THE UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH-HUMBER: A BOLD INITIATIVE IN COLLABORATIVE LEARNING IN ONTARIO’S SYSTEM OF POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION By NANCY BURT Integrated Studies Project submitted to Dr. Derek Briton in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts – Integrated Studies Athabasca, Alberta March, 2007 2 Table of Contents Chapter Page I. Introduction 4 II. Background of Higher Learning in Ontario 9 The Early Years until the 1960s 9 A History of the University of Guelph 18 A History of Humber College 21 The Two Solitudes and Attempts to Collaborate 22 The Beginning of the University of Guelph-Humber 30 III. The Early Days 36 Planning and Developing a New Institution 36 Effecting Positive Institutional Change 40 Governance of the Joint Venture 44 Early Implementation Phase 46 Curriculum Development 49 General Breadth Electives 55 Moving Forward 58 Marketing and Student Recruitment 60 Preparing for the First Cohort of Students 63 Doors Open to Students 64 IV. The University of Guelph-Humber Takes Shape 67 A New Building for a New Initiative in Higher Learning 67 Looking Ahead 78 In Conclusion 81 3 I. Introduction: The province of Ontario has a rich and diverse history of postsecondary education. The history of higher education in the province can be traced to the royal charter allowing for the formation of King’s College in 1827 which became the foundation of the University of Toronto. Queen’s University in Kingston was founded in 1841, Ottawa University in 1848, and in 1878, the University of Western Ontario was established. Today there are 18 universities, 24 Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology (CAATs), and an assortment of private and specialty institutions mainly offering vocational training. The two entrenched systems of higher education in Ontario are the universities, and the CAATs which were established in the mid -1960s. While each is viewed as a valuable system for educating the population, the two are separate in almost every way. “Ontario maintains a binary system of post-secondary education. The province’s 18 degree-granting universities are distinct from the 24 Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology in terms of requirements for admission, programs offered and qualifications awarded. In addition, accredited universities belong to the prestigious Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, while CAATs do not” (Sedgwick, 2). The college system began operation in the fall of 1966 when Centennial College in Scarborough, a suburb of Toronto, opened its doors to students. The Ontario Legislature under Progressive Conservative Premier, John Robarts, had begun debate on creating a community college system in the early 1960s. Education Minister, Bill Davis, introduced legislation to create the system in the Ontario Legislative Assembly on May 21, 1965. Davis described the new system in vague terms, saying the colleges would 4 provide “courses of types and levels beyond, or not suited to, the secondary school setting” and “to meet the needs of graduates from any secondary school program, apart from those wishing to attend university” (Skolnik, 5). From the beginning, however, the CAATs were not seen as offering a university transfer function because, as Davis stated in the legislation, “…there is no need for such courses in Ontario at the present time” (Skolnik, 6). In other words, the system would not mimic the U.S. model of community colleges which can act as preparatory schools for four-year degree programs in universities or polytechnic institutes. Ontario’s colleges were established to meet the needs of the province’s economy – to train students for the workforce. “Rather than importing the two-year junior college concept from the U.S., Davis wanted a more career-oriented college – offering on-the-job training and a wide variety of flexible programs – that was responsive to the economy” (Tolijgic, J9). So from their inception, Ontario’s publicly-funded colleges developed as a separate system of higher education from the universities. University administrators were naturally wary of the CAATs fearing that some of their funding would be redirected to the colleges. (Tolijagic, J9). Perhaps because the CAATs were not seen as having a transfer function to the province’s universities, and because the colleges might have threatened university funding, the two systems have developed separately and to this day they tend not to work together. College graduates wishing to complete a university degree usually have to approach universities outside of Ontario to gain a reasonable amount of transfer credit. Humber College’s University Transfer Guide 2005 – 2006, which lists the amount of credit transfer that various universities will grant graduates of specific programs, shows that students usually receive more credit from out-of-province 5 universities. For example, for those who graduate from Humber’s three-year Journalism – Print and Broadcast program, Ontario’s universities that have articulation agreements with