#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.

If there is one thing we’ve learned over the past couple of years, is that things are changing. Sometimes slowly, like it feels as though this pandemic thing has been going on forever. And sometimes really quickly – like how quickly classes at Seneca College shifted from being 98% in-person, to practically 100% online, in a matter of just a few weeks. So how is all that change in classroom delivery managed? Who decides, and who is the one who will say, “Hey, you know what? This thing that we started during COVID is really working well. Let’s keep it.” And while that’s pretty much a team effort involving lots of faculty as well as the senior leadership, the actual person who’s job it is to navigate all of that complexity is the Vice-President, Academic. In quote-unquote normal times, it’s a very tricky role. But these days, with so much change happening, and classes starting to open up in the coming weeks and months, it’s never been trickier, or more important. The Seneca College Vice-President of Academic is Marianne Marando, and as you can imagine she’s super busy, and she just happens to be our guest on today’s show.

Before we get to the interview, let me tell you a little about Marianne –

As VP Academic, Marianne Marando recently returned to Seneca after five years at Durham College, where she was Associate Vice-President, Academic. As you’ll hear from our conversation, Marianne started her career in academia around 20 years ago as a teacher – first at George Brown College, where she became the marketing program co-ordinator, and then right here at Seneca College as a professor, and co-ordinator in the School of Marketing. Then she progressed to academic chair positions in the School of International Business, and the Centre for Human Resources and the School

of Media and Marketing. Marianne also served as Seneca’s Director of Marketing and Communications, before accepting the role of Executive Dean, School of Business, IT & Management.

Her first role at Durham was as Executive Dean, School of Business, IT & Management. She was then appointed Associate Vice-President, Academic, responsible for program review and renewal, capital budgeting, corporate training, international education and the office of the registrar. Marianne holds an honours degree in business administration and an MBA from York University, an adult education certificate from Seneca and is enrolled in the Doctor of Education, Educational Leadership program at Western University. Marianne is also the board chair at a pretty amazing organization called Blue Door, a York Region-based provider of emergency housing and housing supports. We spoke extensively about Blue Door in an episode last season. Blue Door Shelters provides shelter to families, youth, women and men without a safe place to stay. As they say on their website, Homelessness can happen to anyone . It’s an incredible organization that helps people experiencing homelessness and shelter anxiety make the transition to permanent housing, and begin to move forward in their lives. I’ll leave a link to Blue Door in the show notes.

And normally I share the interview part-way into the conversation, skipping the “hi, how are you. Welcome to the podcast” as well as reviewing the guest’s bio with them, because I want get right to the good stuff – but for today’s episode I want to share the start with you, because what you’ll discover is that Marianne, as accomplished as she is, is also super nice and down to earth. Okay, here’s my conversation with Seneca College Vice-President, Academic, Marianne Marando.

Marianne, welcome to the podcast. I'm so glad you could join us.

 

Marianne Marando 05:18

Thank you, Pat. It's my pleasure to be here, and man, I've been around the block. That's what that intro tells me.

 

Pat Perdue 05:26

Well, you know, you've, it's, you bring a lot to your current role. That's what that tells me as well.

 

Marianne Marando 05:32

One or the other.

 

Pat Perdue 05:35

So let's talk about your current role: VP of Academic at Seneca, if you can share with us a little bit about what that means.

 

Marianne Marando 05:43

Sure. So you mentioned in the intro that I started teaching at Seneca about 20 years ago, and one of the steps in getting a full time job at Seneca was meeting with the Vice President Academic. And about five minutes into that meeting, I decided, That's the job I want. So this has been my dream job for a long time. And it's taken me 20 years to get there. And it's funny because now I get to meet with new faculty as part of their hiring. So the tables have turned. But the reason that the job was so intriguing to

me is that as a faculty, you get to impact your class in deeply. But it's, as you know, it's deep, but it's limited in that it's your class. As the Vice President Academic, you get to impact all students. And I find that really exciting. So I see myself as the Chief Academic Officer, and sometimes call myself the Chief Quality Officer. And really, I'm responsible for making sure that every student from every credential, whether it's a four year degree, or you know, a six hour micro credential, and everything in between… My job is to make sure they're getting the highest quality education that they can, and that we always stay on top of that trend to keep providing high quality education. So it's a really exciting job. It's been my dream job. My heart's been at Seneca. I had a great experience at Durham and George Brown, the other colleges, amazing institutions. But my heart has always been with Seneca. So I'm so happy to be back in this role.

