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We are days away from OUSA’s 2011 Spring General Assembly and the excitement is building.
Our host for the weekend, the Alma Mater Society of Queen’s University, is busily preparing to welcome over 50 student leaders from 9 different universities for three days of intense discussion, strategizing and policy development. Among their other responsibilities, General Assembly delegates will debate three draft policy papers, prepared by the Steering Committee, on the subjects of Aboriginal students, ancillary fees, and student success.
Delegates can look forward to a visit from the Honourable John Milloy, Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, who has always been committed to constructive dialogue with students. With a budget, a long-term plan for higher education, and an election on the horizon, this will be another excellent opportunity to bring the needs of students to the attention of government.
Regarding the past month, the highlight was undoubtedly the release of Breaking Barriers, a holistic access strategy devised by OUSA and our partners at the College Student Alliance and the Ontario Student Trustees’ Association. The release received coverage in the national media, and demonstrated again how OUSA is committed to making progress toward an accessible, affordable, and accountable post-secondary education system that offers our students the quality experience they deserve.
-Meaghan Coker
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The year 2011 has started with lots of activity, as January was filled with considerable progress on a number of OUSA’s ongoing priorities. Most visibly on our campuses across Ontario, the annual Blue Chair Campaign was a great success at raising awareness and bringing understanding to the issues of accessibility and early intervention. Accessibility continues to be a major priority for OUSA, and we are looking forward to jointly releasing our Access submission, “Breaking Barriers: A Strategy for Equal Access to Higher Education”, with the College Student Alliance (CSA) and the Ontario Student Trustees’ Association (OSTA) this month.
On January 17th, the Honourable John Milloy, Minister of Training, Colleges, and Universities, officially announced the creation of a Credit Transfer Innovation Fund, which included over 70 million dollars to assist in the development of an expansive credit transfer system between Ontario’s university and colleges. This is one step forward towards opening up Ontario’s pathway mobility between our post-secondary institutions and students recognize the access opportunities that this will mean for them.
With the announcement of the Provincial budget quickly approaching, on behalf of OUSA I was provided the opportunity to present our budget recommendations to the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs. In our submission, we highlighted the importance to provide for enhancements to the student financial assistance system and to increase Ontario’s per student funding levels, with the aim of returning to a fairer cost sharing model between government and students. In addition to funding the long term enrollment growth as outlined in the Open Ontario Plan, we continue to stress the importance of the government providing leadership in terms of investing in teaching quality and student support services in our institutions.
During the question period of our presentation, we continued to receive support from MPP Elizabeth Witmer, Education Critic for the Official Opposition, on better allocating Education Tax Credit funding and the substantial impact that teacher training programs can have on the classroom learning experience for students.
In the lead up to the provincial budget release, we will continue the conversation around the recommendations OUSA has made to improve the accessibility, affordability, accountability, and quality of post-secondary education in our province, and the significant benefits these investments have for the prosperity of Ontario and all Ontarians.
-Meaghan Coker
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November was an exciting month for OUSA, beginning with our Fall General Assembly in St. Catharines hosted by the Brock University Students’ Union. After months of research and analysis, the hard work of our Steering Committee and Home Office Staff culminated in a weekend of debate and discussion with student representation from all of our member schools. At the end of the three days, we emerged with three approved policies including a revised plan on student financial assistance, an updated accessibility and early outreach strategy, and a whole set of recommendations on international students studying in Ontario. OUSA’s General Assemblies’ always seek to provide the necessary forum for student engagement and dialogue; and I am exceedingly proud of the leadership that our students have shown in setting the direction for OUSA’s advocacy on these priorities.
Only a few weeks later, we held our annual Student Advocacy Conference in Toronto at Queen’s Park. For three days, our student leaders had over 70 meetings with Members of Provincial Parliament, cabinet ministers, political staff and members of the public service, with the purpose of spreading OUSA’s message on the importance of investing in post-secondary education (PSE) in Ontario. This conference provides the distinct opportunity for student representatives to meet with the provincial decision makers and present the concerns and challenges currently facing Ontario students. Our student delegates spent their time discussing the reallocation of Educational Tax Credit funding into other forms of needs-based financial assistance including the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP). Students also stressed the necessity of additional enrolment space funding to accommodate the growth that Ontario’s system will experience over the next five years. Further, students presented strategies to improve teaching quality within our classrooms and recommendations on how the provincial government can offer a more holistic and comprehensive access strategy for groups currently underrepresented in our universities and colleges.
