Building a Learning Community

Principal Munroe-Blum established the Task Force on Diversity, Excellence and Community Engagement to assess McGill’s strengths in achieving excellence, inclusiveness and community contribution in the pursuit of McGill’s mission.

• Timeline: Ongoing
• Units: Members of the Task Force, Office of the Principal, Office of the Provost, Planning and Institutional Analysis, Faculties, Friends of McGill, McGill Community
• Actions taken:
  • 2009-10: Call for submissions to the Task Force.
• Upcoming:
  • 2010-11: Draft recommendations will be submitted to Senate and the Board of Governors, followed by a final report.

The LEAD program prepares students for positive and constructive leadership within the student body while encouraging them to engage in their communities in a socially responsible way.

Participants in the LEAD Program explore topics of diversity and social justice, e.g., sexual identity, disability, race, and ethnicity in small discussion groups of their peers. Our goal is to create a safe and encouraging environment for learning and sharing based on mutual respect for each individual's experience.

• Timeline: Ongoing
• Unit: Social Equity and Diversity Education Office
• Actions taken:
  • 2007-08: The LEAD program, launched in 2007, continues to be offered annually to students. Participants develop skills in self-reflection and personal growth, interpersonal communication, and community involvement.

The Social Equity and Diversity Education (SEDE) Office has helped to educate and heighten awareness about equity and diversity-related issues through the Cultivate Respect and Burst Your Bubble awareness campaigns. Their aim is to raise awareness on some common misconceptions and prejudice, encourage community members to seek accurate information about each other in order to adjust perspectives and change attitudes and shed light on the detrimental, far-reaching effects stereotypes have on relationships within the community.

• Timeline: Ongoing
• Unit: Social Equity and Diversity Education Office
• Actions taken:
  • 2009-10, 2008-09: Over the last two years, the Community in Diversity and Burst Your Bubble! campaigns have celebrated the high-quality students, faculty, and staff members from a diverse social, cultural, and economic backgrounds and identities, which are part of the McGill community. Leading up to the launch of the Burst-Your-Bubble campaign, Residences and Student Housing hosted a reception with help from members of the Social Equity and Diversity Education Office office.
  • 2007-08: Cultivate Respect! - Challenging Stereotypes
  • 2006-07: Cultivate Respect! - McGill's 1st Annual Harassment Prevention Week

The First-Year Office’s Leadership Training offers a number of opportunities for students interested in leading an active student life. The Leadership Training Program’s workshops and development opportunities are open to all students enrolled in a degree program at McGill on both the downtown and Macdonald campuses, including opportunities for graduate students. The Leadership Training Program includes: Orientation Group Leader Training, Student Services Core Volunteer Training, Server Training, a Facilitator Training Program and a Leadership Skills Development Certificate Program for student leaders.

• Ongoing
• Unit: First Year Office
• Actions taken:
  • Leadership McGill, launched in January 2008, comprises many events workshops, conferences and other resources designed to help students lead active lives on campus.
• Ongoing: Leadership Skills Development Workshop Series, Leadership For Life! annual conference

The Student Demographic Survey, launched in Fall 2009, measured student diversity, which will help the University to better understand the needs of students.

• Timeline: 2009-10
• Unit: Planning and Institutional Analysis
• Actions taken:
  • 2009-10: The results of the survey, which was completed in Fall 2009, are being compiled.

A generous gift from Senator Michael Meighen and his wife Kelly established a $5M endowment, The Kelly and Michael Meighen Program for Student Orientation and Support, which will be key in supporting Student Life and Learning initiatives to help students (especially first-year students) make the transition to university.

• Timeline: Ongoing

The First-Year Office assists new students and their parents and families obtain information related to resources and services available across campus to ensure a smooth transition into the academic and social life at McGill University.
First-Year Essentials

• Timeline: Ongoing
• Units: First-Year Office, Faculties, Residences

The First Year Transition Network (FYTN), focused on the meaningful support and development of initiatives for First-Year McGill undergraduates, is dedicated to building a leadership infrastructure necessary to coordinate student services, community engagement and orientation programming across the University.

• Timeline: Ongoing
• Actions taken:
  • Since June, 2009, the FYTN has developed and is currently administering three projects: 1) The Community Action Toolkit; 2) The Student Services Guide and Campus Map; 3) Student Orientation Integration.
• Upcoming:
  • Conduct assessments & maintain associations with other institutions and relevant professional organizations in order to achieve ongoing improvement in the first-year student experience.

The Orientation helps ensure that graduate students are fully informed of expectations, which will aid them in fulfilling their roles with respect to supervision and advising.