 

Pat Perdue 07:09

What a great story. And as I, as we cast our mind back to that person, 20 years ago, when you thought, “I really want that job,” Now that you have it, it's like my dad would have said, it's like the dog that chases the car and catches it. You know what I mean? So now, what do you do? How has the experience of having the job compared to what you had envisioned?

 

Marianne Marando 07:29

That's an interesting question, because it's harder than I thought it would be. Because there's so many moving parts, and I'm very impatient. And I want all the parts to be moving in the same direction, in the direction that I think they need to go to right away. But with so many complicated parts, you need to really engage and get input and, and move in a very intentional way. So it's a little bit harder than I thought. I can't just say, “let it be.” and it and so, so that's, you know, my impatience gets the better of me. But I'm really happy I'm here. But all of the 20 years experience that got me here is making this job a lot easier than it would have been had I not been down that path. So all the mistakes, I've made all the lessons I've learned… It's a busy job. But it's an amazing job and amazing opportunity.

 

Pat Perdue 08:23

And do you find that your time as a prof at Seneca closely informs your role as VP Academic?

 

Marianne Marando 08:30

I think so. You know, and I still consider myself a prof in my heart. Most of those jobs, I continue to teach a class a semester or a Class a year and people would say, “You're crazy. You're so busy, that's not done at colleges. At universities it's often done, but at colleges, administrators typically don't teach, and people would say, “Why would you want to do that? You're so busy!” But that was my joy. That was that was the best part of my day, though! That time in the classroom. So I still consider myself a prof and, and it really helps me understand what professors do. It helps me understand what it feels like to walk in their shoes. I know how hard it is, I know the challenges. And I think that makes me better at my job. And I mean, at the end of the day... You know this and I know you know this, that's what it's all about is what happens in that classroom. Like that's where the magic is between the professor and the student. That's the magic. That's where it happens. And so if you don't understand that, if you haven't lived that, how do you lead a team of, you know, academics? So I think not, you know, having some teaching experience, I guess it's not necessarily a formal requirement of a VPA job, but I can't imagine doing this job without having that experience.

 

Pat Perdue 09:39

And knowing that the magic happens in the classroom. I'm just imagining, you know, I impact, truthfully, three classrooms a week as a part time prof. You're impacting, when we think of it this way, thousands.

 

Marianne Marando 09:56

Well, I try to Yeah. Well, I'm supporting all of you folks, all of the faculty as they impact... I don't, you know, I'm not a direct impact, but I feel my job is just to help you do your thing in the best way you can. So I think all of us are here to support what happens in that classroom, from the President on down, make sure that happens, you know, to the best of our ability. So I still think you guys are the luckiest guys, professors, to teach. I often feel so jealous, but I hope to get back to it. I'm not teaching right now, just because my schedule’s too busy. But I would really love to teach a class during my time as VP.

 

Pat Perdue 10:32

So let's talk a little bit about some of the things that you're working on. And some of the initiatives that do impact teaching, or do impact that time in the classroom. Knowing that there's so much change taking place in classrooms today, what are some of the things that are capturing your attention these days?

