UPDATE TO DONORS ON KPU’S ACADEMIC PLAN 2023

Launched five years ago with full implementation beginning in early 2019, the KPU Academic Plan 2023 includes 9 strategic goals in the key areas of student success, teaching excellence, accelerating research, next generation international, increasing Indigenous participation, advancing open education research and practices, employability of Trades and Technology apprentices, preparing for incoming K-12 graduates, and graduate studies. Each of the strategic goals is accompanied by 6 to 8 strategies and I am pleased to provide this update of our tremendous progress in working towards our goals in the 2022-2023 academic year.

To promote student success, we imagined the opportunity to enhance online learning for KPU students, and since the conversion to online delivery in March 2020, KPU has truly become a multi-modal delivery institution. Since Fall 2021 we have planned a course delivery mix each term of approximately 65% face-to-face and 35% online in various formats including asynchronous, synchronous, and blended modes. The Teaching and Learning Commons has presented the Level Up: Learn to Teach Online course to hundreds of faculty and also provided faculty with access to a suite of new and updated software platforms to enhance video conferencing, ePortfolios, video creation and editing, infographics, and digital collaboration. We purchased over 300 laptops to enable access to online learning for our students and contributed resources for small equipment purchases to assist faculty in the online learning environment. Our embrace of open educational practices, signifying open, affordable, and equitable education, is now well understood as a core part of KPU’s identity. In the past year our Zero Textbook Credit initiative saved KPU students another $3 Million in textbook cost savings and we are widely regarded as an international leader in open education. KPU has additionally focused on developing new support structures to recognize students’ prior learning and work experience for mature learners. This has included the development of a self-paced training course for learners on competency-based portfolio preparation, as well as a self-paced training course for faculty on prior learning assessment and recognition. The KPU Complete program, initiated in 2021, has served as a pathway to offer specialized support to mid-career and mature learners who wish to take academic programs at KPU. This program has supported the designation of KPU courses as specialized sections dedicated to learners 25 years old or older. The program has also offered centralized coordination services for mature learners, intended to connect them with services to facilitate re-entry into post-secondary education.

We continue to make progress in our efforts to increase Indigenous participation and to promote a renewed, authentic approach to Indigenous resurgence and decolonization. In

2022 we hired a new Coordinator, Indigenous Student Transition and Engagement, who is responsible for the coordination and delivery of specialized culturally relevant programming that supports the transition and engagement of KPU’s diverse Indigenous student population. The University has also recently welcomed the Associate Vice President, Indigenous Leadership, Innovation and Partnerships who reports to the Vice President, Students, and is responsible for overall Indigenous leadership, innovation, partnerships, and strategic planning at KPU. Work is underway to update the content and format of KPU’s Indigenous Awareness Modules including their translation to multiple languages. In addition, KPU’s Foundations in Teaching Excellence program includes a focus on Indigenization within the context of inclusive teaching. In Spring 2022, the University Senate and the Board of Governors approved the establishment of a new department of Indigenous Studies in the Faculty of Arts, effective April 1, 2022.

Our determination to build the next generation KPU international has yielded remarkable results. Through innovation, creativity, and process review we have been able to renew our focus on international students and more fully realize the important role they play in our institution and the KPU community. The International Peer Mentor program has continued in every semester since Summer 2020. KPU International recruits and trains 40 mentors each semester

Dr. Diane Purvey Provost and Vice President, Academic

for a total of 120 new mentors per year. Each mentor is matched with new students. Changes to our admissions process for international students has reduced the issuing of acceptance letters from up to eight weeks to within 48 hours. There has also been sustained attention paid to diversifying our international student mix through implementation of a diversification strategy which includes the identification of target markets.

The pandemic had the potential to hamper our efforts to realize aspects of the Academic Plan 2023, however, this has not been our reality. In some ways, the pandemic has accelerated the rate and breadth of change. The vast majority of the strategies are showing significant progress and are having demonstrable impacts. Such amazing progress on the Academic Plan 2023 can be attributed to the resilience and hard work of our students, faculty, staff, and administration during such an unusual and challenging time in our history. We are actively developing a new Academic Plan which we will share with you in our next report.

Learn more and follow our progress at: kpu.ca/vp-academic/academic-plan-2023