This week has ultimately proved to be successful in broadening the awareness and importance of investment in higher education. I want to thank all of those who met with OUSA over the past week for your time and continued support – the students of Ontario rely on your voices and decisions to enhance the accessibility, affordability, accountability and quality of PSE in the province.
Finally, I want to thank all of the student delegates from our seven member schools for your dedication at these conferences over the past month. Your efforts to advance the issues and advocacy for students across Ontario have made a difference.
-Meaghan Coker
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We are days away from OUSA’s 2010 Fall General Assembly and the excitement is building.
Our host for the weekend, the Brock University Students’ Union (BUSU), is busily preparing for the 45 students from 7 different universities coming to their campus. The weekend begins on Friday afternoon in which we have the Honourable Jim Wilson, MPP for Simcoe-Grey and Official Critic for Training, Colleges & Universities and the Honourable Rosario Marchese, MPP for Trinity Spadina and Official NDP Critic for Training, Colleges & Universities speaking to the OUSA delegates.
This will provide a tremendous opportunity for students to ask questions and gain insight into their short-term and long-term priorities for post-secondary education in the year leading up to the provincial election in October 2011, and beyond next fall.
However not all of the anticipation of this General Assembly is reserved for Friday night, as Saturday and Sunday should prove to be two days full of stimulating debate and solution-oriented discussions.
This weekend, the General Assembly are tasked with reviewing three policy papers, on the subjects of Student Financial Assistance, Internationalization, and Accessibility. These are three major areas that encompass enormous amounts of research and affect a vast amount of the students that OUSA represents.
On behalf of the OUSA Steering Committee, we are all eagerly awaiting this weekend to begin. The OUSA General Assemblies are infamously known for their engaging debate and discussions, and are the foremost reason why OUSA continues to provide strong representation on the provincial level. With these opportunities, OUSA continues to pursue our vision of striving for an accessible, affordable, and accountable post-secondary education system that offers our students the quality experience they deserve.
-Meaghan Coker
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As students have started rushing to and from class, OUSA has been rushing all over Ontario to make our annual visits at each of our members’ campuses.
Within two and half weeks, travelling from Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Waterloo, to Brock, Windsor, McMaster, Western, and finishing with Queen’s, we were able to pack in as much contact possible with the students we represent and the institutions they attend.
This year we reached out to the campus’ student media groups, each university’s institutional planning and budgeting office, and the administrative and executive heads of each university. In addition to using these visits as an opportunity for information sharing on OUSA’s work, it was extremely helpful for OUSA to ask about the priorities of each of our universities, and identify the unique issues that characterize each campus.
One of the most enjoyable aspects of the visits included the time we spent meeting with and presenting to each of our members’ elected student assemblies. This provided a chance to answer some well-thought out questions from student leaders, and gave us the opportunity to interact directly with them.
After this busy month of visiting we look forward to applying what we’ve learned, as we continue our efforts to provide students the best representation in order address the challenges they are facing and strive for the class of university education they deserve.
-Meaghan Coker
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September is here, signalling the beginning of another school year for over 450,000 university students across the province. On campuses all over Ontario, excitement for the year is building, with this week welcoming new students with orientation week activities and fall semester classes beginning in only a couple of days.
It has been a busy summer for OUSA, having furthered the discussion and awareness on a number of important issues including the prevalence of financial aid illiteracy among students, the significance of student support programs contributing to student success, and students increasingly funding a greater proportion of university operating budgets.
Additionally, over the past couple months OUSA’s policy and advocacy efforts have focused on many of our priorities, including international students’ need for specialized support and resources, deferred maintenance of our university campuses, a review of an Ontario wide survey ranking students’ priorities, and students’ vision for the Ontario Online Institute to be created this year.
In August, we had the privilege of welcoming Dr. Grace Lynch, a Senior Project Manager at Open Universities Australia, to make a presentation at a Conversation on Post-Secondary Online Education, hosted by the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities and the Ministry of Education. With support from the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), OUSA arranged the visit to learn from Dr. Lynch’s extensive experience. This was a great opportunity to understand a successful online consortium model, and consider how these best practices can be incorporated into the design of the Ontario Online Institute.
This year promises to be one of change and renewal within the post-secondary sector, and we are looking forward to contributing to the direction of PSE in Ontario. From our perspective, the next twelve months hold immense potential of moving towards ensuring and enhancing a high quality post-secondary education system in Ontario, as we continue to strive to offer our students the opportunities they deserve.