 

Marianne Marando 10:48

So one of the things we're working right now, one of our biggest priorities, is return to campus and, sort of, flexible learning and how learning how teaching and learning has changed post-pandemic. And, you know, when we all went home, March 2020, we were pretty much a face-to-face institution, everyone taught pretty much... we had some online, but we were 100, pretty much 100% face to face. And now we're not. And so now, where are we going to be, you know, in the summer, and in the fall as we emerge out of the pandemic? To me, that's really exciting. So we're really focused on that. We're really focused on taking the lessons of the pandemic that we've learned and bringing them forward. So we have, you know, a number of strategies around offering our students flexible learning, and choice. I think, you know, what we've realized is that students want choice, and that we can really deliver in the flexible mode and in the online mode. So we now have four delivery modes: We have face to face, online, hybrid and flexible. Whereas we used to have one. So just figuring out that mix of delivery that makes sense. Not all courses, you know, work well online. That'll work well flexible or hybrid. So, the exciting part is figuring out what will work best putting the student at the center of that, and figuring out how we emerge. That's really, really exciting. And as I think about it, you know, I think about my experience with doctors, you know, I would never have thought of having an online visit with a doctor prior to the pandemic. And now I can't imagine hauling myself to a doctor's office, you know, for a five minute appointment for simple questions. So, similarly, our work has changed. And we have to figure out where we're gonna land and that best mix of delivery modes to make sure that that student experience, and learning experience, is optimal.

 

Pat Perdue 12:29

Oh, that sounds exciting, and super daunting.

 

Marianne Marando 12:33

It's not easy. It's because we're bringing faculty with us, right. And not all faculty think the same way. And not all faculty, you know, there's some, you know, that we have to sort of bring along and help

them, and listen to their concerns around flexible and online, and help bring them along. So it's a massive change management project. And that requires a lot of engagement. And, and you can't change by, you know, sort of pushing from the top down. That's not how it works. It really involves bringing everyone on board and making sure everyone's on this train. I've often called this, you know... Seneca right now is a really fast moving train. We're moving fast and furious towards a post pandemic reality, where we I think we're going to be leaders in flexible learning, flexible teaching, and learning flexible work. I think we already are. And I think we will continue that leadership. But we're really moving fast. And there's some people at Seneca that are sort of on that train riding with us, but there's some that are like, “We're not sure we want to get on this train.” So, you know, a lot of my job is around listening to faculty and staff to make sure we're all on the same page.

 

Pat Perdue 13:35

And I was going to ask you in terms of, you know, those are excellent intended outcomes, what are some of the strategies or the tactics that you're focusing on in order to achieve those outcomes, and to actually even know that you're heading in that direction?

 

Marianne Marando 13:50

Right. So you know, some of the things we're doing is we're measuring, so we talked, we do surveys of faculty, staff, students, just to make sure that we are having the impact that we have, we're looking at students success in terms of, you know, retention and achievement of their courses. But mostly, we're listening to faculty and staff with concerns. So when we first launched flexible delivery, I want to say it was launched before I got here, you know, it wasn't perfect, and there were things that we had to change. And so we listened to faculty who said, Well, you know, you should look at this or this technology or change this. And we spent a lot of time listening to them and then improving and I think we're on our fourth version of our flexible classroom since that very, very first one. Each one with an improvement and all of those came from listening to faculty. So it's a lot of listening and a lot of making adjustments and, and training faculty to make sure that they're prepared to teach, you know, in this new environment, and supporting and encouraging all those great things.

 

Pat Perdue 14:51

And in addition to that, as you cast your mind into, I guess, a post-COVID pandemic pseudo new normal that's gonna sort of...

 

Marianne Marando 15:03

Will anything ever anything ever be normal again?

 

Pat Perdue 15:06

What are some... In addition to the flex teaching, are there some particular things that you're looking forward to once this really, you know, formal lockdown is a little bit more behind us.