• Units: Post-Graduate Students' Society, Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies Office, First-Year Office
• Timeline: Ongoing
• Actions taken:
  • An interactive electronic guide to services for graduate students was circulated to students who attended Orientation. The guide also provided students with browsable electronic publications, such as the Green Book (Student Rights and Responsibilities) and the Red Book (Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies calendar), as well as a guide to living in Montreal.
  • Orientation sessions were interactive. Participants were able to provide immediate feedback, using 'clickers' for live voting, and see how the rest of the group responded.
  • Collaboration between the Post-Graduate Students' Society, Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies Office and the First-Year Office ensured that Orientation met the needs of graduate students.
  • A separate Information Session/pizza lunch, organized by the Post-Graduate Students' Society, serving as an introduction to Research Ethics, the Library, and the Office of the Dean of Students, helped communicate McGill's expectations to graduate students.
  • A survey, distributed at Orientation, allowed students to suggest improvements for future sessions.
• Upcoming:
  • Post-Graduate Students' Society, Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies Office, First-Year Office and Student Services will review participant feedback and will continue to collaborate closely to develop effective and informative Orientation sessions for future years.

The University is taking steps to increase students' exposure to small- and medium- sized courses and improve teaching and learning in larger classes.

• Timeline: Ongoing
• Units: Office of the Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning), Teaching and Learning Services, Content and Collaboration Solutions, Educational Technologies (CCS), Faculties
• Actions taken:
  • Academic units were asked to review their offerings of very small courses with a goal of increasing enrolment slightly, thereby increasing the offerings of small courses.
  • March 2009: Sowing the seeds of inquiry: Teaching and learning at a research-intensive university. This two-day university-wide event brought together all those across campus interested in learning about the integration of teaching and research/scholarship to promote student learning. The highlight of the event was a panel of McGill professors and their students, each pair describing an experience where students were actively engaged in learning through the professor’s capacity to incorporate the findings, methods and/or processes of research/scholarship.
• Ongoing:
• Workshops, offered by Teaching and Learning Services help instructors on how to enhance student engagement.

Awareness Campaigns addressed to students living in residences aims to increase students’ understanding of diversity in McGill Residences, to help incoming students to continue developing their awareness and appreciation of their peers and other members in the McGill community.

• Timeline: Ongoing
• Units: Residences and Student Housing, Social Equity and Diversity Education Office
• Actions taken:
  • 2008-09: Continue to raise awareness of diversity in Residences, McGill and in Montreal. Launch of Community Group of the Week in Residences - a different campus or community group will be profiled each week along with information about how to get involved.
  • Winter 2008: Linking Campus and Community (March 10 - 18, 2008): A week of events aimed at fostering new contacts between McGill students, faculty and staff and Montreal's communities. Involved visits to community centres and a presentation at EcoMuseée.
  • Fall 2007: The diversity awareness activities, launched Fall 2007,at Student Council Orientation and Floor Fellow Orientation, staff/student interfaith visits in collaboration with Chaplaincy Office.

A web-based multimedia (video, text and graphics) site: Interactive Guide to Finding an Internship

• Timeline: Fall 2007
• Units: Arts, CIO
• Actions taken:
  • One example was launched Summer 2007, sponsored by the Faculty of Arts, to promote Internships on campus, as part of the University’s overall internships initiative.

An interactive web site has been developed to show new students what legal documents they need to deliver to Enrolment Services to ensure that their tuition is assessed correctly and that their registration file is complete. A new Minerva tool for the collection of legal documents is being developed to replace the current email process.
Legal Documents

• Timeline: Fall 2007
• Units: Enrolment Service, Chief Information Officer
• Actions taken:
  • Website launched Summer 2007.
• Ongoing: Minerva tool for collection of legal documents in development.

• Timeline: Ongoing
• Units: IT Services, Office of the Chief Information Officer
• Actions taken:
  • Functionality enhancements are ongoing.
  • March 2010: New "portlets" added, allowing more control over the information you see and how you see it on mymcgill. New and improved functionality

A review was undertaken of the information targeted to students on the McGill website. The aim of the review was to examine how Stiudent Life and Learning sites could be made more accessible and the navigation more intuitive.

