Students can expect more collaboration between York and Seneca College in the near future.
At the September Board of Governors meeting, President and Vice-Chancellor Mamdouh Shoukri reaffirmed that York is exploring “interinstitutional programming” with the college.
Alice Pitt, York’s vp academic, says the university is taking their commitment to collaborate with Seneca to a new level. This includes long-term plans to create a new University of York-Seneca, as mentioned in York’s Strategic Mandate Agreement to the Ontario government in 2012.
“York’s relationship with Seneca is different than other colleges,” says Pitt.
The two schools, she says, hope to create ‘a ground of innovation’ for education. York’s new partnership with Seneca could mean new opportunities for students and affect how the university operates as a whole.
Although this strategy is still in the exploratory phase, York and Seneca has jointly hired project managers to support faculty development programs between the two schools. Pitt says these project managers facilitate dialogues between the two schools and are creating new models of collaboration. The aim of this partnership is to design additional support and access to post-secondary education.
“These dialogues have been happening for some time,” Pitt says. “Both schools hope to work together more on institutional functions like admissions, recruitment, and transcript assessment.”
“It was natural for York and Seneca to come together,” says Pitt.
He adds that York’s collaboration with Seneca has “long roots.” For example, Seneca is York’s largest credit transfer partner. Pitt says in the fall of 2010, students from Seneca comprised roughly 35 per cent of college transfer students and since 2000, 8,954 students have transferred between the two schools.
“The needs of post-secondary students will be different in 15 years, and York needs innovative pathways to foster access to education,” says Pitt. “The landscape of post-secondary education is changing.”
Ernest Reid
Senior Staff