 

Marianne Marando 15:16

Yeah, so the other two parts of our strategic plan in addition to flexibility, the other two parts are also really near and dear to me, one being a more equitable Seneca. So we have a number of equity initiatives, which the pandemic has, has highlighted the inequity in some cases, right ,in terms of access and technology. So I'm really excited about some issues around equity. And the final piece is

sustainability. And, again, I think the pandemic has highlighted how important it is to you know, be good to our planet, and, and to make sure that we're, you know, sustaining our economy. So those two pieces are really, really exciting. I'm also excited to hear where we go from here, right. We're just on the cusp of developing our next strategic plan. So okay, pandemic’s done. We're leaders in Flex, we have great equity initiatives with sustainability initiatives. Now, where do we go? And I think Seneca is poised to really take things in some really extraordinary ways. We're not sure where yet. We're just in the consultation stages. But I think we're ready to really take it to the next level.

 

Pat Perdue 16:17

As we consider the next level. Is there anything that you're at liberty to talk about? As, you know, you're kind of gazing into a crystal ball, and sort of, “This is the direction that we're headed.” Has anything come to the surface?

 

Marianne Marando 16:31

We're just in the early stages. Nothing yet, really. We're about to embark on that process. And that will be led by President David Agnew. And I'm sure he knows. He's got a vision. He's always, you know, his vision has got us here where we are now. So I'm sure he has, sort of, in the back of his mind a vision. But we haven't started the consultation and the discussion around where we're going with the neck strat plan.

 

Pat Perdue 16:55

Well I'm sure it's going to be exciting when you do. And such a different world, because I imagine that's going to be more of an in-person environment than it is now, which is mostly not-at-all, is that correct?

 

Marianne Marando 17:08

Yeah, mostly not at all. But we're gonna see more and more. There's more classes coming on stream, if face-to-face in the next couple of weeks, and then even more in the Summer and even more in the Fall. And I'm looking forward to that. I'm really looking forward to seeing students back, and I'm looking forward to the sort of the energy of the campus. And I'm also looking forward to having staff back. Right now we're all working virtually, most of us, I'm looking forward to collaborating in person. I don't think we're all going to go back to what we did prior to the pandemic, you know, nine to five in the office. I think there'll be flexible work arrangements for staff. But it's finding what it will look like that's exciting. And I also don't think we're going to go back to what Seneca looked like in terms of delivery, pre-pandemic. We are going to offer more online hybrid and flexible options for students. There's no going back. Why go back there? It's about picking the best, what works the best for each course, and moving forward in that way.

 

Pat Perdue 18:03

Then in that regard, the pandemic and the resulting, you know, shutdown of Seneca and our, you know, our need to pivot, seemed to be... as challenging, as hard as it was, seems to be sort of a learning moment for Seneca moving forward.

 

Marianne Marando 18:20

And we learned a lot. And I remember I wasn't at Seneca when the pandemic first started, I was at Durham. But I remember thinking, ‘This is so hard. How are we going to do this?’ And it was hard, but

we figured it out. And I think the first couple of weeks of teaching online, it probably wasn't perfect. Faculty were amazing. Just figuring things out. And faculty were buying headsets and microphones and setting up lights. And I mean, just the amount of work that went into that was incredible. But they've become very, very, very, very good at it through training and through practice. So we've come a long way. But I think the biggest challenge will be actually coming out of the pandemic. I think, I think, you know, coming into the pandemic, we just reacted and we just did what we had to do. We made it work. Coming out is the big opportunity. And I think finding our new normal, and making sure that we capitalize on those learnings, and maximize the impact, I think is going to be the most challenging part.

 

Pat Perdue 19:14

And you must be looking forward to being able to roam the halls, lots of people, lots of people to talk to. Food court full of people. For some reason, that's the image I have in my mind, because I know it's a beautiful food court.

 

Marianne Marando 19:27

I know! And you may be able to guess I do like to chitchat. So I look forward to just, you know, walking the halls and running into people. Every conversation now, it has to be so intentional, that it's difficult to do sometimes. And for students. I mean, our students are missing the on-campus experience as much as some of them say, “You know what? I'm really happy with online. I never want to come on campus.” And that's fine. We'll have programs for them. Many of them are missing the opportunity to be with their friends, to be in the library, to be in our computer commons, to be in our studios in our labs. I mean, we've got some extraordinary labs and equipment that students aren't able to experience firsthand right now. So, they're looking forward to it, as are we,

 

Pat Perdue 20:07

And I'm imagining you, being who you are, and wanting to keep your, you know your finger on the pulse of what's going on, you're the type of person that does roam the halls to say, “Hey, what's going on?”