-Meaghan Coker
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With the beginning of the fall semester just over a month away, OUSA has been busy preparing for the coming school year.
In July, OUSA had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Thomas Carey, a Professor at the University of Waterloo in the Management Sciences Department and currently a Visiting Senior Scholar in the area of Knowledge Mobilization for Exemplary Teaching and Learning at HEQCO (Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario). Dr. Carey shared valuable information on the most prominent examples of online teaching and learning models, in addition to the prospective research themes that HECQO will be examining in the coming months for the Ontario Online Institute.
Additionally, OUSA was invited to take part in a day of discussions with the Canadian Publishers’ Council. This offered an interactive environment where students and publishers’ were able to highlight areas of aligned values, while continuing to express the diverging perspectives between students and textbook publishers’.
Later in August, OUSA will be attending the Partnership Conference hosted by CASA (Canadian Alliance of Student Associations) in Ottawa. This conference has always offered a unique opportunity for the provincial alliances, including NBSA (New Brunswick Student Alliance), ANSSA (Alliance of Nova Scotia Student Associations), and CAUS (Council of Alberta University Students) to meet and discuss the priorities of each other and potential for coordination on issues. This year’s conference will be focusing more explicitly on understanding the framework and effects of a new model for federal representation of student alliances.
Lastly, having determined the direction for this year at last month’s Strategic Planning Conference, we have been focused on developing the Action Plan for the year, coordinating our research and policy initiatives, advocacy priorities, and communications strategies. In assessing OUSA’s plans for 2010-2011, it is a year that is budding with potential and will be bursting with activity. With the strong commitment from our membership and relationships with our partners, there are great possibilities of moving towards ensuring and enhancing a high quality post-secondary education system, one that offers our students the opportunities they deserve.
-Meaghan Coker
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In complement to the summer heat rising, OUSA’s brainstorming and planning for the coming year has taken a dramatic upswing! Having just wrapped up our 4 day Strategic Planning Conference, the Steering Committee and Home Office Staff are returning with a renewed sense of direction for the year ahead.
This planning process provided the ideal opportunity for us to all come together and discuss OUSA’s policy and advocacy priorities. At the forefront of our minds, we envisioned how OUSA can contribute to creating a more accessible, affordable, accountable, and high quality system of post-secondary education in the Province of Ontario.
This year, OUSA plans to promote the importance of student success and further define the aspects that it comprises, including striving to improve teaching quality, offering enhanced support services, and providing engaging learning environments. Also, we have reaffirmed our commitment to realizing additional student financial assistance as it continues to be one of the highest priorities for students, and is critical to addressing the accessibility and persistence of students at a post-secondary level.
It is extremely motivating to see the potential that can come from the ideas developed over the past several days. We are all looking forward to the exciting opportunities for growth at OUSA, in our advocacy, our research, and our continued commitment to post-secondary education in Ontario.
This upcoming year holds much promise. Over the next twelve months, we will have the opportunity to contribute to the ongoing discussions on issues including quality enhancements, improving teaching and learning, implementing the Province’s internationalization strategy, and expanding early outreach initiatives in Ontario. I am very enthused about the potential for this upcoming year to engage with our membership and partners in the sector and continue to explore our shared vision for an accessible, affordable, accountable and high-quality post-secondary education in Ontario.
-Meaghan Coker
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After a dynamic transition conference week at OUSA, the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance is ready to take on another year, with eight motivated Steering Committee members and a new Executive.
I am pleased to have been elected President for the 2010-2011 year and inspired to be working with such talented student leaders from across our OUSA member student associations.
I want to extend my sincere appreciation and congratulations to the outgoing President Dan Moulton, the supporting Executive, and Steering Committee. The leadership you provided and the achievements you worked for this past year have carved a path for us to follow and have truly made a difference in the lives of students across Ontario.
Also, I would like to extend my gratitude to the guest speakers who presented at the OUSA Transition Conference this past week, including representatives from the Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities, the Council of Ontario Universities, the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations, the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, and the College Student Alliance. Your dedication and contribution is appreciated.
This upcoming year holds much promise. Over the next twelve months, we will have the opportunity to contribute to the ongoing discussions on issues including quality enhancements, improving teaching and learning, implementing the Province’s internationalization strategy, and expanding early outreach initiatives in Ontario. I am very enthused about the potential for this upcoming year to engage with our membership and partners in the sector and continue to explore our shared vision for an accessible, affordable, accountable and high-quality post-secondary education in Ontario.
-Meaghan Coker
