to it from wherever you get your podcasts. And I'll see you back here in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, stay proud Seneca.