 

Marianne Marando 20:18

Yeah, that's always been my style. It's a, it's a problem sometimes, because I ended up at the end of the day, not actually having done much work. So I ended up spending all night working. But I think the, the lessons you learn by talking to people, faculty, and students and staff are so important. So, I do a lot of that. And I did a lot of that when I started at Seneca. I ran a number of virtual coffee chats with students and with faculty. And let me tell you, though, you know, students and faculty will tell you what's on their mind, and they very quickly helped me develop my priority. So those coffee chats, I would have loved to have done them in person, but we ended up doing them virtually. And in some ways, it was actually great, because I could talk to 100 or 200 people, you know, at a time, that would have been a little bit more difficult in person. So it was good. It was great. So that was how I spent my first couple of months is listening. And that really informed my priorities. And I have to figure out a way to always make time for that. Because it's easy, sometimes those conversations slip to the bottom of the to do list, when you have so much other stuff on the go.

 

Pat Perdue 21:18

When you were having those conversations, did anything surprise you? You must have come in with some sort of sense or pre-conception of your role or your priorities. Was there a process of shifting after having those conversations?

 

Marianne Marando 21:33

Yeah, I was surprised how open everyone was, you know, to, to changing. I was surprised how hard everyone had worked. Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised. But I don't think I realized how hard it was for faculty and staff, all of us, to make the transition to online learning. That came across really, really clearly. I was surprised to hear sort of the techniques and ways of operating that faculty came up with like, they macgyvered solutions to everything. You know, and I heard from faculty who said, “Well, I had this problem and, and you know, I ended up I have a whiteboard in my, in my kitchen, and I have a camera on. They just figured it out, right? They figured it out, which that impressed me so much when I heard how faculty figured it out, and, you know, each in their own way. So that, that was really interesting for me to hear.

 

Pat Perdue 22:23

How exciting and how, I guess how refreshing and heartening that you're joining a team that was so engaged, and so ready to step up and make it happen?

 

Marianne Marando 22:33

Yeah, well, you have to. We have the best team at Seneca. And that's all not only faculty, administrators, our IT department has been so supportive. Our HR partners, our Teaching and Learning center, our Student Services team. I mean, what I what just astounds me at Seneca is that every department is so clear on what our mission is that it makes it really, really amazing. It's an amazing place to work.

 

Pat Perdue 22:57

What a great statement to be able to make. That's awesome. And I believe that so sincerely. And so we have a lot of different people listening; we have faculty listening to the podcast, we have students listening to the podcast. So, I'm going to I'm glancing sort of at our student listeners right now. And they're, you know, they're figuring things out. They're figuring out the careers, what they want to do next. And perhaps they're hearing your story. And they're thinking, ‘Yeah, I kind of want that job.’ What's some guidance that you might provide for them?

 

Marianne Marando 23:26

Sure. So, if someone you know, if I was speaking to a student who wanted to become an administrator in a college, the first thing I would say is, it should start with some time as a professor, I think that's important. And I think to start as a professor, it starts with some time in your industry. So, you know, as at a place like Seneca, where we rely so much on real life learning, hands on learning, applied learning, we hire professors, based on their industry experience. So if you're teaching marketing, it's your marketing experience. So, I think, what I do tell students is go out and launch your career. Have a great career, whether it be for five or 10 years, and be really amazing at it. And then dip your toe into teaching, and then do a bit of teaching and then you can build your career as an administrator. I'm not saying every sort of senior administrator has worked their way up that they haven't there are some that

have just come in and have been very, very successful. But it's been my path and I think it's a successful path to sort of build some industry experience. Mine was in marketing. I had about 10 years in marketing. And then bring that to the classroom. Look, you know, understand what happens in the classroom, understand sort of the inner workings of Seneca, and then and then move to an administrative role. So that's what I would tell our students. Go out, build your career, be awesome at it, and then come back and share what you've learned with our students.