• Timeline: 2007-08: Project plan completed. Improvements ongoing
• Units: Office of Public Affairs, Office of the Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning), Content and Collaboration Solutions
• Actions taken:
  • Fall 2008: Banner for Student Aid Canada system allows students to access student aid information via their Financial Aid Menu in Minerva. (See section 2 for more information on Banner for Student Aid Canada.)
  • Since the review, www.mcgill.ca/students a new landing page, was created to provide a comprehensive directory of services and resources for students, linking to information about exams, courses, academic support, counselling, finances/tuition, the bookstore, transportation, important dates, and much more.
  • http://www.mcgill.ca/students/courses/ is a new site assembling all information regarding how to plan a courseload, change/register for courses, and find course information. Content had previously been scattered across several separate sites.
  • The First-Year Office: Re-organized the architecture and edited/polished/re-organized the content to improve navigability, added images and channels functionality to make information easier to find.
  • /Student Rights and Responsibilities is a new site assembling all information regarding students’ rights and responsibilities as outlined in the Student Handbook, as well as additional information for students and instructors about plagiarism and cheating, citation resources and the disciplinary process. Content had previously been scattered across several separate sites.
  • /Academic Advising, introduced elsewhere in the Report Card is a new site assembling all information regarding services offered by the various types of advisors, a directory of SAOs, an online form where students can submit advising questions with a guaranteed reply in 48 business hours, and an expansive FAQ covering a broad range of common academic questions. Content had previously been scattered across several separate sites.
  • Transfer Credits and Advanced Standing assembles all information for both prospective and current students on this subject. Content had previously been scattered across several separate sites.
  • International education re-organized the architecture and polished the content to improve user-friendliness and make content easier to find.
  • /International Student Services re-organized the architecture and polished the content to improve user-friendliness and make content easier to find.
  • /Engage McGill was the result of a question by students at a Town Hall meeting with the Principal, and in consultation with SSMU, we created a new site aimed at increasing students’ extra-curricular engagement on campus. The site includes a comprehensive list of student clubs and initiatives, a SSMU-maintained list of upcoming events, and volunteering and employment opportunities at McGill.
  • /Important dates is a new site listing all academic dates in the Undergraduate Programs Calendar, searchable by category, by faculty/school and by keyword.

The McGill International Education Network meets regularly to consider what supports are needed centrally and what is needed to encourage students to participate in international activities. This group is responsible for Exchanges, and has representation from Faculty offices engaged in international student mobility.

• Timeline: Ongoing
• Units: Office of the Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning), Faculties

The LEAD program prepares students for positive and constructive leadership within the student body while encouraging them to engage in their communities in a socially responsible way.

Participants in the LEAD Program explore topics of diversity and social justice, e.g., sexual identity, disability, race, and ethnicity in small discussion groups of their peers. Our goal is to create a safe and encouraging environment for learning and sharing based on mutual respect for each individual's experience.

• Timeline: Ongoing
• Unit: Social Equity and Diversity Education Office
• Actions taken:
  • 2007-08: The LEAD program, launched in 2007, continues to be offered annually to students. Participants develop skills in self-reflection and personal growth, interpersonal communication, and community involvement.

Following the Roundtable on International Education held in 2005-06, the Office of the Deputy Provost drafted a strategic plan to develop exchange opportunities consistent with University priorities and responsive to Faculty priorities.

• Timeline: Ongoing
• Units: Office of the Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) with input from Deans, Vice Principal (Research and International Relations), Academic Policy Committee
• Ongoing: Continued discussion and alignment with faculty and university emerging priorities.

The inter-university-transfer agreement allows McGill undergraduate or graduate students registered in a degree, diploma or certificate to take three or, exceptionally, six credits at another Québec university.
Québec Inter-university transfer (IUT) agreement">

• Timeline: Ongoing
• Unit: Enrolment Services
• Upcomimg:
  • Launch Fall 2008

The exchange between McGill and Université de Montréal was piloted for a 2-year period, but although there was interest by Université de Montréal students to attend McGill, there was little interest on the part of McGill students to attend Université de Montréal. The exchange was discontinued in 2010-11.

• Timeline: Complete
• Units: Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning), Enrolment Services, Arts & Science

A Learn French web page was added to the McGill Student Information tab to inform students about French / Quebec Studies Programs at McGill.

• Timeline: Fall 2007
• Unit: SLL
• Actions taken:
  • Site launched

On-going support for Francophone students studying in English for the first time.
Étudiants francophones

• Timeline: 2007-08
• Unit: First-year Office
• Actions taken:
  • Adjointe aux étudiants francophones de première année hired

Ensure front-line staff are wearing bilingual badges and that bilingual signage is posted.

• Timeline: Fall 2007
• Units:
• Actions taken:
  • Summer 2007: Name badges distributed to front-line staff

French conversation skills and writing skills are offered at various levels.
Organizational and staff development programs

• Timeline: Fall 2007
• Units: HR- Staff Development
• Actions taken:
  • Programs in place will evolve with the needs of the community.