Humber and this program, in particular, will grant only the equivalent of one year of study. The University of Western Sydney in Australia will grant the equivalent of two years of study toward its four-year Bachelor of Communication program, and Athabasca University in Alberta will grant 72 credits towards its 120 credit Bachelor of Professional Arts in Communication Studies program, or close to three years of study. Most of Ontario’s universities also require a grade point average of 70 per cent or higher. However, there is an indication that the separation between Ontario’s colleges and universities may be changing. In fall 2002, the University of Guelph-Humber opened its doors to approximately 200 students on Humber College’s north campus in Toronto. The new institution is a unique partnership between the University of Guelph and Humber College, and offers six programs of study in which graduates earn an honours baccalaureate degree from the University of Guelph and a diploma from Humber College. The building to house the University of Guelph-Humber is located on Humber’s main campus in the northwestern section of Toronto. The building came about as the result of an Ontario government initiative, known as “SuperBuild”, which was announced in 1999 as a way to provide funding for colleges and universities’ infrastructure, and was awarded for various criteria including the willingness of colleges and universities to work together. The initiative came about because of a phenomenon known as “the double cohort”, a one-time huge increase in the number of students who would register for post secondary education in Ontario in the fall of 2003 as a result of the Conservative government’s decision to cancel grade 13 in 1997, and overhaul the high school 6 curriculum to make it a more rigid system with province-wide examinations in subjects such as mathematics and English. The Conservative government of Premier Mike Harris, and the Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, Dianne Cunningham, recognized that they would have to do something to accommodate the number of grade 12 and final year grade 13 students who would enter higher education together in 2003. Ontario universities and colleges scrambled to come up with ways to increase class sizes. At Humber, President Robert Gordon, said he saw a unique opportunity to develop a partnership with a university. His dilemma was to approach one that would work open-mindedly with a college, a difficult task based on the binary system of postsecondary education in the province, and what Gordon called the “entrenched elitism” at the universities. He said he thought there might be an opportunity with the University of Guelph for a number of strategic reasons, such as the university desired a Toronto presence, but primarily because the president, Mordechai Rozanski, “had worked for 25 years at American universities where they tend to be more open to colleges and have better transfer arrangements. His VP Academic was from Britain where the same is true. They didn’t carry the same elitist bias that other university senior administrators may hold” (Gordon, interview, September 21, 2006). As events unfolded, Gordon’s hunch turned out to be correct and the two institutions embarked on a partnership unique in Ontario. When the provincial government announced the SuperBuild initiative, the two institutions saw a way to receive funding to build a structure on Humber’s campus that would allow both institutions to accommodate up to 2,000 additional students in about five years time. 7 In a letter from Humber’s president, Dr. Robert Gordon, to then Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, Dianne Cunningham, in December, 1999, the uniqueness of the joint proposal from the two institutions was underlined. Gordon wrote: “We believe that this proposal breaks new ground in higher education in Ontario because it marks the first time a university and a college will integrate not only the admission process, which will relieve some of the academic and quality concerns that have always been problematic, but will also offer a fully integrated curriculum with each course being acceptable to both institutions. This never has been done before, and particularly not in such magnitude.” In this paper, I intend to show that the University of Guelph-Humber, if successful as a best practice, may serve as a test case to blur the separation between Ontario’s colleges and universities. The University of Guelph-Humber is the first institution of its kind in the evolutionary next step in higher education in the province. While it is currently unique, I will show how it is an emerging model - or a ‘third option”1 - that will help break the historic pattern of divisiveness between the two cultures by providing a successful test case of university/college collaboration. The blending of Guelph-Humber, both physically and pedagogically transcends the binary divide by bringing together the strengths of a college and a university to deliver a single system that combines applied learning and theoretical scholarship.