 

Pat Perdue 24:42

Awesome, awesome, great advice. And speaking of your career, and your trajectory, and we talked about teaching, when we start to move back into in-person classes or when that becomes an option, do you see in your future teaching or teaching from time to time? Something that you might want to consider doing?

 

Marianne Marando 25:01

I sure hope so, right? It's difficult to commit to a 14 week class because with my calendar, you know, and you don't want to put the students, you don't want to harm the students because you have a meeting that you have to go to. But I always look for an opportunity to interject myself into the classroom, whether it be for a guest lecture, or you know, a week class a week or two, I will look for those opportunities. And maybe one day, I will have a schedule that's manageable enough where I can teach a full course,

 

Pat Perdue 25:31

When we were going over your introduction in your bio, you do a lot of stuff.

 

Marianne Marando 25:37

I like to be busy. Yeah, I like to be busy. You know, other than you read my bio, my other passion other than Seneca and teaching is Blue Door, which is a group of homeless shelters in York Region, and I'm the Chair of the Board of Blue Door. And that really is such important work to me. And we actually hire a lot of Seneca students to be, you know, there's a Seneca connection to Blue Door, and that they hire a lot of us, or social work students. And it's really great to see it from the other side, where now I'm in the employer shoes, and seeing how our students engage with an employer is pretty incredible.

 

Pat Perdue 26:11

Really interesting observation. And I'll definitely leave some links to blue door in the show notes. And as we begin to come to the end of our conversation, we touched on what life at Seneca post pandemic will be like, particularly in the classroom, is there anything else that that in particular jumps to mind that, that you're particularly excited about? And it could even include, if it was me answering the question, it would probably be the food court.

 

Marianne Marando 26:42

Oh, my goodness, wait to see! We have, I don't know how much I can tell you. But there are some amazing plans for that cafeteria, around a mural that is being, that is in process right now. And I won't give away too much. But it's a mural that is being worked on. That will just be an incredible experience that will paint a picture of Seneca and of our community and of our land. It's going to be beautiful. So I'm very excited to see that. I'm not sure when that will be up. But it should be up, you know, when

we're open. So I'm excited about that. I'm excited about our new service hub. So we've really... This is not under my area. It’s under my colleague, VP Renata Dinnocenzo’s area, but she's really launching a new approach to student services where typically you go into college and there's all wickets, right? You want student loans, you know, financial assistance, wickets? And we're launching a hub where you kind of walk in and there's a triage. And if you want virtual support, you'd go into a booth and speak to someone virtually. If you want face to face, we have someone here and we can triage. So, it's a service model. That's really, really exciting. That again, once again, Seneca will be a leader. So that will be, we are piloting that now, and that will be ready to launch when we're back in the fall, I think. And I think that will provide our students with student experience at a level that we haven't experienced yet. So I'm excited. I'm very excited about that.

 

Pat Perdue 28:06

Well, I can't think of a better spot to end our conversation than on that super positive note. Marianne, thank you so much for joining the SenecaProwd podcast today.

 

Marianne Marando 28:14

Thanks. It's been great chatting.

 

Pat Perdue 28:17

And that was my conversation with Seneca College Vice President Academic Maryanne Marando. My key takeaway from that conversation was how dedicated Marianne is to furthering Seneca’s position as a leader in accessible student centered learning at Seneca College, particularly in these times of great change. What was your key takeaway? And Marianne mentioned Blue Door. Be sure to check out the link in the show notes if you want to see how you can get involved with this great organization and make a difference. Again, a huge thank you to Marianne Marando for joining us on the pod. And as always, thank you for listening. I'm Pat Perdue. Stay proud Seneca.