Wednesday marked an important day for Georgian College, as executives announced their strategic plan for the next five years that they say will lead them toward game-changing innovation and greater career-focused education.
The college calls their plan ‘Game Changing Innovation: Flourishing Students. Thriving Communities.’ It is a mission statement they say is behind their goals to accelerate research, creativity and community partnerships.
“We’re going to be bold and brave, and we can’t do it without our partners in the community and beyond,” said Kevin Weaver, Georgian College president and CEO. “Our communities and our employers have always looked to us to innovate, and I think now what we’re doing in this plan is we’re going to double down on that.”
Following nearly four months of consultation, the college outlined five focuses that they want to prioritize in the next five years:
1. Transformative education
2. Student experience
3. Community impact
4. Global connectivity
5. Organizational excellence
“For our students, experiential learning is so important,” said Kelly Duggan, Georgian’s executive director of strategy, innovation, and performance. “They come to us for experiences… It’s more than just what happens in the classroom. It’s that real-world opportunity to engage with employers during their course of study.”
The college will also lean on community partners, such as the YMCA of Simcoe-Muskoka.
They employ graduates from Georgian in childhood education and research.
“They have an amazing data analytics program where we can use their students to come in and analyze some of our data and understand what we’re looking at as we think about some of the challenges that we’re facing over the next couple of years,” said Jill Tettmann, YMCA of Simcoe/Muskoka president and CEO.
Through their strategic plan, Georgian hopes to remain in the top three among Ontario Colleges in terms of graduate employment rate.
Their current mark of 90.3 per cent has them nearly five points above the provincial average of 85.8 per cent.
“Our job is to ensure we’re feeding the economy with skilled labour,” added Weaver. “If they’re successful, we’re successful, and we know our communities will flourish.”
